Holbrook Heroes: End of the Year 2013

The last couple of weeks of school for the year 2013 were spent mostly on holiday stuff. We managed to get in a few good language arts and math lessons, but really, we just tried to have fun. Here's a run-down of what we accomplished:

Language Arts

The last of the Skylanders activities:
Rhyming words. Sawyer cut apart and glued the words that
rhyme with each Skylander in the correct columns.

Working on blending sounds together to make words that have the long /a/ sound.

Books We Read:
O Christmas Tree, Its History and Holiday Traditions by Jacqueline Farmer
The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg
The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth
Mooseltoe by Margie Palatini
Olive the Other Reindeer by J. Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh

After reading the book, Mooseltoe, the boys both wrote/illustrated in their journals what they would do if they couldn't find a Christmas tree.

Sawyer's journal entry

Hayden's journal entry:
"If I couldn't find a tree, I would try to make a tree for us
to decorate. I would make it out of cardboard and wood."

After reading The Gingerbread Man, the boys wrote/illustrated in their journals again. They had to create a gingerbread person and write about it.

Writing in his journal after reading The Gingerbread Man.

After reading The Polar Express, the boys were supposed to write in their journals what their wish would be for the very first gift of Christmas. That one didn't go so well. So, no picture for that one.

Math

Math was a little weak at the end. We didn't do much at all. Sawyer worked on a little skip counting, and Hayden made a gingerbread house graph, but that's about it. We had a couple of other things planned, but they just never happened.

Putting the gingerbread men in the correct order by 2's.

Filling in the blanks using the gingerbread men cards as a guide.

Making his graph. He liked this a lot, and he worked on it for a couple of days.
This was his first time ever doing a graph like this.

The finished graph!

Social Studies:

Our country for this month was France. Yay, France! Well, boo-hoo, because we hardly got to do anything with it. I can't believe what a hard time I'm having trying to find things to do with France! Everything I look for is really centered around the language, which I know is cool and all, but ALL the countries we study have a different language. I'm not teaching languages right now, and I just want to find activities that pertain to the country! I found some stuff on impressionism, but we just never got a chance to do any of it. Having the holidays at the same time just really got in the way. So, the furthest we got with France at this point in time was locating it on the map, and learning about the flag. I plan on picking it back up once we start school after our holiday break.

Coloring in the French flag.

Other Fun Stuff:

After reading about Christmas trees, the boys created their own Christmas trees with strips of wrapping paper that were all different sizes.

Putting the strips in order from largest to smallest.

Almost done!

To go along with our gingerbread themed day, we made our annual trip to the Gingerbread House Extravaganza downtown. For the first time ever, Hayden did almost the entire scavenger hunt on his own. His reading has gotten WAY better than I realized! (Sorry for the quality of these photos. They were taken with my phone).