This brings me to my announcement: we are going mainstream next year. We are taking a break from homeschooling in order to get a new perspective on education. The two older boys will be attending the elementary school just down the street from our house, and our youngest will be starting VPK for 4 days a week.
In the meantime, here is a brief summary of our spring semester:
Language Arts
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| Worked with Contractions |
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| Parts of Speech booklets - this one was the Noun Booklet in progress. We also made verb and adjective booklets. |
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| Types of sentences |
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| Made a comic strip of The Whipping Boy to summarize each chapter they read. |
Other Books Read for Language Arts:
50 American Heroes Every Kid Should Meet by Dennis Denenberg and Lorraine Roscoe
Who Was Helen Keller? by Gare Thompson
Math
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| Clocks - Time to the Minute and 5 Minutes |
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| Roman Numerals, Place Value, and Adding Numbers in the Thousands |
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| The Commutative Law of Multiplication using tiles. |
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| Played the Subtraction Corners Game and learned about check numbers and how to use them. |
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| Writing large numbers in word form. |
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| Finding perimeters of different figures. |
Other Math Skills Learned:
Finding Area and Solving Area Problems
Multiplication Tables
Working with Centimeters
Constructing Equilateral Triangles with T-square & 30-60 Triangle
World Geography
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| Located Israel on the Little Passports map |
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| Learned a little Arabic |
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| Experimented with salt water after learning about the Dead Sea on YouTube. |
Holidays
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| Mardi Gras Bead Necklaces |
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| Added names and made patterns with the colors |
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| Mardi Gras King Cake! |
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| Easter - used plastic eggs to count change and identify coins. |
Social Studies - Government and the People
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| Sawyer for Mayor! |
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| Hayden for Mayor! |
We studied this unit after reading the Whipping Boy. The boys learned about the relationship between U.S. citizens and their government. They learned about the three branches of government and they did a mock election after learning about the process of voting and elections. Books we read to go along with this unit were: How the U.S. Government Works by Syl Sobel and Vote! by Eileen Christelow.
Scientific Method and Experiments
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| The Scientific Method reminder posters |
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| Using the Communicating Skill, the second step of the Science Process Skills |
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| One person built an object and had to describe it to the other person without them seeing anything. The second person had to build it as it was described to them. |
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| Using the Science Process Skills with M&Ms |
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| One of several experiments concocted at our house. This was the Egg Drop Experiment. |
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| How the boys kept track of the experiments they did. (I can't believe I didn't take pictures of the actual experiments) |
Other Social Studies and Science Units Studied:
People Change the World
(inventors, being a responsible citizen, and looking for ways to make the future better)
Sound
(studied alongside the literature unit, Who Was Helen Keller?)
Art
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| Project using Opposite/Complementary Colors |
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| Contemporary Folk Art Landscape using Heather Galler's method. (Someone got a little overzealous and then gave up on his patterning once he realized how long it was taking him). |
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| Circles! |
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| Paper Plate Weaving |
