Weekly Wrap-Up: Pigs & Gingerbread

It's been a relaxing week at our house....we have needed the chance to not worry about anything! We've continued with math and reading as usual. The kids have enjoyed reading different versions of The Nutcracker, and our favorite music this week is "Sleigh Ride" by Leroy Anderson. We have been learning about the instrumentation and talking about how instruments can evoke certain feelings and moods in a piece of music.

Thursday we headed to Atlanta to ride The Pink Pig at Macy's. It's been a tradition here since the 1950s. We had a wonderful time! We went with some good friends of ours.... Miss B didn't want to have her picture taken with Priscilla the Pig!

Here are my two sweet children getting ready to ride the pig.... even though it was a cold, rainy day we had a great time!

And of course we headed into the mall afterwards and enjoyed some California Pizza Kitchen. What a special treat!

Today we have a friend staying with us... he is a good buddy of GMan's, so we wanted to do a fun activity with him. We read about the history of gingerbread, colored our own Gingerbread Glyphs (check out the link for great Gingerbread Math activities!), then decorated Gingerbread men with icing, chocolate chips, and candies.

The sun is out and I can hear the basketballs bouncing outside - the boys are getting some energy out and having lots of fun! Later we have a couple of homemade goodies to deliver and then I think I have to face the inevitable -- cleaning bathrooms! Well, the WHOLE day can't be perfect now, can it?

I'm looking forward to Miss B's piano recital tomorrow afternoon - I'll be sure to post some video when it's over.

Weekly Wrap-Up: Thanksgiving, Crafts and the Animals

I learned a valuable lesson this week: ditching the "plans" and going with some tangents and my children's interests is a GOOD thing. We kept our normal schedule with math, grammar and writing, but really just let the spirit lead us with everything else. I did try to get in a couple of history lessons (we are getting so close to the Civil War) so we didn't lose our good flow of history, though. I was very happy with our week!

One oft he highlights of the week. was our trip to see the BBC Orchestra play at the Fox Theatre in downtown Atlanta. The conductor was Keith Lockhart. I had heard so many wonderful things about him, and finally got to see him in person. They played an all Russian program, and in the second half played Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto. Just Miss B and I went, and we really enjoyed ourselves! We talked a lot about instruments of the orchestra, seating arrangements, audience etiquette, etc... We need to do a full unit about the orchestra after Thanksgiving.

Tuesday we had a clay class with a fabulous art teacher. We have taken classes with her before, but this was the first time GMan participated. Miss B made a huge mug with leaf impressions. She did it all by herself. I was so proud of her - I was busy helping GMan with a shaker he was making so I didn't have time to assist her. She did great all on her own. We go back in two weeks to paint the pottery.

I had seen this very cute fall leaf craft posted at Heart of the Matter, and decided to give it a try. The kids spent a lot of time outside this week because it was so beautiful. One day I just sent them into the yard and told them to collect as many interesting leaves, berries and grasses as they could find. Then, I asked them the create their own picture with the materials. Miss B enjoyed it very much. GMan enjoyed picking everything, but once inside the house seemed frustrated with the activity and wound up just drawing something on his own.

Miss B's finished masterpiece was called "Turkey in the Woods". So cute.

Thursday was such a fun day. We took a trip to Zoo Atlanta with some other homeschooling friends. We had the BEST time. The zoo just welcomed a baby panda two weeks ago. Of course we didn't see the mom and baby, but we did see two other pandas, and we saw a picture of the baby (who is about the size of a stick of butter!). You can also see the panda on the zoo's panda cam.

I told my kids to each choose one animal they wanted to research further in the upcoming weeks. Miss B chose the giant panda, and GMan chose the orangutan. One of the keepers talked to us about the orangutans at the zoo and told us they are training them to do simple matching games on the computer (which is inside a tree and the animals interact with it!)... the orangutans get the game right 80% of the time!

In honor of our trip to the zoo, we read a Boxcar Children book - The Mystery of the Mixed Up Zoo. We love Boxcar books, and this one didn't disappoint us.

We also continued reading Stories of the Pilgrims online. Right now the Pilgrims are going to be led to the new world by Captain Miles Standish. We can't wait to journey with them more next week!

Gman completed a very cute free unit from Simple Schooling called "Autumn Fun Book". It had copywork, coloring, puzzles, alphabetizing, and some comprehension questions. He loves written work and this was right up his alley.

Miss B finished the second book in the Percy Jackson series, The Sea of Monsters. She read it in just a couple of days and wants the third book quite badly! I love that she has so much time to read and that she enjoys reading. I'm a sucker for books and she knows that if she reads them I will be happy to add to her library (which I know will be her brother's library one day!).

At the very end of the week I discovered a GREAT game for the iPhone/iPad/iTouch called Math Bingo. If you have one of these devices you HAVE to get Math Bingo. It makes drills so much fun and even I'm addicted to playing Bungee Bugs! I can't say enough good things about this app!

My favorite thing about the week was that it was very unstructured. I was a little worried my kids wouldn't handle that well, but they are getting better at it. This morning while I was fixing breakfast they got out an animal matching game and starting playing together happily. They were chatting with each other about the animals in the game and facts they had learned about those animals at the zoo yesterday. It was one of those warm, fuzzy moments where I was so glad to be homeschooling. (Trust me, sometimes the warm, fuzzy moments are far and few between, so I savored this.)

Next week we are taking the whole week off and I plan to take a big blogging break. Happy Thanksgiving!

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Weekly Wrap-Up: See Our New Vocabulary Word!

*I know this is a bit of a long post, so if you want to see the vocabulary word, scroll to the bottom. I hope you read about our week, but if not, that's ok, too!

Wow - this week was a blur! I read people's posts about car schooling and think "I'm sure glad that's not me". Well, I spoke too soon, because this week was definitely way too busy, but somehow we worked school into the nooks and crannies of our schedule. I didn't take many pictures because we didn't really do many "projects" this week, just lots of academics and read alouds. We were only home for a full day on Tuesday and Wednesday, and while we accomplished a lot, I usually like to have four full days at home during our week.

For my own sense of accomplishment, I'll break down our week by academic subjects:

Math:
Miss B. began long division. It isn't easy for her, but it's not quite as hard as I thought it would be. We could stand to be more automatic with our times tables, so I plan to drill these hard with her next week. She also started basic geometry - lines, rays, line segments, right angles.

GMan continued to whiz right through math. His new Grade 1 Horizons math book came and he worked through 13 lessons in two days. Math is just his thing.

History:

Miss B. learned about the Cotton Gin and Steam Engine and how they changed life in America in the early 1800s. We are working up to the civil war. She loves history so much. Her book this week was Robert Fulton, Boy Craftsman.

We also finished Imprisoned in the Golden City, which is a wonderful Trailblazer book about Adoniram and Ann Judson, the first American missionaries in Burma. I think this was Miss B's favorite Sonlight book yet.

I began reading Pilgrim Boy aloud to GMan this week. It is out of the ABeka curriculum and was handed down to us. He enjoys the book very much. I've been looking for new things with him because he has seemed to move quickly since we have brought him home for school!

Grammar:

Miss B. continues in Easy Grammar and daily grams. This week was regular and irregular verbs. We LOVE Easy Grammar!

GMan did more in First Language Lessons. I have been printing handwriting worksheets to go along with some of the exercises in the book and that has worked well for him.

Science:

We are all about bears! We have checked out a million books about bears and have been working through a great bear resource we found while in the mountains last week. Tonight we watched a National Geographic film about bears in Alaska. Very interesting.

Spelling:

Miss B is at lesson 60 in Sequential Spelling. GMan has been helping me give her the tests. He reads the words and puts them in a sentence (with some help from mom). They are both learning spelling words this way. I did take problem words and put them on Spelling City as well.

Reading:

GMan is totally hooked on Read, Write & Type. He is a good reader, but enjoys this phonics and keyboarding program. I recommend it without reservation. What a great find this has been. One day at rest time he also read all of Flat Stanley by himself! I didn't believe he had done it, but I quizzed him on each chapter and he knew it all. Funny little kid.

Miss B finished the first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and has the second one ready to start. She is also re-reading the sixth Harry Potter book in preparation for the movie for the seventh book coming out very soon. She has her nose in a book all the time!

Each night the kids had The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh read aloud to them. In the beginning Miss B said it was too "babyish" for a fourth grader. But, guess who was listening each night and giggling along? (I feel like we are playing catch-up since Miss B was in school until the third grade. There is so much I want her to know!) It is such a sweet and wonderful story. I'll be sad when we finish it tomorrow. One day we also read the short version of Paddington, and I can't wait until we can start the chapter book.

Extras:

We didn't get in a lot of extras this week. The kids are both taking an art class for the next two weeks, so I feel good about that. We also listened to some Beethoven's Wig in the car today, so I filled them up with classical music! Anna is preparing for the Christmas piano recital and we were very good about her practicing each day. We're also always listening to music in the car, so I don't feel they're lacking in this area! Miss B had tennis lessons and GMan did plenty of baseball with his dad and neighborhood kids this week. He's ready for spring ball to start!

Co-Op:

Today was the last day of co-op this semester. The kids made gorgeous lapbooks in each of their classes. I have been so impressed with what they have learned and the friendships they have gained through our co-op. It has been an invaluable experience for all of us.

Finally.... the new vocabulary word of the week was FOUL. We were going to the restrooms at the park and encountered this sign:

OK. The people who made the sign were SERIOUS. It was the worst smell ever - imagine 1,000 dead fish and it was 10 times that bad. GMan will never forget what the word FOUL means. He must have used it again 50 times throughout the week! Too funny. I knew there was a reason I took a picture of the sign.

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