March Comes In Like A Lion

The first week of March for us was a little tricky.  Monday fooled us into thinking it was going to be an awesome week weather wise, but then Tuesday came.  And Wednesday.  And Thursday.  And Friday. Every single day this week was gross gross weather!  We were stuck inside for the last half of the week, and holy COW did we go stir crazy!  I tried to keep things interesting, but I can't deny that our family MUST have sunshine and out-of-doors activities, or we just all go nuts.

So, thank goodness we took advantage of Monday's beautiful weather!  We shirked our normal school duties of reading, writing, and math, and we took it outside.  We begun a new experiment this week of making vertical gardens with bamboo stalks.  Of course, the rest of the week made it impossible for us to continue working on them.   We will start again next week if weather allows.

Distracted by all the earthworms we were finding as we pulled up the plants to move them.

Our biggest elephant ear.  Those suckers were HARD to get out!

The beginning stages of the bamboo structure.

Tuesdays are usually our co-op days, but this was an off week.  Luckily, Daddy was able to take off from work, and we made a special field trip to the zoo.  That's when the weather started turning sour.  But it was still a great day, and we spent a little extra time in the Australia area of the zoo since that's the country we are studying right now.

Heading from the monkeys and apes to see the jaguar and some reptiles.

Watching the ducks and other cool birds.

Koi pond (would've fit in well with our Japan unit).

As you can see, it went from super warm and sunny on Monday, to chilly and misty weather on Tuesday.  From that point on, it was downpours and just yucky weather.  We stayed inside the rest of the week.  And, that's where school came in!

Language Arts

Spelling word practice using the Trace-Copy-Recall activity.

Sawyer working on some letters.  

Hayden does a little research on a favorite animal.

The finished "research" paper.

Sawyer's sight word caterpillar parts for the week.

Hayden making sentences with his spelling words.

Sawyer working in his HWT workbook.

Vocabulary words from Sawyer's Dear Dragon reader.

Matching the post-it note words to the ones in the book.

Sight word hunt on chart paper.  He finds a word, says the word, and then circles it.

Sawyer making up sentences in his journal for his sight words.  I wrote the
sentences, and he filled in the blanks with the sight word.

Working on writing a friendly letter!

Math:

Sawyer and I played some math games with the tally stick, bead, and finger cards.

Sawyer couldn't BELIEVE that I got the better card AGAIN!

Sawyer also worked on grouping objects together in a way so that he wouldn't
have to count every single one to tell how many there were.  First, he had to
guess how many were in the pile.

He kept trying to group them into pairs, which I guess works, but wasn't
what I was going for because it still created too much work for him (as far
as the assignment went).

I grouped them like this, and asked him to tell me how many there were
without counting them individually.

Then he had to show me with the place value cards.
(Baby is trying to get in on the action here).

Working on reflections using megabloks.  

Sawyer also did some work with money.

Hayden started his new Right Start Math curriculum learning how to fill out
an addition table.

He also got a little introduction to different types of Venn diagrams.

Like Sawyer, he also had to take a large group of objects and group them in
a way that he could tell how many there were without counting them.

It took him a couple of tries, but he figured it out.

Social Studies:
We are in the Land Down Under this month, as you know, and this week, the boys had plenty of exposure to some videos, books, and maps.  We haven't gotten into the art and people and music yet, and I'm really anxious to get there, but it's also kind of nice just taking our time with the country.

We opened the newest package from Little Passports, put our passport sticker,
suitcase sticker, and boarding pass all in their proper places.

Then we found Australia on the Little Passports map, our wall world map,
and the globe.

There it is! (It's now become a battle over who gets to put the map pin sticker
onto the Little Passports map.  I also put a map pin on our wall world map,  and
every time, they try to get me to let one of them do it, but I'm not giving them
free reign on my wall with those little suckers yet!)

Our Australia boarding pass got us in to the Little Passport's website where
we played a few games, one of them being a "create your own" aboriginal
print.  That was fun.  All of us did took turns with that one!

Hayden's print

Sawyer's print

Coloring the map(s).

And coloring the flag.

I rented this movie from Netflix.  I saw it when I was a kid, and I remember all
the Australian animals in it, the songs, the suspense, etc.  So, I thought it'd be
good for the boys.  Boy have we come a LONG way in animation!  I forget that
until I see an old movie like this!  They did like it, however, until the end.  It
really bugged Sawyer that it didn't have a happy ending.   Sorry - spoiler alert. 

Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter.  MUCH more entertaining than Dot and the Kangaroo!

And, finally, the books we read on Australia:
D is for Down Under by Devin Scillian
Where is Little Wombat? by Charles Fuge
Read-About Geography - Australia by Allan Fowler

February - a hit and miss month

We had very strange weeks of school this month.  Every body took turns being sick.  Then we went out of town.  Then we had visitors.  Then we had a field trip.  Then we had Valentine's Day.  It was always something.  I thought about just waiting until the very end of the month before just posting for the entire month (and that very well may happen by the time I'm done putting it all together), but I'm hoping to get in a second separate post if I can!  *Edited note: I did not get a separate post.  Ah well.  Brace yourself for a huge barrage of photos from the entire month of February.

The problem with trying to do one big post a month is that I tend to forget details by the time I actually do the posting.  Here's hoping that doesn't happen this time!

Language Arts

Learning Skills workbook: Following directions to decorate a cake.

I love the look of concentration on his face!

Hayden read a new easy reader, "My Dog, Ike", and completed a double story chart
with pictures from the story.  

He also worked on the long /i/ sound with i_e, _y, and _ye words.

Then, we did some blended sounds with the _y spelling of long /i/.

Sawyer worked on the /r/ sound, identifying and writing the letter Rr.

He also had 4 sight words to add to his Sight Word Caterpillar.

Sawyer working in his Handwriting Without Tears booklet.

Hayden had a short story, "Pig Builds a Home" to read through and talk about.
We discussed whether the story could really happen or if it was make-believe, and
we talked about helping others in need.

Using "Pig Builds a Home", Hayden made another story chart and wrote
two sentences about each picture.

This was a short vowel review.

A game with some of our blended word cards and "Head, Tummy, Toes" cards.
He had to draw a brown card, and depending on the picture, tell me the sound
he hears at the beginning, middle, or end of the word.

Putting magnet letters on the sight words of the week.

Doing an assessment of the long vowel sounds we learned this month.

Sawyer gets a little help from Riley.

The spelling portion of Hayden's assessment.  He checked his own work and
corrected his own mistakes by matching the index cards with the words that
he wrote.

The letter U in Handwriting without Tears booklet.

Filling in the blanks where the correct capital or lower case letter should go.
This was harder for him than I expected because we haven't worked much on
writing in lowercase.

Sawyer's book for the majority of the month.  This is
the third Dear Dragon book that he has been able to
read all the way through on his own!

Working on adjectives using the early reader,  "Try a Kite".

A little "beginning sounds" activity.

And some "ending sounds" activity.

Working on blending those long /i/ words.

We played a memory game of sorts with the long /i/ words.

Touching on singular possessive nouns.

A context reading exercise (kind of a silly waste of time, actually, since he can
read the words with no problem, but sometimes, it's a nice break and an ego
booster to do something easy).

Sawyer did an activity on the /ar/ sound.   I made 4 columns with the word
families -ar, -ard, -arm, and -art.  He had to put all the words in the correct
column based on their ending sound.

Sawyer's Dear Dragon reader for the end of the month.

Writing the letter C in Handwriting without Tears.

This was a "following directions" exercise in one of Sawyer's workbooks.
I'm not a fan of standardized tests, but this was that kind of format.  I  liked
it for Sawyer, though, because it helped him with his fine motor skills to
fill in those little bubbles.

After reading the Dear Dragon book, we focused on color words.  He had to
trace the words in the matching color.  

Using his "mouse" crayons, Sawyer picked one color for each letter in his
name to write in a pattern on large graph paper.

He got a little over halfway through before he called BS on this activity.

Hayden made Word Family Flip books from scratch.  He picked the word
families -ill and -ike.  It was harder for him to come up with words than he
thought it would be!

Hayden also practiced punctuation by putting periods, question marks, and
exclamation points at the end of sentences.

Math:

Sawyer learning to work with part-whole circle sets.

Reading Tens

Hayden uses a ruler strip to measure out and cut strips
of paper for constructing triangles.

Constructing an equilateral and isosceles triangle.

Constructing a rectangle out of only 5 of the 6 strips.

A rectangle constructed from all the strips of paper.

Finding the perimeters of the triangles he constructed.

Hayden works on subtracting.

Playing the Corners Game with subtraction instead of addition.

Reading scales:  thermometers

Applying what we learned in the activity above to paperwork.

Reading scales:  bathroom scale measuring

Worksheet on reading scales

Sawyer searches for the place value card that matches the entered number on the abacus.

Playing the "Can You Find" game with the place value cards.

Introduction to adding with oral word problems.

More word problems using higher numbers.

Hayden reviews time to the minute.

Placing the minute cards around the clock.

Matching clocks and minute cards.

Sawyer playing "Swim to Ten" game to work on his counting and decision making.

Hayden has an introduction to halves and fourths through the dividing process.

Diving strips of paper into halves and fourths.

Review of adding numbers in the 1000s with the abacus.

Putting the review to practice.

Sawyer cuts out figures, names them, and folds them in half.

Then, we talked about the hexagon.  He put several together like a honeycomb.

Hayden reviewed quadrilaterals and triangles.

Then, he started collecting data on the colors of hot wheel cars for making a graph.

After collecting the data, he constructed a bar graph.

Sawyer got a little intro to money with pennies and nickels.

We also made reflections on the geoboard to learn about symmetrical shapes.

Hayden's worksheet after working on bar graphs.

Sawyer drew the wings of a butterfly to demonstrate symmetry.

Hayden's final test of his Level B curriculum.  I think I'm more excited that he
finished this than he is!  He missed only 3 problems out of 54.  Yay! So proud.

Social Studies:
This month, the country we learned about was Egypt.  Because we studied Ancient Egypt last year, Sawyer had a very difficult time understanding that the country itself is not ancient.  He kept calling it, "Ancient Egypt" which was pretty entertaining.

The boys opened their package from Little Passports to find a mini pyramid to excavate,
their new boarding pass, a passport sticker, and the map pin for Egypt.

It was Sawyer's turn to put the pin on the map.

Finding Egypt's flag below our wall world map.

Coloring Egypt on the map of Africa to put in our geography binders.

The boys immediately got to work on the pyramid.

This was as far as they got before they called it quits. Hahaha!  Every once in
a while, one of them picks at it a little more, but so far, the treasure inside has
yet to be completely excavated.  (Which really surprises me, actually, with Hayden.
I thought for SURE he'd keep at it till it was all uncovered).

Coloring the map of Egypt, and drawing the Nile River on their maps.

Taking our studies outside on a very lovely day.

Building a pyramid out of Legos.

Oh, the teamwork!

The finished project.

The boys thought it was a bit too small because they can't fit their Lego men inside.

So they made a bigger one.

Yay! Lego men can go in now!

Making a cartouche

Making hieroglyphics in salt dough tablets is harder than it looks.

Books we read about Egypt this month. Not as many as I would have liked, but ….

Painting the cartouche

More cartouche painting

Hayden's cartouche

Sawyer's cartouche

An Egyptian meal of sorts to finish out the unit.  Obviously, this wasn't nearly
as creative and intensive as our French dinner, but I know nothing of Egyptian
food.  So, we went with what we could find.

Lamb Shish Kebabs and Biram Ruz (a rice casserole made with heavy cream and milk).

Dessert was part store bought- part homemade.  The store bought is on the right:
konafah (I think?), layers of thin noodles drenched in honey.  The homemade is on
the left.  It's supposed to be halavah but it's not.  It's more of just a sweet couscous
dish with processed pistachios and almonds, and topped with powdered sugar and
cinnamon.

Sawyer wasn't too thrilled about either dessert.

Hayden, however, was right in his element.  If it has sugar, it MUST be good!