Back to the Grind

Well, we had a nice 2 week break and field trip.  Now, it's time to get back to business!  It's going to be a little jumpy for the rest of the year now that the holidays are coming.  So, we'll see how well we do with the 3Rs over the next month and a half!  This post actually is 2 weeks worth of school: the week before our trip to D.C., and the first week of November.

Language Arts

Books We Read:
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss

Collage project on items that belong/don't belong together

Word Family Paint Sample Activity
Real or Nonsense words?

Finished project.  The animals on the left belong together.  The pictures on the
right do not go together (ex. giraffe in a swimming pool with an octopus)

Sideways picture of a drawing by Sawyer after reading the book, The Interrupting Chicken

Hayden got all sad when Sawyer got to do this activity, and he really
wanted to do it, too.  So.  Here you go.

Writing the ABC's just because.

Matching name cards to all the easy readers he's read over the past month or so.

Writing the names of the characters under the correct picture.

Finding the word families he's learned on the chart using the BIG finger.

Handwriting without Tears workbook
"The ant, the bug, and the bee"
Sawyer would aim for the critter and color it in on the left.  On the right, he
traced the lines of the critters' paths.

Working on beginning sounds and matching pictures to the correct box.

Building words with the blending cards.
(He had a tougher time with this than he thought he would!)

Color-by-Number sight words

For some reason, Sawyer LOVES workbook activities.  So, we spent a good amount
of time on this one.

Writing and illustrating what we are thankful for.

Another book we decided to read impromptu because
someone placed a hold on it at the library and I had to
return it!  So, we did a little journal entry afterwards.

Sawyer's "Thankful" entry.

Hayden's "Thankful" entry.

Reviewing the word family flip books made this past month.

Letter Hunt with Do-a-Dots!

Sawyer working on his sight words to make a caterpillar.

Math:

Patterning with tiles

Making squares with the tiles

Making rectangles with the tiles.

Learning about half of a whole through a water activity.

Then we furthered the lesson to learn about quarters/one-fourth
of a whole/one-half of a half.

After the water activity, we counted out 12 tiles.  Then, he had to find a quarter of
the tiles and tell me how he did it.

Reviewing half hours on the clock.

Taking what we learned about whole/half/quarter and using it to count money
and find a quarter of a dollar.

Counting money.  He actually had a hard time with this worksheet.
Until I gave him real coins to place on the pictures.  

Combining tally stick amounts

Reviewing place value

Adding 4-digit numbers on the abacus.

Science:

Not a whole lot in the way of science these couple of weeks.  What we started to do was an experiment with our Halloween pumpkin.  It was called "The Rotting Pumpkin Experiment".  The plan was to keep a journal about the desiccation of our pumpkin by writing a little something about it each week, and draw a picture of how it looked.  The first week we started, it was already starting to fuzz up on the inside.

It looks okay, but on the inside, it is NOT okay.

The boys making their journal entries.

Flies and fly larvae appear on week 2 of our pumpkin experiment.  The outer
shell gives if you poke it. 

Things were rolling along nicely, with the black fuzz growing throughout the inside.  Then the flies became much more prominent, and little white larvae showed up all on the outside.  It was excitingly disgusting.  We poked at it a little bit to see what happened, and the whole face moved!  

Which is probably what led the boys to explore further with it this week.  Thus ending our experiment for good.

Notice the pumpkin juice flowing out the bottom and alongside the house.
If you thought dead animals smelled bad, then you've never smelled a rotting pumpkin.
Oh. My. Gross.

Social Studies:

The week before we left for D.C., we finished up learning about Brazil.  We also worked on our globe some more.  The boys are very excited about that thing becoming an end-of-the-year piñata!

Taking turns putting together a large floor puzzle of the world.

Working on painting the 7 continents.

Creating masks for the Carnivale!

The finished products!

These boys are ready to party!

The week that we got back into school after the trip, we received our next package from Little Passports in the mail.  The boys had a good time pulling everything out, and finding our next country - Japan - to study on the big world map.

Adding the map pin to the map.

Putting our Japan sticker/stamp in our passport.

All the goodies!
Japan boarding pass, sushi eraser, picture of a Japanese home, and activities to
help explore Japan.

Origami!

Books We Read about Japan
Children Just Like Me by Barnabas and Anabel Kindersley
Easy Origami by John Montroll
I Live in Tokyo by Mari Takabayashi
Japanese Celebrations by Betty Reynolds