Plodding Along

How did September get here so fast?

It's been non-stop learning over here in the Holbrook household.  The boys are doing such a great job with their work, and I'm getting (a tiny bit) better at managing the time used between each one of them. I'm a little disappointed with the Reading Eggs program we've been using....really more disappointed with the Mathseeds part of it for Sawyer because it keeps locking up on him.  Apparently, it's not very compatible with Mac computers, and nothing I do has definitively solved the issues we've been having. So, we may stop using it altogether and find something else.  In the meantime, Sawyer is getting a good amount of hands-on activities with me while Hayden works on other stuff, and that seems to be working for us.

Books Read This Week:
Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel
Heckedy Peg by Audrey Wood
The Liberty Bell by Mary Firestone
If Maps Could Talk by Erika L. Shores
Somewhere in the World Right Now by Stacey Schuett
The Statue of Liberty by Lloyd G. Douglas
Spot Goes Clip Clop by Debbie Strayer (Hayden's Easy Reader)

Language Arts:

Working on the -at family by reading, tracing, and pasting together sentences.

Sequencing events 

The finished product

Sawyer's Cookie Sheet Challenge #3
Beginning Sounds Mm and Ss

Roll-a-Dough Letters 

Sawyer "LOVES" doing these.  The letters this week are B, F, O, and X.

Letter "F" worksheet.  He had to trace and copy the letter Ff and color the
pictures that start with the "f" sound.

Another angle of the same activity.

You'll notice, I'm sure, that there are more pictures of Sawyer than Hayden in this section.  Sometimes, it will be that way.  I'm allowing a lot of his writing and reading to be done with lap booking, in which case, those pictures will show up underneath our science and social studies sections.

Math:

Quantities 1 to 5.  Learning that 5 has a middle.

Playing a matching game.  

Count Your Beans Place Value Activity.

Count Your Beans worksheet to follow the activity.

On the Number Game.
We took turns making rows of 15 or 18 (random numbers chose by Hayden).

Adding three numbers together to get 10 or 15.

Science:

For science this month, we added geology to Hayden's list since that is what he is working on at co-op in his Magic School Bus science club.  We read the MSB chapter book, Rocky Road Trip, (which I forgot to include in my pic of books earlier) at home.  He is completing a lapbook at home as well, and doing activities at the co-op on Tuesdays.

Working on the lap book

Metamorphic "rock" made at co-op from sedimentary "rock" crayon shavings.
To see pictures from our co-op days this semester,
you can go to my Free Range Learning Co-op album on Facebook

Social Studies:

After learning about the American Flag and its history, along with a few patriotic songs, we moved on to other symbols of the United States.  We watched a little video from the website, BrainPopJr., about American symbols, and we read two books this week - one about the Liberty Bell, and one about the Statue of Liberty.

We also worked on mapping a little bit in preparation of our Little Passports that should be coming in the mail soon.  I found the Classical Conversations song on YouTube about the continents and oceans.  So, we listened to that and practiced on our map at home.  Then, we read the book, Somewhere in the World Right Now, and talked about time zones, etc.  Hayden completed a word search of the names of the continents as well.

Getting a feel for what the number 7 billion (approximately,
the number of people in the world) looks like.

Making a map of the school room (wow, was this hard!)

Using shapes to represent items in the room.

Word Search on the continents.