The First Weeks of April

The first two weeks of April are combined in this post.  It's really more like one week's worth of school which is why I just waited.  We did a lot of running around these last two weeks, playing outside, going out of town, etc.  

Language Arts:

This week, Hayden's easy reader was "Duke has a Tube".  Sawyer's reader was "It's Circus Time, Dear Dragon".  Below are the activities they did that went along with those readers.  In addition to the activities below, Sawyer also watched a couple of fun videos on the hard and soft c sound from here and here.

Making a sequencing strip using pictures and phrases from the easy reader.

Hard C and Soft C activity sheet

Venn Diagram activity on the hard and soft c sounds.

Hayden made a word family flip book using with the -ole family.  Then he did the
writing activity below in his journal.

After making the flip book, he chose two of the words to write and illustrate.

"mole" and "stole"  

Working on verbs

Math:

Sawyer started adding with tally marks this week.

Worksheet with abacus beads.  Sawyer had to fill in the equation using tally marks.

Hayden worked on "doubles" and "near doubles"

He also started a temperature graph for the month of April.

Reviewing tens and hundreds by adding 5, 10, 15, or 20 to numbers given.

Review and practice of addition equations.  

More tally marks and writing equations.

Sawyer also made an "abacus" bracelet to help with visualizing numbers that
add to 10.

Finished product!

Social Studies:

For our Mexico unit, we read a few books, watched a few videos on youtube, and managed to get in just a portion of a couple of art projects that I had planned.  The videos we watched stemmed from the National Geographic Kids website.  There was actually other information there as well, and I'm starting to find that we are spending a LOT more time finding clips and movies on the computer either through youtube or Amazon Prime or Netflix.  Books are great, but to be able to hear the music, see the people moving, hear them talk in their language.... it goes a lot further, and it gets the boys a lot more excited about each country.

The books we read this week on Mexico:
Viva Mexico! The Folk Arts by George Ancona
Faces and Places Mexico by Mary Berendes
It's Cool to Learn About Countries - Mexico by Barbara A. Somervill
Many Cultures, One World - Mexico by Gina DeAngelis

We started making sombreros this week, but we ran out of paint.  I had no idea how low on paint we were.  Took me till the end of the week to finally go buy some more.  So, the goal is to finish them next week.  They look pretty hilarious right now, but bear with me, and hopefully, the end result will be much cooler.  We are making them out of newspaper, masking tape, modpodge, and tempera paints.  That's it.  Unless we decide to get crazy with pom poms for decoration or something....

Hayden's ojo de dios that he made in the car on the way back from out of town.

The little world beside the month of May was designed to hopefully serve as a reminder to the boys when we will be able to bust up our piñata that we made at the beginning of the school year.  I must get asked at LEAST once a day by Sawyer when we are going to have our party and break the piñata.

And March Goes Out Like A Lamb!

It's the last week of March, and yes, the spring weather has finally graced us.  Along with a plethora of pollen and rain, the sun is finally coming out to warm us up and get us outside more and more.  Yay!

Our studies for the last week of March started out with a game day.  I tried to keep up the fun from that point on.  Sometimes things just get a little out of hand….

Language Arts

Super Why ABC board game

Super Why?

After reading "Dear Dragon Helps Out", one of Sawyer's activities was to match
up baby animals with their adult names.

Using a graphic organizer of sorts to build a paragraph of complete sentences.

Putting all our complete thoughts into the writing journal.

The final product of our graphic organizer-to-complete sentences activity.

Handwriting Without Tears  workbook.  Letter Q.

Coloring in the quilt after tracing all the Q's.

Working with the Long /o/ sound.

Both boys read their readers to each other on Friday.

Kumon folding papers to help with fine motor skills.

Hayden had a little lesson on poetry, and then created a cinquain poem.
About donuts.  :)

Using the graphic organizer idea from earlier this week, Hayden wrote a journal entry
about what he would do if he were a detective.

Math

As with language arts on Monday, we used games for Math.  The boys took turns
creating figures with tangram-like shapes.

Then we moved on to working with money with Sawyer.

Figuring out half of a set

Grouping by Fives and Dozens

Finding a pattern with the dozens.

Hayden adds more to his addition table

Practicing adding 8 to a number.

Corners Game! One of our favorites to come back to. 

Matching coings to prices 

Riley started swiping our stuff during this lesson.

Tally Mark Chart.  Sawyer picked the names of 5 people to count up the letters in their names
and record them with tally marks.

Monkey see, monkey do.

Social Studies:

This week, we received our next package from Little Passports in the mail.  Our new country is Mexico!

Opening the Little Passports package.

We got a balero to play with!

Putting the Mexican flag sticker into our passport.
(Thanks, Sawyer, for the lovely photo bomb).

Searching for Mexico on the map.  I didn't tell them which continent it was on.
They wanted to figure it out for themselves.  Sawyer kept trying to put the map
pin on any country that started with the letter M.

Working with the Mexico map for our 3-ring binders.

Since this was our first North American country, we had two maps to work with today.

The books we used this week:
Rookie Read-About Geography:  North America by Allen Fowler
Galloping the Globe (our big activity book for all the countries)