When I asked the boys what their favorite part was about learning about octopuses I heard, “working on our mural,” “eating octopus hot dogs,” and “watching an octopus video.” The boys enjoyed learning lots of new facts about octopuses and other sea creatures. The best part of our week (and perhaps the one where they learned the most) was creating our ocean mural. We made a few items together to put on the mural, such as... On some afternoons while MJ napped I allowed the boys to make whatever they wanted from the mural. Some of their own creations included... Here are the boys posing by the mural. The mural was a great learning experience as we investigated specific ocean creatures, and it will make a nice school room decoration for the next few weeks. (Although, MJ loves pulling off all the wiggly eyes, and I may or may not have found one in her diaper this week.) During our octopus study, we colored the water on a basic world map and discussed the names of the oceans that border our country. Another favorite of the week was our octopus supper – hot dogs cut up like an octopus and buttered noodles with green food coloring for seaweed. Note: To make the octopus hot dogs, cut the hot dog in half lengthwise just halfway up (forming two octopus arms). Continue cutting the arms until you have eight. When you cook the hot dogs, the arms will tend to curl up making it look like an octopus.
For our nature journals, we sat by our creek and looked for animals that live in or around the creek. We made a list – a heron, a bumble bee, birds, fish, and a fly. We picked one to draw a picture of in our journals. We also made of list of animals that we thought heard or saw us while we were there. In other subjects… AJ is enjoying Xtra Math for learning his addition facts. I learned about this program to practice math facts when I was a school teacher. I always assumed there was a subscription fee. When I looked into it to sign Alex up, I was delighted to learn it is free! What a wonderful free resource it is – without ads and everything! Thank-you, Xtra Math! I highly recommend signing up your child for this to practice math facts. (And, you don't have to be a homeschooler or teacher to sign up - anyone can sign up.) CJ is working hard on his letter sounds and blending. He does well with the letter sounds, and some days, I think he has blending and some days I don’t think he does. One activity (from Abeka’s K4 program) that really helped AJ learn to blend was to draw a water line with waves peaking across the white board. At each wave peak, put letters to blend. Then have the child sail a boat across the waves and blend the letters. CJ started this activity this week, but still needs lots of practice. All in all, we had a wonderful homeschool week. I'm curious if any other moms or teachers out there have any simple, enjoyable activities to help a child learn to blend letters? I would love to have some ideas to help solidify blending for CJ. Thanks for stopping by! This post is linked to the weekly wrap-up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
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Our week was different with Daddy home recovering from knee surgery, but it was much more normal than last week in that we were all home. We enjoyed wrapping up our dinosaur study and delving into octopuses (Yes, octopuses! I always thought it was octopi, which, from what I understand is also correct, but octopuses is every bit as correct.) To finish up dinosaurs, we made an additional page to go along with If the Dinosaurs Came Back? This book came along with our kindergarten literature package from My Father's World. It gives ideas of what jobs the dinosaurs could do for us if they came back. The illustrator of the book does all the dinosaurs in color and all the rest of the pictures in black and white. We mimicked the illustrator's style and came up with a job we thought dinosaurs could do. AJ drew a picture of a triceratops digging a hole, and CJ drew a plesiosaurs giving rides in our creek. Each unit we spend time outside with our nature journals. For dinosaurs, we measured off 110 feet for the length of an ultrasaurs. We calculated how fast we could run this distance and went in search of plant we thought the ultrasaurs would've eaten. Below the boys are showing off the plants they found. We took a picture in front of these tall weeds by our creek because we discussed how this big dinosaur likely went for tall things. To begin our octopus study, we read a book called An Octopus is Amazing. Let me just say, ahem, that I learned a few things about octopuses from reading this book. I had no idea an octopus lays 200,000 eggs and then proceeds to weave them together in multiple strands that she hangs from the roof of her den. I remarked to my husband that it is amazing what I'm learning from a kindergarten curriculum! With each unit, MFW has a Bible verse to memorize and a lesson. The lesson for the octopus is "Even the octopus praises the Lord." We made tambourines out of small paper plates and a spoonful of rice (since octopus eggs are half the size of a grain of rice) inside them. We stapled the edges together and then painted them. We are using these to praise the Lord while singing this week. Below, they are painting their tambourines. The boys are excited to continue studying octopuses and complete our wall mural we started of the ocean floor - pictures coming next week.
How was your week? What new thing did you learn? This post is linked to the weekly wrap-up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Our week took on a whirlwind feel when the surgeon's scheduling office asked us on Monday morning, August 29, "How does knee surgery on Wednesday the 31st sound?" Let me back up and say that my husband tore his ACL in 2014 when I was 31 weeks pregnant with MJ. After surgery when I was 37 weeks pregnant, he had a great recovery and things were going well until a slight misstep and twist on uneven ground in the summer of 2016 (when I was 31 weeks, 6 days pregnant with Russell #5). We only found out on Monday, August 29 the extent of the damage from the MRI results. We were already prepared for surgery again simply because of how he was feeling, and we were praying we could get surgery done before the baby. We thought, at the earliest, they would probably get us in mid to late September. So, we were shocked, but elated, when they offered surgery on August 31. All that to say, home school did happen this week, but there were days when we didn't do school because the kids were with babysitters while Daddy recovered. This week we were studying dinosaurs and the letter "D." The highlights of the week were making a plesiosaurs out of modeling clay and digging for "dinosaur" bones in the garden. We also enjoyed the book What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs? (This book came along with our My Father's World deluxe package.) It was a lot of reading, and I wasn't sure it would hold my boys' attention. I planned to read it over several days, but they kept asking for more, and we finished it in two days. Below they are making a plesiosaurs. And here is the dino dig. (The bones were chicken bones I saved from two whole chickens that I baked several weeks ago. I deboned the chicken, cooked the bones for about an hour in boiling water, and laid them out to dry on newspaper for about 3 weeks. I did this all without the boys knowing. Then I photographed the bones and created a paper with pictures and labels for the boys to use a search guide.) Of course, I explained that these are just "pretend" dinosaur bones. There's something about boys and dinosaurs that just go together. They were so fascinated by their massive size. One of my goals for the unit is for them to be able to identify at least 3 types of dinosaurs. We still have several dinosaur activities to finish up next week.
In other studies, AJ continued working on learning shapes in math. We learned some new words like trapezoid, rhombus, and hexagon. His favorite activity from the week in math was figuring out all the ways to cover the hexagon using rhombuses, triangles, and trapezoids. In language arts, AJ focused on the -ng sound. I introduced him to Bob Books this week with the first reader in the Beginning Reader set. A friend recommended these books to me, and I was delighted to find the set at our library. I'm excited to use them as a supplement to the My Father's World grade 1 language arts that he is doing because the MFW program does not come with any type of "readers" with real stories. The Bob Books remind me of a Dick-and-Jane type reader, but with more of graceful feel to the text - not so much repetition of the same word. CJ focused on the "d" sound and hearing it at the beginning of words. We will work on blending it with the other letters he knows as we continue our dinosaur unit next week. So, to you other homeschooling mamas out there, what do you do when life sends you major interruptions? For me, I decided to use these 3 principles to guide my week. 1) Relax, and take a few days off school without feelings of guilt. 2) Look for a few opportunities to integrate some school activities into their free time. I'm a believer in lots of unstructured play time for young children, but this week I chose to have them do their "dino dig" and a simple art project during free time. They loved it and didn't know they were doing school. 3) Look for the life lessons to be learned from the interruption. This time, it is learning to serve Daddy and learning how to behave around someone who has had surgery. All in all, it was a full, busy week where we were reminded that sometimes life interrupts school, and that's okay. This post is linked to the weekly wrap-up at Weird, Unsocilized Homeschoolers. |
AuthorVanessa from Russell Homestead. Follower of the Lord Jesus, wife of my knight in shining armor, mother of 5 wonderful children, and joint-keeper of the Russell homestead. Thanks for stopping by! Archives
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Vanessa Russell
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