August 16 - 27

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston finished reading "The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings" this week.  He loved it and is looking forward to watching the movie.

MARISSA

Marissa's favorite thing this week was painting during our read aloud of the book "Call it Courage."  She loves to create and finds many opportunities to fit art and creativity into her every day learning.  

CALEB

Caleb finished All About Reading, Level 1 this week.  He's excited to get started with AAR, Level 2 next week.  He earned a Lego set for completing an entire curriculum and spent some time putting that together for his building and engineering class as well.  

OTHER

P.E.

We went on a fun hike in Centerville.  The kids all loved identifying plants and small animals we found along the way.  We saw mushrooms, butterflies, a gray squirrel, humming bird and more.  The kids also LOVED playing on the rope swing when we got to the top! :)

SCIENCE

We went to the zoo for a field trip.  We decided to feed the giraffes because we got there right at feeding time.  It was so cool to see their long tongues reach out to grab the piece of lettuce.  

BIRTHDAY

Caleb turned 8 on August 18.  We celebrated with time swimming.  He decided he wanted to make his own cake this year.  Marissa ended up helping him a little bit, but the two of them made his birthday cake all by themselves.  Pretty amazing!

May 10 - 14

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston had a review section in his language arts book this week.  He reviewed sentence diagramming, run-on sentences, semi-colons, prepositional phrases and spelling words.  He did a great job!  I love that we have found something that is helping him progress in his reading, writing, spelling and grammar without being too all-consuming.  

MARISSA

Marissa finished her language arts book this week and got to move onto a new level.  Reading has been difficult for her to pick up, which affects her writing and spelling as well.  We have decided to move more slowly and go at her own pace and it is making all the difference.  She doesn't worry about which level she is on, but is proud when she accomplishes something big...like finishing a whole book!  

CALEB

Caleb has been focusing mostly on reading and writing, but still attends his Musikgarten class each week and finds time for building for his tech class.  This week, he created a couple of original Lego structures for building and engineering.    

OTHER

SCIENCE/P.E.

We explored rocks and fossils this week while we were in Moab.  We hiked to Delicate Arch for the first time.  It was just Preston, Marissa, Caleb and mom, and we made it (even though we didn't realize Caleb's shoes were way too small for him and his feet were hurting so bad from hiking so long).  It was so much fun to get in some extra outdoor time like hiking and swimming as well as a whole lot of reading!

May 3 - 7

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston built a really cool trap door out of Legos this week.  Here was our attempt at catching it on video.  

MARISSA

Marissa's favorite thing this week was making a tote bag for her tech class.  She is so artistic and creative.  I love how much fun she has creating! 

CALEB

Caleb has been focusing mostly on reading and writing.  We have gone back to an old handwriting book to really practice his letters again.  

OTHER

SCIENCE

We discovered the "Over and Under" books at the Treehouse Museum a couple of years ago, but we didn't realize there were so many of them.  Since we are spending some time working outdoors and trying to get a garden planted, we decided to read some books about nature in different areas.    

NON-FICTION

We are loving reading non-fiction picture books to learn a little bit about a lotto different people.  This week we read "Me...Jane" about Jane Goodall and a book called "Manfish" about Jacques Cousteau.  We really enjoyed them.  We also read a book called "Swirl by Swirl" about shapes in nature and talked a little bit about the Fibonacci sequence and other patterns in nature.  

April 26 - 30

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston wrote a story to describe the picture for his writing workshop this week.  He did a really good job!  

MARISSA

Marissa also had a writing assignment in her language arts book.  She wrote about what she likes about school.  I'm not sure if she was trying to earn something with all the mom flattering, but I'll take it.  ;)

CALEB

Caleb is working really hard on his reading with All About Reading.  Here are a couple of pictures of him reading and working on the word activities.  

OTHER

HISTORY

This week we read a book about the Statue of Liberty.  It talked about how it was a gift from France and also about how it represents freedom, liberty and people coming from all over the world to the USA.  

EMOTIONAL GROWTH AND CHARACTER BUILDING

We found books that might be my new favorite from the library.  I think we will be purchasing these for our home in the future.  They are called "The Good Egg," "The Bad Seed," and "The Cool Bean."  Loved them! 

April 19 - 23

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston's typing is getting so good.  He's also spending a lot of extra time working on his math.  He's practicing multiplication and division with decimals.  He's getting really close to being ready for pre-algebra.  

MARISSA

Marissa's favorite thing this week was finishing reading "Heartland Hotel."  We got the next one in the series from the library and she is looking forward to reading more books with Mona the mouse.  :)

CALEB

Caleb's favorite thing was building using dominos.  He had some help from his siblings, but it was one of his favorite activities this week.  

OTHER

HISTORY

This week we read a book about the Statue of Liberty.  It talked about how it was a gift from France and also about how it represents freedom, liberty and people coming from all over the world to the USA.  

MUSIC

We also read a book called "The Magic Flute" and then looked up the music from Mozart's opera.  We watched portions of the opera online and enjoyed knowing a little bit more of the background from the book we had read.  It was a fun break from what we usually learn during the week.  

April 5 - 16

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston's writing is improving so much.  He had to write a summary review of a story he read for language arts.  I was extremely impressed with how well he did without any help from me.  Deep and meaningful answers to the story with only a few spelling and grammatical errors.  He is definitely growing and improving this year! 

MARISSA

Marissa was super excited to receive her Doodle Crate this month!  She got to make knitted animals!!  The first animal she made with the yarn was this adorable little penguin!!

CALEB

Caleb's FAVORITE thing to do is play games.  We decided to appease him this week with another game of Monopoly for some extra math practice.  

OTHER

GEOGRAPHY

We read a book this week about Amsterdam becoming the world's biggest bike town.  The kids really liked it and decided it is time to get bikes out and fixed up for the spring and summer.  

SPRING BREAK

We decided to continue our regular schoolwork during spring break, but also get in some extra fun outdoors.  

WSU football game (in the spring!). It's so weird attending football in the spring, but the kids are not complaining at all!

March 29 - April 2

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston learned about Holland this week in his language arts book.  He read about it, did some map work and also drew a picture using pastels.  It turned out great! 

MARISSA

Marissa is working on her multiplication facts.  She started using flashcards, which I think is helping her brain organize the facts a little easier.  Her learning tends to be much more visual than anything else so we're trying this for now.  

CALEB

Caleb's favorite thing this week was reading about Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and finding out that Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood was made from that older show.  We read a really informative and touching book and spent some time looking at old clips of the show from years back.  

OTHER

CHARACTER BUILDING

The kids are really enjoying "A Little Spot of..." books.  This week we read "A Little Spot of Giving" and talked about ways both big and little that we can give to others and help make the world a better place.