The Heroes of Holbrook Academy

The Heroes of Holbrook Academy

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Spring Break Week

After St. Patrick's Day, we were kind of lazy about school.  It's kind of hard for us to get in school mode when we don't have co-op and the weather is decent.  And if everyone is getting along well, being nice to each other, or creative on their own, I hate to mess that up.  At any rate, we accomplished a tiny bit of school, including the conclusion of our study of Australia.

Math:
Since Sawyer has started learning about money, I thought we'd empty out their piggy banks this week
and get it put into their savings accounts.  This was a MUCH bigger task than I had anticipated!

Hayden's ugliest coin and most interesting coin.

Sawyer's ugliest and most interesting.

The boys both counted out all the coins in their piggy banks starting with the pennies and working
their way up to the quarters.  The bills we set aside.  After counting out each type of coin, I showed
them how many would fit into a roll, and we rolled what we could.

This system helped both of them for counting.

Some of the more unique coins and foreign currency that made it into their piggy banks.

Even Riley helped!
Social Studies:
And so our time in Australia ends.  We didn't get to everything that I had planned, but I figured the boys had learned enough, and I for one, am ready to move on.  We learned about the music, the people, the art, and of course, the food.  Can't end a study of a country without experiencing the food!
Scratch art Aborigine style!

Riley perusing the book we just read.
Children Just Like Me by Barnabas and Anabel Kindersley
 We completed a team project this week using the Aboriginal signs and symbols in our art and storytelling.  All three of us worked together to create a story.  I found this idea here.
 Hayden working on his part:  3 spears

Sawyer working on his part: a campfire

Getting some more detail in.

I was shocked how cooperative Sawyer was with this activity.
The finished product with all three portions put together.
Close up of the paintings:  campfire, spears, kangaroo tracks
Close up of the story.
Sawyer's section.  I wrote the words that he dictated, and he traced them.
"People were camping in the Australian woods.  They heard dingos howling.  It was night."
Hayden's section.
"The men decided to go hunting.  They wanted kangaroo.  They found a group of them and attacked."
My section (not really necessary, but for the sake of hearing the completion of the story):
"The kangaroos ran off, but not before one spear hit its mark.  The men continued to follow the tracks,
and they ate a good dinner that night."

Fairy bread:  A traditional snack at children's parties in Australia.  The boys HATED this.  (Just kidding).

After watching a few videos throughout the week on youtube and Amazon Prime,  the boys worked
together to build a coral reef habitat in our little water table.

Making the reefs were interesting and fun.

Water in the water table:  also fun.  The actual reef didn't work out so well, but hey.  What can you do?
And finally…..  the Australian meal of the month:  Australian BBQ!
Shrimp and Snags on the Barbie!
and Hasselback Potatoes!
Hayden helped me (sort of) make the dessert:  Lamingtons.

After baking the butter cake, it had to be cut into squares and dipped in a chocolate frosting.

Then they get rolled in coconut.


We also made Anzac biscuits, a cookie that was made back in World War I era to be sent off to the
soldiers.  They were NOT pretty, and honestly, I forgot to take an "after" picture.  I guess they tasted
good enough, though, because they got scarfed!

Dinner time!

Dessert time!

Is it yummy, Riley?

How can you tell?








Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I figured I'd just make a separate post for this day since it was a unique day for us.  The boys both wanted to build leprechaun traps like we did last year (and maybe the year before?).  However, the weekend leading up to St. Patrick's Day was SO busy that we almost forgot to build them, and I will have to admit, they were pretty lazy about it.  It wasn't until bedtime that they all of a sudden decided to start kicking it up a few notches and adding food and tea for the leprechaun to drink, a bed for him to sleep on, etc.  They put a LOT more thought to the inside of their trap than the outside.  The outsides of their traps looked like no effort whatsoever had gone into their planning!
Hayden, surrounded by possibilities to decorate this big cardboard box in order
to trap the leprechaun, explains how the leprechaun is going to climb up a ladder
to get the pot of fake gold and fall through the top.

Sawyer doesn't even bother decorating.  He's got this whole drop system planned out.  The pot of "gold" (located on the ground) will have a string attached to it, with the other end of the string attached to a blue dump truck (hidden by Sparky).  When the leprechaun grabs the pot of gold,  it will activate the bed on the truck to lift.  The box above is also attached to the same truck bed.  When the bed lifts, the box will drop down, capturing the leprechaun.

Here, the boys are now starting to get more into the luring part of the trap.
They are finding more and more "stuff" that will attract said leprechaun.
Needless to say, the traps did not work.  The leprechaun escaped yet again (blast that little man!), but he left a scavenger hunt for the boys to follow.  I was going to take pictures, but since Hayden is now fully capable of reading on his own, those little boogers went through the entire hunt before we even woke up the next day!!
Helping the leprechaun find the pot of gold through the maze.

The two books we read for the day.  The first one was a little too preachy for me,  but I just went with it.  The boys didn't really notice or care.  The second one is a Magic Tree House book and is a chapter book.  We didn't finish it, but we are kind of still working on it.  It's hard for us to really get into because it's so far down the road from where we are with these books.  We are on book #17, and this one is book #43.  A LOT has happened between the two.  So,
we might just shelve this one and come back to it later.

Looking for Ireland and its flag.  This will be helpful for when we eventually study the whole country of Ireland.

Shamrock Dot-to-Dot.

Graphing a rainbow of Skittles!
First, the boys estimated how many of each color they had.

Then they sorted and counted out each color to see how close they were.

After that, we added up the total amount of both boys' Skittles.
(Hayden did the math for us on the chalkboard).

The finished graphs!



Dem bones, Dem bones...

Week 2 of March was shortened by Sawyer's unfortunate monkey bars event that resulted in a broken arm.  Hardly anything happened after that incident other than running from one doctor's office to another to get x-rays, follow-ups, and a sling.  Not even a cast!  After all the drama and pain and stress, it turns out that the fracture is too high up on his arm for them to cast, and he has to just "keep it still" in the sling for 4 weeks before we get it x-rayed again.  Yeah, right.  Keep it still.  You'd think these pediatric doctors have never worked with highly active children before.  Needless to say, he hurt himself another 4 times before I finally made a trip to Walgreens to purchase a stretchy Ace  bandage.  This better secured his arm, and we have had no problems since then.  So, for the next 4 weeks, when you see pictures of Sawyer with this wrap around him, now you'll know why.

Language Arts:

Books We Read this week:
Helen at Home and the Letter H by Klingel and Noyed
Dear Dragon Helps Out by Margaret Hillert
I Did It, Dear Dragon by Margaret Hillert
Rooster is Off to See the World by Eric Carle
Jo and the Foal (Emergent Reader with Hayden's curriculum)

Hayden read through his emergent reader aloud for Sawyer

Riley got interested in one of Hayden's books.

Sawyer read aloud the "I Did it, Dear Dragon".
Afterwards, we began the next book together.

The boys cut out and played a memory game with some sight words.

They each had their own set of words to work with.  

After cutting them out, we arranged them facedown on the table and took turns
flipping them over, reading the words aloud, and trying to find a match.

This is a book that Hayden picked out at the library this week for his own
reading pleasure.  Looks interesting enough from the front cover, I suppose.

But then, you look at the inside.  What the heck??
It's a scientist in the making, I guess.  He loves these books.  Me?  I was
reading Ramona Quimby at his age.  Hahaha!

A little close-up of one of the passages that he read to me.
At this rate, he'll know more about reproduction than I'll ever care to cover
with him! 


Sawyer, meanwhile, is circling all the H's he can find.  :)

Back to reading skills……  Looking for and identifying punctuation in one of
his books for the week.

There were a LOT of periods.
Math:
Playing the Corners Game:
Each card has 4 numbers in 4 different colors.  You have to
match numbers/colors up so that the numbers together make
a sum of 5, 10, 15, or 20.  The first one to 100 is the winner. 
Working on learning the value of coins (pennies, nickels, and dimes).

Understanding what "half" of something is.

After showing him what half is and isn't, Sawyer had to cut out a bunch of
shapes and then fold them in half.

It was a lot of shapes.  So, I helped out a little.

He didn't do a bad job in the folding, though!
Social Studies:
This week, for our study of Australia, we made a map cookie!  I found the idea here.  It took a lot longer than I expected, and our cookie dough wasn't entirely cooperative, but below shows our results.
We put our map worksheets inside sheet protectors first.  Then, the boys rolled
out the dough to cover the continent.

We had to squish it, playdoh style, to move it back just inside the line of the
country/continent.

Which proved to be a big waste of time since our cookie dough grew exponentially in the oven.  I ended up cutting out the map, laying it on top of the cookie, and trimming the cookies with a paring knife.  The boys liked this because they got to eat the excess pieces.

Once the cookies were looking more like the country/continent of Australia again,
the boys got to pick and choose their toppings that would represent certain cities
and other places of importance.

The mountain ranges and the Outback were their favorite parts.

Sawyer's finished map cookie.

Hayden's finished map cookie.