I haven’t done one of these in the past couple of weeks because I have struggled with the format. The list of resources was fine, but I felt it lacked a bit in the journaling I needed as a record of our learning. So, I hope to add a bit more narrative to these from now on. Since that takes time, I will likely not link up all of the resources as I do the weekly notes. If you have a question about something we used, please feel free to ask about it in the comments. Eventually I hope to add everything I have mentioned in this notes to our resource page. It just make take a little extra time for that to happen.

PinOlivia worked on her newest book, The Mermaid and the Hero. She dictated it to me, I typed it on the computer, and she started working on the illustrations. She also made a number of cartoons using Toontastic (review coming soon). She read Bubble Trouble (My First Hello Reader!) to me. She also began working on a fashion catalog. She laid out some outfits and took photos of them. Then she put each one on and modeled them for another photograph. I am not sure where this project is going, so I am going with the flow. I do need to remind her of it since she hasn’t worked on it since Tuesday. She also made her own board game, which didn’t seem to have much of a purpose as far as board games go, but it made her happy and was good handwriting and number writing practice.

John built a spider web one morning with yarn. He found the idea in Creating Clever Castles and Cars.

We also played for a while with our magnetic poetry set. John’s great joy was to choose random words, put them in “sentences” and then have me read them aloud with various voice inflections. He would erupt in fits of giggles every time. Olivia made a couple of silly sentences and then accepted a challenge from me. I have her some tiles and she put them in order to make a sentence and read it to me. It took a few minutes, but she did quite well with it. It was an interesting process to watch as she first put together subject and verb, then added articles, and then finally found homes for each of the adjectives.

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I shared how to do a magic trick from our math book. She learned to look through a die with her “x-ray vision” and tell what number was on the other side. Hint: Opposite faces on a die always add up to seven. We played a game of Sorry — John joined us as well. We also played a game of What Did I Change? and Fast Track (easy problems) from Peggy Kaye’s Games for Math book.

We read a Benjamin Franklin Rookie Biography and also Snowy Day. A number of books were read for bedtime reading, but I didn’t do such a good job of recording them this week, including the books Olivia read to herself. We went to the library and everyone picked out some books interesting to them. I also picked out some more on the American Revolution to be read over the next few weeks.

We listened to Judy Moody Gets Famous and started Judy Moody Was in a Mood on audio book. This all sprang from the kids watching Judy Moody and the Not So Bummer Summer with our friend Paxton.

We went to the art museum and played a while in the children’s room. The still-life scene, texture board, and dress-up were a big hit. We stayed for about an hour, but could have stayed much longer as everyone was engaged. We also did gymnastics, art class, and Spanish class (Flip Flop Spanish Lesson 2 — a review for us).

We learned about how to use and practiced with a lint roller. 🙂 We talked about the difference between “lint for your clothes and Lent for Jesus.”

We ate green eggs and ham and read the book on Thursday. Friday saw us working in our Seuss activity book and reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish.

We talked about organization and categories from Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2 Lesson A1/B1. I bought a huge bag of craft buttons at Michaels that they enjoyed sorting and playing with. We talked about all the different categories we could sort the buttons into. We also talked about how things in our kitchen were sorted into categories. I then put twelve items on a tray, let Olivia look and then covered them with a towel and asked her to name as many as she could. The little stinker got eleven of the twelve. Next we took the towel off and sorted the items into categories. This time she was able to name all twelve and much more quickly too. We watched Classifying Animals from BrainPop Jr. and discussed how scientists use categories and organize things. We also played BBC Schools Science Clips: Grouping and Changing Materials. Next we read Dave’s Down-to-Earth Rock Shop. This led to us looking for a Magic School Bus episode about rocks. There was not one, so Olivia chose to watch The Magic School Bus Gets Ready, Set Dough. This led to an exploding bag science experiment with baking soda and vinegar, which all three of them loved.

We watched Beethoven Lives Upstairs and listened to our Beethoven playlist on Spotify.

Various iPad apps on a myriad of topics. (I need to be better at noting the most popular of these as well.)

What I liked – We had a relaxed earning pace. The week flowed well, we enjoyed being together, and I think what we learned about will stick with them. They (Olivia especially) chose some projects they wanted to work on and were productive with them.

What I could improve – Starting our day earlier. Sticking with TV off between at least 9-4 and being available to them during that time to work on their projects or introduce new things between bouts of play. Being sure we do a little math, reading, and handwriting most days. We were a bit lax last week. A song, activity, and book or two specifically for Thomas.

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