Weekly Wrap-Up: Where did all the ducks go?

Two weeks down and we're not "behind" yet. Woot! I know, I know. We homeschool, it's our schedule, we can't get behind. I forgot. I mean we didn't have to adjust our schedule at all this week. Except for the fact that we're ahead in math already. I love that kind of rescheduling.

It was a great week. We accomplished a lot, including all of our science experiments. Those I often slack on. Shame on me.

Bible

We're reading through the book of John right now. Mackenzie also had VBS every evening this week.

I do not, as a general rule, like activities in the evenings. I have dinner to make and a toddler who goes to bed at 7. And I'm just plan tired. Usually we do VBS at another church who offers it in the morning. But this year the director asked if Mackenzie might like to participate in the skits that were part of the opening. She loves all things dramatic, so how could I say no. Plus it's a good opportunity for her to serve her church. (As it turned out it was also an opportunity for me too. Somehow I wound up running the skits. LOL)

One of the challenges of the week was to memorize all the books of the Bible. Kenzie already knew the NT so she decided to master the OT too. She did. In one day. Tonight is the actual challenge at VBS. I have no doubt that she'll rock it.

Math

This week we started division. By ones and twos. Piece of cake!

Social Studies

We finished our unit on South America. It was a nice little mini-unit and Kenzie enjoyed it. She'd like to visit South America now. Specifically Angel Falls and the rainforest.

Our reading included finishing up Shoes for Everyone and continuing on with Moccasin Trail and By the Great Horn Spoon. Kenzie was getting a little agitated with Moccasin Trail. One of the characters was insulting the "injuns" and that just got her dander up. She was shouting, "We're the ones who messed up their lives." Clearly she remembers everything she learned last year.

She is continuing to enjoy The Star-Spangled State Book. She aced her second quiz and can locate six states on an unlabeled map. She was also biting her cheese into the shapes of the states she'd learned the other day. LOL

Science

Science was heavy in non-book work. She finished her Live 'N Learn mini books for chapter one and we completed all of our experiments for the week.

Our experiment on air pressure worked perfectly. Our hypothesis (that the water would bubble like it does when you blow air into a straw) was totally wrong. But that made the results (water sprayed out of the straw) more exciting. If you look closely you should be able to see the spray. Very cool!

Our experiment on air lift was not so successful. You were supposed to build two identical gliders, other than their wing size. One glider was to have long and narrow wings, the other short and wide. We built our gliders to the exact specifications in the book.

That did not help us much. Our hypothesis (that the glider with the long, narrow wings would fly fartherest) was correct. Our results were the total opposite. We threw them about 20 times. 3 times the gliders flew the same distance. The other 17 times the glider with the short, wide wings flew farther.

Experiment bust! I think, with my non-scientific mind, that the problem was that the gliders were just too small. Even though we used the exact dimensions in the book, I think we needed to make them bigger so the wings were large enough for the air to really get under.

Maybe one day we'll try it again in jumbo size. Starting with a paint stirrer and our base. Probably not anyday soon though. It's hard enough for us to get the assigned experiements in without adding in extra.

On Friday we went on a Nature Scavenger Hunt. We had a list of things that we had to observe in nature. When we find it all we can had the list to our Live N Learn notebook.

We found a few things on our list. Mostly of the insect variety.

Birds were harder to come by. Which was weird because we were walking around a lake that's usually filled with ducks and other water birds. But that day the lake was empty. Very bizarre.

Recently, our HOA had sent out a letter saying that a lot of ducks had been getting sick. Apparently from people throwing food in the water, which then resulted in bacteria. They asked for people to refrain from feeding them. So we thought maybe they were so sick that they all had to be removed. It was really freaky.

Language Arts

First Language Lessons and Writing with Ease continue to be review lessons so that's been nice and easy. We also added Spelling Power back in this week.

Extras

Mackenzie is officially signed up for soccer and piano lessons. Now we are officially broke. LOL

For art this week we worked in I Can Do All Things. We started on painting lessons and mixing primary and secondary colors. We had a lot of fun but haven't mastered that skill yet.

She used watercolor pencils to draw her bedroom. That didn't work out so well for her. LOL

And here's one of our projects from last week that I didn't post because I hadn't taken the pictures off the camera yet. She was making line designs out of construction paper. She was not thrilled with this project when I explained it to her. "It's soooo much cutting!" she whined. She does not like to cut. I'm thinking Matisse will not be her favorite artist.

Then I had an light-bulb moment and remembered all the scrapbook stuff that I own and never use. So I got out my paper cutter and gave her a quick lesson. She was much happier then and declared the project "fun!" Shew




Be sure to pop on over to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and see what everyone else has been up too.

And in case you're still wondering where all the ducks went, we found them. Napping under the willow trees on the other side of the lake. It was totally weird that every, single bird was out of the lake at the same time.

The Homeschool Village: Books

The Homeschool Village is asking "What is your child's favorite book and why would they recommend it to a friend?"

I had to laugh when I read this because I knew my child could never pick one favorite book. Is there such thing as one favorite book? We've never heard of such a thing.

One book? LOL As if! She's been a book junkie since before she could talk. Here she is in K rolling in books. LOL

I asked her anyway. Her answer was "The Percy Jackson series and Sonlight. Except for The Last Little Cat." That's right she named an entire series and an entire curriculum company, at least 5 cores of the company minus one book. Do I know my daughter or what?

In the interest of being helpful I'll list some of the books that she rereads most often.

Usborne Time Traveler
Usborne Living Long Ago
A Little Princess
Understood Betsy
Strawberry Girl
Twenty and Ten
Witch of Blackbird Pond
The Cricket in Times Square
Mr. Revere and I
My Father's Dragon
Ben Franklin of Old Philidelphia

That should get you started. Happy Reading!

We won!

We were one of the winners of the L.E.N.S. black and white photo challenge. Woot!

Now to think of something with a "Sunlight" theme. Hmm....

And I forgot to post about Mackenzie's accomplishment. She entered an online art contest for homeschoolers and won two honorable mentions. Whoo-hoooo Mackenzie! Check it out! The next contest deadline is in November and the theme is America the Beautiful. All you need is you buddying artist/homeschool student and a flickr account.

Not-Back-To-School Blog Hop: Student Week

This week on the blog hop we're supposed to share student photos. Here's our class roster for the 2010-2011 school year. I'm in the middle of working with their "official" school year photos so you'll have to make do with this. LOL

Tot School

Kayleigh is...gasp!...30 months old

Tot School this week was a little chaotic. We only did three days this week. Thursday and Friday Kayleigh just did not want to do anything. Maybe it was because we started fourth grade with Mackenzie. So we didn't get everything I had in mind done but that's okay.

Tot Trays

Our trays this week included:

Stringing pony beads on pipe cleaners. Big hit! She did it every, single day. Even on the days that she refused to do anything else.

Using an eyedropper to transfer water. Huge bust. She could not get the hang of this at all. Getting the air out to allow the water in is apparently not a skill for a 2.5 year old. LOL



Scissor Skills. This is always a hit but she was struggling with it this week. A couple of weeks ago she did a great job cutting up Sissy's script for her VBS skit. Apparently this skill comes and goes depending on whether the situation is inappropriate or not. Later in the week she decided she was going to try and cut Sissy's hair. She couldn't, not only because she's not good at cutting, but because our kids scissors won't cut anything but paper. Now I'm not so sure I'm in a big hurry for her to master that skill. =o)




We practiced our letters A-D with our KinderReady Eric Carle Alpha Clue Cards. She did a pretty good job putting the puzzles together and was even able to recognize the letters A & B. Yay! And she's also doing a great job singing her ABCs. I've got to get a video before she starts singing "L M N O P" correctly. LOL

She played a paint can coloring matching game and did a great job. It's really old. I made back when I was still teaching other people's kids. Just goes to show how important a good laminator is.

Our last tray was stickers. She was frusterated with this. It's been a while since she's done stickers and she had a hard time getting them off the paper, even though I had removed the background paper. And she really got upset if I tried to help her.

Learning Games and Toys

We practiced our numbers, 1-5, my matching our number magnets and foam puzzle pieces to the numbers on our number poster. (How many times can I use the word numbers in one sentence? LOL) Mackenzie helped her count 1-5 because Kayleigh didn't want to do it herself.

Then we put our puzzle pieces back into the puzzle using a hammer. A great way to get out your aggression while learning.

Our Lauri Toys Smart Shapes and Stacking Pegs, which is usually a big hit, didn't get a lot of attention this week.

Our Melissa & Doug Lacing Beads were also tossed aside rather quickly this week. I was very lucky to catch this picture.


She finally got to enjoy her Melissa & Doug Jumbo Blocks that she got for Christmas last year. I decided since Christmas is almost upon us again I should finally put them together. She had a great time playing in the castle that Mackenzie built her. She's yet to build anything herself. She likes to sit on them though.

We practiced making capital As and Bs with our HWT wood pieces. She did a great job making B by just copying mine. She had a little more trouble with A. I'm not sure if it was because she didn't get it or because she was just playing baby mind games. She seemed to think it was funny every time I corrected her.

Letter Focus

Our letter this week was B. We read about Baby Moses and made Moses in a Basket.

We Batted a Balloon while dancing to our Brainy Baby Sing Along Songs.

We also started our B is for BumBleBee page in our ABC book. We haven't finished it yet because Kayleigh wasn't in the mood by the end of the week. Our B is yellow but it does not resemble a BumbleBee yet. I hope to finish it tonight.

She also colored the cover to her Book.