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.  

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.