January 21 - 25

MATH

Preston:

Preston completed four assignments in his math book this week.  He is learning about addend, sum, minuend, subtrahend and difference.  He is also learning to round after doing his adding and subtracting.  

Marissa:

Marissa completed four assignments in her math book this week.  She is learning basic fractions using different shapes.  She is also getting a lot of practice working with money.  

Caleb:

Caleb completed two assignments in his math book this week.  He also worked with inchimals practicing adding with inchimal manipulatives and cards.  He also is working on sorting skills by emptying the silverware from the dishwasher.   

LANGUAGE ARTS

Preston:

Preston completed four assignments in his language arts book this week.   

Marissa: 

Marissa completed four assignments in her language arts book this week.  We also listened to "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" on Audible for our read-aloud this week.  It was an excellent version narrated by Anne Hathaway.  We had a great time and got a lot of extra snuggle time since I didn't have to hold a book in my hands.

Caleb:

Caleb completed two assignments in his language arts book this week.  He also put together a letter puzzle to practice the sounds of the letters and work on some fine motor skills.  

HISTORY (WORLD GEOGRAPHY)

Preston, Marissa & Caleb:

For history this week, we learned more about Antarctica.  The kids broke up into younger and older kids and did some individual research on their favorite animals.  Preston and Owen ended up looking up information on seals.  They also did some reading on orcas and blue whales.  Marissa, Slade and Caleb stuck to their favorite animal, the emperor penguin.  

We also took a little bit of time on Monday to learn about Martin Luther King Jr.  We listened to a video on Brain Pop and talked about his "I have a dream" speech.  

TECH (BUILDING & ENGINEERING)

Preston:

Preston made a remote control car out of pieces that are similar to Lego's using a kit he was given by his grandmother for Christmas.  He had a great time building it and making the remote control work, but was disappointed with how easily the pieces fell off of the vehicle if the car hit anything even at a very slow speed.  It was a good lesson about building materials and how he could tweak the remote so it was more precise in turning and slowing to a stop.   

Marissa:

Marissa made light up lanterns for building and engineering this week.  They were more work to assemble than she realized, but they were so beautiful once the lights were turned on with all the colors behind them.  

Caleb:

Caleb made snowflakes in his music class this week, but I didn't manage to snap a picture before we left.  He also built several "ninja" structures and a vehicle with Lego's.  

OPTIONAL (PE)

Preston:

Preston attended his karate class four times this week.  He loves it!  

Marissa:

Marissa attended her tumbling class this week.   

Caleb:

Caleb attended karate class two times this week.  

January 14 - 18

MATH

Preston:

Preston completed four lessons in his math book this week.  He is working on rounding, measurements and adding and subtracting money. 

Marissa:

Marissa completed four lessons in her math book this week.  She is learning add multi-digit numbers right now.  She is also reviewing skip counting by 2, 5 and 10. 

Caleb:

Caleb completed two lessons in his math book this week.  He loves math and is really good at figuring out the answer before I finish reading the question to him. 

LANGUAGE ARTS

Preston:

Preston completed four lessons in his language arts book this week.  He learned how to edit a story this week.  He did a great job with it once he caught on to the different symbols used.  It helped him pay more attention to whether or not a sentence started with a capital letter, had a period at the end or used commas in a sequence.  

Marissa: 

Marissa completed four lessons in her language arts book this week.  She is still extremely nervous about being timed for the different reading assessments so we have started reading them for fun instead of with a timed goal in mind.  She reads much faster without the pressure of needing to complete a page in a certain amount of time. 

Caleb:

Caleb completed two lessons in his language arts book this week.  We continue to focus on handwriting and fine motor skills since his understanding of letters and their sounds is quite solid, but he needs extra practice holding a pencil and forming letters and numbers.  

HISTORY (WORLD GEOGRAPHY)

Preston, Marissa & Caleb:

We continued to learn about Antarctica for World Geography this week.  The kids love learning about all the animals so that has been our focus this month.  They got to choose their favorite animal to paint after we read several books and watched a YouTube video.  It was fun to see their creations!   

Caleb's penguin

Preston's orca

Marissa's penguin

TECH (BUILDING & ENGINEERING)

Preston:

Preston built a Mech from a Lego Ninjago book he got for Christmas for building and engineering class this week.  He had to use pieces he already owned for some of his creations, but he was able to put together many of the ideas from the book.  He had a great time!  

Marissa:

Marissa finished the other half of her kiwi crate this week.  She built a hungry hungry "tiger" that opens and shuts its mouth using a pendulum.  She had so much fun playing with it!

Caleb:

Caleb made a snowflake and played a song about snowflakes in his music class this week.  He had so much fun learning more about winter!

OPTIONAL (PE)

Preston:

Preston attended his karate class four times this week.  He is getting so good!  

Marissa:

Marissa attended her tumbling class this week.  She really looks forward to her class and is progressing well.   

Caleb:

Caleb attended his karate class twice this week.  He loves karate! 

January 7 - 11

MATH

Preston:

Preston completed four assignments in his math book this week.  He also watched two episodes of Odd Squad and practiced counting money.   

Marissa:

Marissa completed four assignments in her math book this week.  She also watched Odd Squad to get some extra practice with math concepts and did some money counting as part of her math assignments.   

Caleb:

Caleb completed two assignments in his math book this week.  He also sorted money and worked on counting for his dice board game.  

LANGUAGE ARTS

Preston:

Preston completed four assignments in his language arts book this week.  He is working on homophones, commas in a series and spelling words in the EA family.   

Marissa: 

Marissa completed four assignments in her language arts book this week.  We discovered that timing her reading was giving her quite a bit of anxiety so we have switched to untimed reading for the foreseeable future.  She is working on blend words and doing quite a bit of work with nouns and verbs for grammar.  She also wrote in her creative writing journal and drew pictures to go along with what she wrote.  

Caleb:

Caleb completed two assignments in his language arts book this week.  He loves letters and their sounds.  He played a letter sound game hopping from letter to letter while he said sounds and then put sounds together to make beginning words.  He also did handwriting practice with letters, but still needs a lot of help to hold the pencil correctly and form letters.   

HISTORY (WORLD GEOGRAPHY)

Preston, Marissa & Caleb:

We learned about Antarctica this week for world geography class.  We read a couple of books about the climate and animals in Antarctica and then spent the rest of our class learning about penguins.  We watched a YouTube video about an emperor penguin hatching and learned how mothers go off to feed while fathers care for the egg and baby penguin, then mothers come back to feed the penguin chick while fathers leaves for several months to feed.  The kids loved it!  We also watched a YouTube video about the different species of penguins and where they live.  It was extremely helpful to see on a map where the different kinds of penguins live and why some are adapted to colder weather and others are not.  We made a penguin craft and then the younger kids had spontaneous waddling races in sleeping bags and pretended to explore Antarctica in the snow in the backyard.  Later in the week, Caleb surprised me by getting out the art supplies and bringing down a picture he drew of a penguin.  Apparently learning about penguins in Antarctica was a success!

TECH (BUILDING & ENGINEERING)

Preston:

Preston completed his tinker crate this week.  It was a sketch machine that was basically a homemade etch-a-sketch.  Trying to figure out how to tie all the strings properly to move the marker up and down at the right time was tricky, but it was super cool to use once we figured it out.  

Marissa:

Marissa completed her kiwi crate this week.  It was all about pendulums.  She made a pendulum bird feeder.  It was a really fun project for her.   

Caleb:

Caleb completed his koala crate this week.  It was a crate about dinosaurs.  He made a dinosaur costume and also his own air dry clay fossils.  He LOVED it!  We ended up checking out and reading lots of books on dinosaurs over the week as well as raiding our personal shelves for every dinosaur-related book we could find.  

OPTIONAL (PE)

Preston:

Preston attended karate class three times this week.  He loves his class and is learning the katas he will need to know for his belt test in March. 

Marissa:

Marissa attended tumbling this week.  She continues to work on back handsprings, back tucks and back whips.  

Caleb:

Caleb attended karate class two times this week.  He is really learning discipline and focus, and enjoys loud shouting, kicking and punching.