October 19 - 23

 WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston's favorite thing this week was getting further in his Imagine Math Facts.  He finished subtraction and is about half way through with division.  Caleb stands behind him and is learning his math facts through observation.  He's so funny!  

MARISSA

Marissa's favorite thing this week was working on her cursive handwriting.  She decided to get her cursive book out and start working on it again.  She likes printing, but she really loves cursive.  She is improving quite a bit.  I was surprised when she chose to get out her handwriting without being asked.  

CALEB

Caleb's favorite activity this week was building.  He and Marissa used a couple different materials to build all sorts of things this week.  

OTHER

GEOGRAPHY

We learned about Toussaint L'ouverture who freed Haiti's slaves from Napoleon, the Civil War, the Mayflower, a little bit about pilgrims in Jamestown and the Canadian Pacific Railway.  

POETRY

We read a couple of poems this week.  One was called "Story Books in Winter."  The other one was called "From a Railway Carriage."  It was so much fun that the day we studied the Canadian Pacific Railway, we ended up reading a poem about watching the world through a railway carriage.  I love it when that happens!  The kids did too and decided we should play with trains later on that day.  :) 

READING

Some moments are too sweet not to capture.  I walked in to find Preston reading a book Caleb had requested and Marissa leaning in to hear the story as well.  So cute!  

Marissa continues loving the Sophie Mouse books.  This is her latest read.  She's improving so much!  

MATH

Caleb and Preston started another game of Monopoly.  It is so fun to have days where we add in some game schooling with our regular learning.  

Marissa decided she would rather play Quirkle with me so we started a game at the table while the boys played Monopoly in the Family Room.  

We have been reading through the second Life of Fred book during morning basket.  We laugh so much and are working through simple math concepts together.  It's been a fun break from worksheets and textbooks.  

MUSIKGARTEN

Caleb attended a Zoom meeting for Musikgarten this week since Marissa was a little under the weather.  We were trying to be extra careful with germs.  It wasn't quite the same, but he had a great time helping with rhythm and singing from the iPad.  

October 12 - 16

  WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston's favorite thing this week was creating a game using Scratch coding.  He is having so much fun learning coding!

MARISSA

Marissa's favorite thing this week was learning about Christopher Columbus.  We spent the day reading and watching videos about Columbus.  It was so funny because our Geography sticker book had the Columbus sticker the day after Columbus Day.  Quite a coincidence!  We still love learning little tidbits about the world through this fun little book!  

CALEB

Caleb's favorite thing this week was reading the book "Fate of the Future."  He loves the Tuttle Twins books and thought this one was particularly cool because it was talking about robots taking over the future in a dystopian society.  We learned what a dystopian society and a utopian society means.  These books have opened a lot of higher level conversation in our home.  

OTHER

GEOGRAPHY

In our Beautiful Feet geography study, we learned about saw mills that pull logs off the river and cut them into wood to be used to make homes or other needs.  Caleb was so excited because he remembered a song from Musikgarten called "I Hear the MillWheel" so we spent some time singing and understanding machines and mills in particular.  

FALL

We are spending as much time outdoors as possible this fall.  We have gone on hikes and to pumpkin patches and we also spent a day at a pond.  After our geography day learning about ponds and rivers, we went to a pond to explore what it looks like in the fall.  It was really interesting to observe the changes from spring and summer.  Caleb LOVED every leaf and bush he saw so we ended up with A LOT of pictures for him to look back and see.  

October 5 - 9

 WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston's favorite part of the week was working on his piano songs.  He's improving so much! 

MARISSA

Marissa LOVED practicing her tumbling while we were at Green Acres Dairy for a field trip this week.  When the mat would clear off a bit, she was able to hit multiple back handsprings and finish with a tuck.  Now she wants to own a big, fancy mat.  I told her to save her money.  ;) 

CALEB

Caleb's favorite thing this week was a field trip to "Green Acres Dairy" for the corn maze and hay ride.  We had so much fun and learned so much about how a dairy farm operates.  Caleb especially liked the "Farm Scene Investigation" activity they had in their short corn maze.  We have been to other farms that are produced based in the past, but this was a first for us.  We all had a great time! 

OTHER

GEOGRAPHY

We learned about Chicken Itza this week, which was really fun.  Grandma has been there and had a whole bunch of supplementary materials to share with us.  We also learned about Olmec stone head (the different cultures of the Olmecs verses the Mayans) and the Great Serpent Mount in Ohio.  I had never ever heard about that before so it was fun to learn something new!  

ART

We finished our diamond dots art project.  It turned out so cute and we had a great time working on it and listening to audiobooks.  We also finished "Whittington," an audiobook about Dick Whittington's cat.  

BUILDING AND ENGINEERING

Preston and Caleb built castles with blocks this week.  They did a great job!  

MATH

Marissa practiced math using some math manipulatives.  She ended up building structures when all was said and done.  Yes, she is wearing a jacket from a confederate army soldier.  It's left over from a Civil War study we did a few years ago with my oldest son.  She was pretending to be a detective and solve a mystery for math.  ;)

ENTREPRENEUR

We read a book called "Show Business" that teaching about being an entrepreneur.  The kids learned the different steps of building a business, the risks involved, how to find an investor, how to budget, cut costs when necessary, make a profit, etc.  It was a really fun book that taught so many skills about owning a business.  

P.E.

In addition to karate and tumbling, we found some time to play at the park.  We found a new park with lots of climbing rocks and got in some good outdoor time this week.  

September 28 - October 2

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston took a break from his math curriculum to work on getting faster with his math facts.  He's been working on multiplication.  It's amazing how quickly he's getting fast at calculating, which will make his math easier when he gets back to it.  He completed all the levels of multiplication this week and started on division.  He was so excited one day to show me how much he improved during a level from his pre-test to his post-test so he took my phone and snapped a picture of his progress.  

MARISSA

Marissa had an assignment in her language arts' book to write a letter to someone.  She chose to write a letter to her piano teacher.  It was so sweet and turned out so great!  She loved that it came with a paper that turned into an envelope and she can't wait to take it to her teacher next week!  

CALEB

We read a poem this week called "The Cow" by Robert Lewis Stevenson.  One of Caleb's favorite things is "becoming" everything we talk about.  After I read the poem to the kids, Caleb hopped on Preston's back.  He decided he was riding this friendly cow.  Preston is such a good big brother and very tolerant of an energetic little brother who always wants to play!  Marissa discovered her love of poetry a few years ago during a co-op class and it's fun to watch Caleb learn to love it as well.  

OTHER

GEOGRAPHY

We finished Asia in our Geography sticker book this week.  We learned about the Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin who was the first human in space.  We watched a few videos about that and had a lot of fun learning about space and rockets that day.  We also learned about heavier subjects like the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka in 2004 the atomic bomb during WWII.  Marissa hates learning about difficult topics so we didn't go too in depth, but it's been good to cover all sorts of world topics spanning centuries.  

GEOGRAPHY

Our official geography curriculum finally arrived!  We will be studying the United States, specifically focused on the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River.  It is geography through literature and I'm really excited about this approach to learning.  There is a lot of supplemental resources so we will have to see how in depth we end up going with it, but we read the first couple of chapters of our book and did some map work.  It's a new way of learning.  Marissa loved it, Caleb had fun with it.  I'm not sure about Preston.  He may have thought it was too much busy work for his tastes.  We shall see how it goes moving forward.  

HISTORY

For history, we like to study great individuals who have gone before.  We read stories and biographies or just learn about an individual when an opportunity arises.  This week, we learned about Mother Teresa.  It was so fun to talk to the kids about Mother Teresa and what a great example she was of service and love.  

HIKE (NATURE WALK)

We went hiking this week and decided to pause at the end and explore.  It turned into more of a nature walk at the end.  Marissa found a whole bunch of snail shells.  She was so excited!  Caleb found acorns, which he decided to collect.  We went home with pockets full of nature!  

OTHER

Sometimes our favorite part of the day is snuggling up to listen to audiobooks or read-alouds.  The following pictures represent the cuteness that sometimes simply needs to be documented. :) 

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.