September 21 - 24

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston's favorite thing this week was finishing the 3rd Harry Potter book and starting on number 4.  He has a goal to read all of the books and spends a lot of his free time reading now.  It's so amazing since last year we were still trying to get to the point of fluency with chapter books.  He has come so far with his reading and language arts skills!  It's incredible to see his progress and his determination!

MARISSA

Marissa built an aqueduct system out of recycling materials this week that she is planning on using in the backyard.  I only managed to get a picture of the first part, but she continued adding onto it until it was pretty elaborate.  She loves creating all sorts of things! 

CALEB

Caleb's favorite activity of the week was definitely Monopoly.  He has never played before and has been begging us to start a game.  Sure enough, it held his attention, helped him practice counting money (and adding and subtracting quickly) and ended up lasting over three days.  We finally moved it to a different room so we could still eat meals, but keep the game going longer.  

OTHER

SCIENCE

We headed to Willard Bay for some late season swimming this week.  Not only did we have the beach to ourselves, but Marissa ended up finding fish eggs inside an aluminum can that washed up on shore.  It was really cool and we did a little reading and researching on it when we got home.  

GEOGRAPHY

We love our World Geography sticker book.  It is fun to learn about a person, place or event in different countries.  We have learned so much about Asia the past couple of weeks.  This week we learned a little bit about Ghenghis Khan (Marissa hated it and Caleb was fascinated and wanted to learn more).  We also learned about the Taj Mahal and the story behind its building (Marissa loved that it was a love story!)  And finally, we learned about Mahatma Ghandi.  Caleb saw the sticker and was immediately curious, "Who is on that statue, Mom?  It looks like C3PO!"  We couldn't stop laughing.  Once we pulled ourselves together, we learned SO MUCH about the life of Ghandi and what he accomplished.  

HANDWRITING

Caleb really struggles with fine motor skills.  We have considered getting him into occupational therapy, but for now we are just taking it slowly and watching to see how he progresses.  Writing his letters on a chalkboard with a small piece of chalk is helping SO MUCH!  It's so encouraging to see how hard he works to learn to move his hand the way he needs to in order to form his letters.  

LANGUAGE ARTS

Marissa has a gift for making everything beautiful!  Simple assignments in her language arts book become a work of art.  She's learning a lot and her reading, spelling and writing are all improving.