February 4 - 8

MATH

Preston:

Preston completed four assignments in his math book this week.  He is working on story problems, multiple digit adding and subtracting with carrying and borrowing and time and money review.   

Marissa:

Marissa completed four assignments in her math book this week.  She is working on simple story problems, basic geometry and new shapes and counting money.   

Caleb:

Caleb completed two assignments in his math book this week.  We got out math counters and worked with inchimals for some fun number practice.   

LANGUAGE ARTS

Preston:

Preston completed four assignments in his language arts book this week.  He worked a little bit extra on some spelling words and got all of them correct except "thought."  He could not figure out why in the world thought would be spelled the way it is and even giggled when he saw me correct his word on paper.   

Marissa: 

Marissa completed four assignments in her language arts book this week.  She has been struggling a little with the reading portion of her language arts book.  It looks like she may have some dyslexic tendencies (Preston also has some as well as other more severe learning challenges) and is really struggling to get "b" "d" and "p" straight when reading beyond three letter words.  She does great with grammar and even fairly good with the spelling portion of her book, but is getting frustrating with reading.  I have decided to do fewer language arts assignments with her in the future and focus more on some of her easy readers in more detail to help catch her up where she is struggling.   

Caleb:

Caleb loves letters and sounds.  He was thrilled when he sounded out words in the first Bob book.  We are working on forming letters with lots of different sensory items while he works on improving his fine motor skills since the skill of sounding out words is a little easier than manipulating his fingers and hands.  

HISTORY (WORLD GEOGRAPHY)

Preston, Marissa & Caleb:

We moved on to Europe in World Geography this week.  We watched a cool video that detailed the map of Europe and all its countries using playdough, which was extremely helpful in keeping track of all of them.  Then we made a stop in France.  We learned about the Eiffel Tower and how it was built for the world fair back in the 1800s.  We also learned that it has to be painted every seven years.  It was fascinating!  The kids used modeling clay to build an Eiffel Tower.  They also started to build one out of Lego's, but got sidetracked at some point and built something else.  We talked about the French language and ate crepes for lunch.  It was so much fun!  

Marissa's modeling clay Eiffel Tower

Crepes!

TECH (BUILDING & ENGINEERING)

Preston:

Preston has been extremely excited about Disney characters since our trip.  He decided to build a home for his alien from Toy Story out of blocks this week.   

Marissa:

Marissa came up with an awesome invention out of Lego's this week.  She built a triple bunk bed out of Lego's so all three of her friends could sleep in the same bedroom.  I think it's modeled similar to a friend of hers who has a bedroom with triple bunkbeds, but it was so great for her to have to think through the building and structural process to make three beds fit together like that.   

Caleb:

Caleb completed his Koala crate this week.  The other kids chose to wait until next week to build theirs since it arrived late in the week, but Caleb COULD NOT wait to break his open and learn.  His crate was all about the arctic, which was fun since we had learned about Antarctica last month (and briefly mentioned the arctic region and how they differ).  So instead of penguins, we went back to polar bears like we did when we were studying Canada.  So cute!  

OPTIONAL (PE)

Preston:

Preston attended karate class three times this week.  He also received his bow (the long stick thing) that he's been waiting for so he can practice the moves with his first weapon.   

Marissa:

Marissa attended tumbling class.  She also attended open gym on Saturday for extra practice.  

Caleb:

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

OTHER

Preston:

Preston got really excited about plants and seeds.  He planted two seeds from his apple and an orange seed and a squash seed (all in a tiny plant).  This was entirely on his own.  He dug up dirt under the snow and found a tiny little pot.  I was secretly hoping nothing would grow because I'm not quite in plant-growing mode yet (it usually comes in mid to late spring for me).  He was determined and has attended to his little pot every day.  He showed me his plants today.  He has two tiny apple trees and a squash plant growing in this teeny tiny pot.  I explained that we will have to transplant them to bigger, separate pots so they have room to continue growing.  He is so proud of his plants and told me he would like a part of the garden to grow all by himself this year.  Of course, that led to competition from Marissa who has also decided she is old enough to grow her own section of garden this year.