March 22 - 26

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston wrote a story for language arts this week.  He first wrote out some of the parts of it in his book and then he was asked to type it up.  He did such a good job!  

Quake by Preston Uboldi

MARISSA

Marissa's favorite thing this week was practicing her geography skills with fun continent puzzles.  She worked on Africa using the globe and did a really great job putting all the countries in place.  

CALEB

Caleb's focus continues to be reading and writing with plenty of time practicing math facts.  We're completing lessons in "All About Reading" and he's also completing lessons in Reading Eggs, MathSeeds and Imagine Math Facts in addition to learning we do together.  

OTHER

HISTORY

We read a really good book called "Henry's Freedom Box" about a slave who shipped himself to freedom.  It was really sad, but a gentle way to introduce the topic of slavery to the younger kids.  

March 15 - 19

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston's favorite part of the week was a field trip to the zoo for his 14th birthday.  The weather was great and we had so much fun!

MARISSA

Marissa completed "My Book of Nouns and Adjectives" this week.  It was so cute! 

CALEB

Caleb's favorite part was a field trip to Flowrider!  He had so much fun learning to body surf.  Preston and Marissa loved it as well! 

OTHER

BOOKS

We read several fun books this week.  One was called "Maya and the Turtle" and was a folk tale from Korea.  

The other book was called "The Power of One."  We've been reading a lot of motivation books about how one person can change the world.  It's been a lot of fun!

March 8 - 12

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston learned a fun song for piano this week.  He learned it in one week.  It had a duet part so his teacher sent me the video of their little performance.  It turned out so great! 

MARISSA

Marissa was so excited to get to make her own calendar when her Doodle Crate arrived this week.  She painted 12 separate paintings to represent different seasons or special things on certain days.  She did a great job and always loves when a painting project is part of her lessons for the day! 

CALEB

This week Caleb got to make flip books with rhyming words.  We have also been working on reading sheets.  This is going to be his focus for awhile.  He also completes math on the iPad regularly and participates in family learning, but we are working really hard on reading for the time being.  

OTHER

SCIENCE

We are loving reading biography books right now!!  I am trying to set a steady pace so we don't read the whole stack in one day, but some days we get more reading in than anticipated.  This week we really enjoyed learning about Wangari Maathai through two different books.  Our favorite was "Seeds of Change" but we learned different things by reading them both.

We also LOVED a book called "The Quilmaker's Gift!"  It's one of our new favorites and will be put on a list of books we want to purchase. 

March 1 - 5

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston made a stop motion video for his big brother for his birthday this week.  It was part of his tech class.  He did such a great job! This is his brother's bedroom (literally looks identical) and the video is his workout routine at night.  

MARISSA

Marissa's favorite thing this week was reading about Anna Pavlova in a book called Swan.  After that, we spent some time looking up different things about the ballet and watching clips of dancers.  It was so much fun! 

CALEB

Caleb is working on working through his "All About Reading, Level 1" book.  Even though a lot of it is review, reading has not quite clicked so we are reviewing and doing more activities to help increase his reading fluency.  

OTHER

SCIENCE

We read a book called "The Boy Who Drew Birds" about John James Audubon.  Then we spent some time looking at a field guide about birds in our area and looked outside to see which birds we could identify.    

Feb 22 - 26

 WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston had a unit review this week for language arts and spent a couple of days completing that.  It was great to see how far he's come with his grammar and spelling, his ability to edit writing and diagram sentences.    

MARISSA

Marissa's been really enjoying her math book.  She worked on geometry this week with different shapes, line segments and angles.  She also learned a little bit about probability and statistics.  

CALEB

Caleb is working on reading and handwriting a lot right now.  This week, we did more rhyming words, worked on the difference between "d" and "b" and decided to review some phonics with "All About Reading, Level 1."  I want to make sure his reading is solid since he's struggling with auditory processing issues that make sounding out words a little bit difficult for him.  

OTHER

SCIENCE

We read a fun book called "Alexander's Mirror" that was really great.  It was all about reflecting light using a mirror.  We talked about only being able to reflect light when you can see the light.  The kids practiced reflecting light using small mirrors for several hours and were astonished how far they could get light to bend.  It was a very fun, memorable activity.  

P.E.

In addition to tumbling and karate, we got in some good hiking over the weekend with a quick trip to southern Utah.  The kids had a great time with their dad and some family friends exploring trails and climbing rocks.  They also got to hold a pretty cool lizard (a pet of family friends).  They had a great time! 

BAKING

We finally found time to make Scottish shortbread (one of the recipe's from Preston's geography section in his language arts' book.  It was pretty simple and delicious.  We decided to take some to a family friend whose mom is from Scotland.  She was diagnosed with cancer last year and is still in recovery.  Marissa made a darling note for her and we took her some authentic Scottish shortbread to cheer her up.  

February 15 - 19

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston did some more geography work this week.  He learned about the British Aisles.  We haven't made the recipe from that unit yet.  Perhaps that will happen this week.  :)   

Preston also made a cute Thank You note using pastels for the art portion of his language arts' assignment this week.  This is definitely not his favorite kind of art, but it's so sweet that he follows along with the assignments without complaint.  

MARISSA

Marissa was working on compound words in her language arts book this week.  She chose 4 different compound words to draw as separate words and then draw once they are combined.  It turned out really cute!

CALEB

Caleb's focus right now is reading.  He still completes writing and math assignments regularly, but we are really working on helping him gain some fluency and confidence with his reading.  He was so pleased with himself when he realized he could read "Go Dog Go" with only a little bit of help from me or Preston.  

OTHER

HISTORY

We read a fun book for history this week.  It was called "Six Dots" and is the story about how braille was developed by a blind child named Louis Braille.  It was a very inspiring story, and fun to learn the patterns of dots that make up each letter of the alphabet.  

SNOW

With all the crazy weather we've had, we made time to at least get out and go sledding on a small hill at a park near our home. The kids had a blast!