Preston's had his last week of Key of Liberty this week. He participated in the Constitution Bowl and did a great job demonstrating his knowledge of the Constitution. He also wrote his final paper for that class. The topic was "What will you do and what does the Key of Liberty meant to you?" He did such a good job with his paper and his teacher read his paper for the whole class. He said it was one of the best parts of the class for him that his teacher liked his class enough to read it for everyone else.
MARISSA
Marissa went with her class to the Hill Air Force Base Museum as part of their reading of the book "Jacob DeShazer." They learned a little bit about the history of flight, and had their book discussion afterwards.
Marissa has gotten excited about drawing again. This week she drew "Maribel" from Disney's Encanto. It's so fun to see her excited about projects she chooses.
CALEB
Caleb's main focus has been reading the past several weeks. We purchased an app called "Readability Tutor" where he practices reading out loud. He also reads out loud to me daily. His fluency is improving so much!
He also received the Wolverine Mech and was so excited to put that together as part of his building and engineering class.
Preston has been working really hard to prepare for his belt test in karate. He tested as a brown belt and earned his red belt. There were only five of them testing and it was a really awesome experience. He has decided to work towards earning his black belt in September, which is a huge commitment of both time and money. He is so excited and continues to work on his karate skills daily!
MARISSA
Marissa went to a play called "Rising Up" twice this week. She went the first time with Preston and another time she went with me. She loved learning about women's suffrage and seeing so many friends she knows sing, dance and act.
CALEB
Caleb has been working on math, reading, writing and building. He took a book about dinosaurs to his class on Thursday and read it to several younger kids. It was so cute! The book was above his reading ability, but he was so interested in it that he pushed through to get through all the hard words. We're working on helping him find more and more books he loves so he can continue to progress in his reading ability.
OTHER
LITTLE MERMAID
We all enjoyed attending Central Davis Junior High's performance of "The Little Mermaid" this week. Preston's good friend, Owen, played the part of Sebastian. He did such a great job!
Preston gave his presentation on George Washington. He finished his research paper and had the opportunity to present it to his class. He did such a great job! Here is a link to his paper and a short clip of a portion of his presentation.
Marissa got to attend a play with me this week. We went to see Cinderella at Centerpointe Theater in Centerville. It was such a cute play and we had a great time!
CALEB
Caleb and Marissa had their assembly for jump rope. Marissa was only able to do the skip rope and double dutch because she can't turn an individual rope with her broken wrist. Caleb was so proud of his jump rope skills in front of everyone!
OTHER
MATH
We started reading "Life of Fred" together as a family again. We are only on dogs, but we all learn something from it every time we read.
We also started reading a children's book on Norse Mythology. It's really interesting and helps us all make sense of the characters in the Marvel Universe and where they originated.
Preston finished writing his hero report for his Key of Liberty class. It was a research paper with a least two book sources and had to be at least 2 1/2 pages single spaced. It really pushed Preston, but he did a great job. He chose to do his report on George Washington.
He also started rehearsals for Shakespeare and is doing a great job memorizing his lines.
MARISSA
Marissa has been working on her reading, language arts and math more this week. She did a lot of reading and memorized a poem called "Dragonfly."
CALEB
Caleb has really been working on reading, phonics and handwriting this week. He is getting so much better at holding his pencil and carefully forming shapes and letters.
OTHER
CUP STACKING
Caleb and Marissa have been cup stacking to work on some building and engineering skills for their tech class. They love it and have gotten quite good at recognizing properties that make a structure more sound.
Preston has been working on memorizing lines for his Shakespeare play during a two week break at Polar Star. They are performing "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with a Mexican theme. He's playing a smaller part, but he's still very excited. He's playing the part of Fernando.
Preston has also been asked to do the prolog in Spanish at the beginning of the play. Another person will then come in and translate the prolog. Preston understands Spanish because his dad is originally from Argentina, but he doesn't speak or read much of it. He's having to work hard to learn to read and speak well in his second language. It's been a lot of work, but he's really enjoying preparing for when rehearsals start next week.
MARISSA
Marissa has been in a creative mode lately. One day, she and Caleb were playing Legos. She decided she wanted to invent a machine that could pick up Legos. She dug through the recycling and went to work. It was definitely a promising invention.
She has also been loving Snap Circuits. She was working on finding a way to combine her invention with circuits to make it automatic. It didn't happen yet, but she's not giving up.
She broke her arm at the zoo last week (Caleb came down the slide and landed on her). We didn't realize it was broken for a few days. We finally took her in on Friday and found out it was broken. Then we had to wait for an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon to make sure she didn't need surgery. Thankfully, she emerged from the appointment with a hot pink cast and no surgery. A broken bone doesn't seem to slow her down with all her ideas and inventions and discoveries though.
Marissa also got to attend a formal etiquette dinner. She had so much fun and learned all about manners and formalities. I had to include a picture of her in her fancy dress! ;)
CALEB
Caleb's favorite thing this week was building with Legos. He's been reading a lot about animals and learning so much. One day he ran in to tell me how excited he was because he was going to build a habitat out of Legos. Of course Marissa thought that sounded like so much fun and decided to join him in building.
OTHER
PRIME NUMBERS
Caleb and Marissa had a great time learning about prime numbers from "Life of Fred." He was talking about how no even numbers are prime except for the number 2, but that not all odds are prime. The kids got out gems and lined them up to see why the numbers 9 and 15 are not prime even though they are odd numbers. It was a really good visual to help them understand at a different level.
SCIENCE
Marissa and I had an unexpected lesson about prisms and light when we were at her great grandma's. She was reading on the couch and we looked over to see that the crystals on the lamp in the living room was creating tiny rainbows on the curtain. It was so much fun to see and discuss together. We remembered learning about that from the book "Pollyanna" which was one of Marissa's favorites a year or two ago. It reminded us to play the glad game just like Pollyanna did. Such a fun day!
Preston celebrated his 15th birthday this week. We went to the zoo that day and had a great time. We spent three hours looking at animals, exploring and having a great time learning and playing together!
MARISSA
Marissa made a shadow box for her Tech class this week. It was really fun for her! She did all the wiring for it and then created different pictures she can switch out with the light.
She has also been working on diagramming sentences and working on her homophones lists as part of her assignments for her Ninja Scholar classes. It's a lot of work, but she is doing so well!
CALEB
Caleb has been working hard on his reading this week. He loves Mr Putter and Tabby books!
Caleb's favorite activity this week was building a tower around him with Keva planks and mini dominoes. It was a major accomplishment for him to hold still while the kids built around him (and his legs were so sore afterwards) but he was so proud of himself and we got an awesome video.
OTHER
PI DAY
Preston We had a great time celebrating Pi Day. We watched a couple of videos on YouTube to learn about pi, read "Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi" and then spent about an hour measuring the diameter of several different circles and then figuring out the circumference on paper. We measured with a cloth measuring tape to see if we got our calculations right and (allowing for a little error in measuring) we definitely figured out the equation. So much fun! We ate miniature pot pies for lunch, pizza pie for dinner and chocolate pie for dessert. Definitely a fun day filled with learning.
