Holbrook Heroes: July 2015

Yes, we are schooling year-round. It actually gives us something to do on the days that it is just too hot to be outside. We have found that doing an activity in the morning (such as a playdate with friends at the park or going to the beach), and then school in the afternoon works well for us. Of course, we switch it up on occasion and do school first and activity afterwards as well. Either way works!

Riley
The baby is starting to become more and more a part of the schooling process. Not so much a baby anymore, I guess. So, I'm testing the waters with busy bags and mini themes for him during the first part of the day. Our library system is amazing, and they have these Traveling Tales, which are bags that you can check out for 3 weeks that all have a theme. Inside the bags are books, a CD or DVD, a puppet, flannelboard activity, art project suggestions, and finger play songs all related to a certain theme. This first part of the summer, I was able to get the Boats Traveling Tales and Ocean Traveling Tales.

B is for beads and boats.

Balancing balls

Sorting colors

Flannelboard activity

M is for macaroni?

Some serious coloring going on here.

Working on our fine motor skills by putting "worms" in a "nest".

F is for fish. Hard to see here, but there are fish drawn on the paper and he is putting
a certain number of "air bubbles" above them depending on what number is written
on each one.

Water sensory play time outside.

Language Arts
Both Hayden and Sawyer worked on wrapping up their LLATL curricula. I was anxious to be done with this as both were becoming monotonous and boring for all of us. We just needed a change. Hayden finished his up completely. Sawyer completed all but the last few lessons in his.

Order sequencing: with each story, Sawyer had to color, cut, and assemble pictures
in the correct order of the story he just read.

As we neared the end of the curriculum, we also added on by writing a
sentence to go with each picture.

Hayden's readers with his curriculum became too simplified and not very interesting.
So, he branched out to other books that were more captivating and had better plots.

Putting one of his last Word Family Flip books together.

Math

We are still very happy with our RightStart Math curricula. Both boys are progressing very well in this. Sawyer has been learning to add 2-digit numbers and continue patterns in geometry, and Hayden has been working a lot with multiplication and calculating areas.

Timed multiplication

Determining area with square inch tiles.

Copying and continuing patterns on the geoboard.

Calculating areas in square centimeters

World Geography

For the summer, we decided to go back to exploring the world. This first part of summer, we went to Russia. What an awesome country! After reviewing the continents, oceans, and previously explored countries, we learned a lot about Russia's culture, government, music, and architecture.

Russian Tea Party!
Although we were unable to use actual Russian tea glasses & samovar, we got the
gist of it by listening to the Russian balalaika and hearing some common phrases
in the Russianlanguage while eating pigs in a blanket, smoked salmon on potato
pancakes, and Russian tea cakes, and sipping some hot tea.

Drawing St. Basil's Cathedral after reading about Ivan the Terrible and Peter
the Great.

Adding color bit by bit

Designing our own matryoshkas after watching a video on the history of the
matryoshka and reading "The Littlest Matryoshka" by Corinne Demas Bliss.

This is what imagination looks like :)

Finished products (with the remainders inside).
Sawyer's is on the left and Hayden's is on the right.

Tea party #2!
We love tea parties, obviously, especially when good food is involved. This
time it was pigs in a blanket (bc the boys love these), apples, and red velvet cupcakes
after learning about everyday life in Russia.