Week in review, August 27-31

We had another great week of school! I tweaked our schedule a bit this last weekend, and it helped Alex and Ben's day move along a little more smoothly. Ethan continued with his AWESOME attitude, even {imagine me falling over right here} doing schoolwork in the evenings just because he wanted to!

Not that the week was perfect or entirely conflict-free ... you can probably imagine how well the day went that started out like this:

Jumping games aside, Ethan:

*completed five lessons in CLE 500, moving him into the second Light Unit. (We started this earlier this summer, so he's a little bit ahead of where he would be otherwise.)
*completed six lessons in Winning with Writing
*completed three lessons in Growing with Grammar (and likes only having grammar scheduled three times a week!)
*completed three lessons in The World of Plants - among other things, he gave a short presentation on why plants are important in industry, dug up grass to inspect the roots, and constructed a model plant cell (no pictures of any of that because I tend to forget to take them.)
*continued work on Geography through Literature. This week he studied ponds and sawmills, did more mapping, completed vocabulary work from Paddle to the Sea, and more.
*continued with Wordly Wise vocabulary
*blew through three more spelling lists with Sequential Spelling
*studied Georgia and New Jersey in his state study

*read lots of books. I forgot to mention this last week, but we're not doing a formal reading or literature program, he's just reading a lot and talking to us about it. This week his favorites that he finished were Swallows and Amazons and Rakkety Tam. He was thrilled to find out that Swallows and Amazons was the first in a series, declaring it "one of the best books I've ever read." Rakkety Tam is another book in the Redwall series, a long-standing favorite of his.

Alex:

*worked on fun thinking skills games with Mom - his favorite this week was Trucky.
*studied the water cycle. We read lots of books and also did several fun activities and experiments, including making a water cycle bracelet with glow-in-the-dark beads, making it rain, seeing water vapor on a mirror, and watching food coloring move through shaving cream to simulate rain coming through a cloud.

For some reason, this is the only picture I got of Alex other than the jumping ones.

As you can see, that last experiment was mostly a fun way to make a mess. I saw it here, and if you click through to the link you can see that they made lovely prints with the colored shaving cream with they were done. My boys? Made - and I quote - "swamp water". Alex narrated the entire water cycle to me at the end of the week, though, so it would seem he did learn something!
*played more math games
*once again turned his nose up at anything that came in workbook form.

Ben:

 
*made faces
*played with little cars
*colored a couple of pictures
*stuck popsicle sticks in slots in a box
*saved the world several times (I know this because he went around yelling, "Don't worry! I'll save you!")
*wore his shoes on the wrong feet on purpose

Together, they

*completed five more lessons in The Bible Study Guide for All Ages. They seem to be enjoying this, and I'm a little surprised at the amount of detail Alex (and even Ben) are recalling.
*played some strange game where they couldn't step on the floor of the school room (during school), so they had to hop around from crate to pillow to chair to crate and back again
*didn't wear shirts and showed me their muscles

What a name ...

"Ethan," I asked, "did you read this special feature on Carl Linnaeus? It says he's considered the Father of Taxonomy."

"Yes, I did," Ethan answered. "It was pretty interesting. I don't think, though," he mused very seriously, "that I would name my child Taxonomy."

Mom falls on the floor laughing, and Ethan looks very pleased at how well his joke was received.

Week in review, August 20-24

We've completed our first week of school! While I'll spend some time this weekend tweaking our schedule and possibly rearranging the schoolroom to separate Alex and Ben's desks, it's been a very successful week overall.

Ethan 
*completed five lessons in CLE math 

 
*completed four spelling lists from Sequential Spelling
*did lessons 1.1 - 1.3 in Growing with Grammar and decided he really likes having a workbook for grammar
*completed five lessons in Winning with Writing
* finished the first three lessons in The World of Animals, his first trimester science book
*completed the notebooking pages for the first two states in his state study
*finished Unit One of Paddle to the Sea in Beautiful Feet Books' Geography through Literature- he's really loving this course so far, and was disappointed that it wasn't scheduled for every day!

*completed his first "shop class" project with Dad - a side table to use while they are hunting together

 

Ethan's attitude was outstanding this week! He has shown a huge leap in his desire and ability to work independently, take on multi-step assignments with a cheerful, can-do attitude, and buckle down and do his work even if it's not something he enjoys much. I am so proud of him!

Alex

*worked on phonics with Mom and a whiteboard (we're loosely using AlphaPhonics)

*practiced phonics with Happy Phonics

*did bits and pieces of some handwriting and number writing

*enjoyed various thinking skills games with Mom

*turned his nose up at Rod and Staff's kindergarten workbooks, but did some anyway

*LOVED his Five-in-a-Row selection, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel 

A brand new sensory bin!

Drawing trees like Virginia Lee Burton's in the book

Seeing how steam can make things move

A Mike Mulligan cake (the Teddy Grahams are all the people who were watching)

 Together they did four lessons in The Bible Study for All Ages. We like that so far, but it needs some tweaking in how we actually work it ... pondering that this weekend.

Benny

* played, interrupted, rode his horse, shot bad guys, and generally was three. 

First Day of School, 2012

Today was our first day of school for the year! This year, for the first time, we officially have two students. Ethan is in 5th grade (and boy, does that seem impossible!) and Alex is in kindergarten. I not only remembered to make signs for them, remembered to actually take the pictures, and blogged about it, all on the same day! You may take that as proof that miracles still happen. You will notice, though, that my writing didn't show up very well on their little signs, so I've added captions to the photos.

Ethan, 10yo, 5th grade, 2012

Alex, 5yo, kindergarten, 2012

Ben, 3yo, play school, 2012

Our first day went pretty well. Hopefully that's an indication of how well our year is going to go!

Ooblek revisited

We made a summer bucket list at the beginning of the summer. The first thing the boys wanted to do was make more ooblek. 

Benny played with his so long his hands were smurf-like blue when he was done!

Ethan opted not to color his, but Alex and Ben both added food coloring to theirs.

They left this terrific mess and went outside to play. It took me a loooong time to clean up, mostly because I kept getting distracted and playing with it myself. It really is a fascinating substance!