December 3 - 7

MATH

Preston:

Preston completed 4 assignments in his math book this week.  He is currently learning about estimation and rounding.  He also got lots of practice with counting money for the chocolate chip cookie fundraiser.   

Marissa:

Marissa completed 4 assignments in her math book this week.  She has had a lot of addition and subtraction review as well as introduction to addition with carrying.  She also helped with money and got a lot of hands' on experience adding and sorting money to figure out how close we are to our goal.  

Caleb:

Caleb completed two assignments in his math book this week.  He is working on counting and skip counting by ten.  He is also working on writing numbers better to improve his fine motor skills.  Caleb spent time playing Inchimals this week for extra math practice.  

LANGUAGE ARTS

Preston:

Preston completed 4 assignments in his language arts book this week.  He worked on a new spelling rule that teaching that "v" and "u" cannot come at the end of a word in English so a silent "e" needs to be added.  He caught onto the rule very well, but was extremely frustrated with all the other lack of rule following his spelling words had.  Why is "solve" pronounced with the short o sound and shove is pronounced with the short u sound but still spelled with o?  And move is spelled with only one o instead of the double o that we learned makes the oo sound?  I didn't have a great answer except that words in English originate from many different countries with lots of different phonics and spelling rules.  Some things you just have to learn and memorize.  

Marissa:

Marissa completed 4 assignments in her language arts book this week.  She has been doing a lot of work with nouns and verbs. She is also learning a lot of new word endings in the reading/phonics portion of her language arts curriculum.  

Caleb:

Caleb completed 2 assignments in his language arts book this week.  He also did some computer work on ABC mouse and Starfall to practice letters and their sounds.  

HISTORY (WORLD GEOGRAPHY)

Preston, Marissa & Caleb:

We completed our study of North America by learning about Canada.  The kids were really excited about the new snow that had fallen so we focused a lot on the cold climate of Canada.  We learned about mounties, animals that live in Canada, provinces and the big cities.  We watched a video about polar bears and learned how to build an igloo.  Then we made our own igloos out of marshmallows.  The kids also decided they wanted to "camp out" in Canada so they built a tent with Marissa's building kit and a sheet.  It was quite fitting with the Christmas tree behind them.  

They also learn about how air takes up space in their science and PE class.  They had a lot of fun with that as well.  

TECH (BUILDING & ENGINEERING)

Preston:

Preston spent most of his time finishing his snow fort in the backyard.  He came in regularly to report how much better he was able to get the snow to stick if he used a little bit of cold water to solidify it.   

Marissa:

Marissa assembled her kiwi crate for building and engineering this week.  It was all about hydraulics.  She built a really cool inch worm that moves with hydraulic power.   

Caleb:

Caleb assembled his koala crate this week.  He was thrilled that it was all about pirates.  He built a pirate hat, eye patch, parrot and two pirate ships.  Marissa ended up joining him for pirate play and we read a couple pirate books we had on the shelf to add to their afternoon.  So much fun!  

OPTIONAL (PE)

Preston:

Preston attended his karate classes four times this week.  During sparring time, he actually won the match against another student who is a blue belt.  He was thrilled!   

Marissa:

Marissa attended her tumbling class this week.  She worked on putting four back handsprings together in a row with more power and speed.   

Caleb:

Caleb attended karate class twice this week.  He loves it!  He learned and practiced X block, Wedge block, outer block and inner block.