Weekly Wrap Up Week 14! {2014}

Welcome back!  I hope your week was a good one!!  

I appreciate these weekly wrap ups because, I didn't think we had a very productive week!  But, when I went to type up this wrap I, I realized we did much better then I thought!  Yay!!

We didn't exactly have a theme this week, and I think that's why I didn't feel productive.  We were transitioning out of one theme and into another, so we have a lot of hodge-podgy feeling lessons.

Abraham Lincoln

Last week we read all about Abraham Lincoln with a book by Ingri d'Aulaire.  We loved it, but it didn't mention anything about Lincolns assassination (which is sad, but kinda important to know).  So this week, we finished up by reading A Picture book of Abraham Lincoln.

While we read, we used the free timeline printable from Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational.  

April Fool's Day

While I had hoped to do more, I was happy to come up with a few things to do to learn about this silly holiday.

We read about April Fool's Day in the Berentain Bear's Big Book of Science and Nature, and also from a printable in the free pack from Rachel Friedrich.

Using printables that are also from the free pack (link above), we drew pictures of silly monsters.

We made silly creatures with our magnetic people and animals.

And, of course, we had breakfast for dinner.  Worked out nicely because we chicken sat for our neighbors this past weekend.  The pay is farm fresh eggs-yummy!!!

Weather

It's a new month, so we switched to a new calendar theme.  This month it will be weather.  Thanks to the free calendar cards from 1+1+1=1.

The Human Body

This will be our focus all of next week, but we started our human body unit this week.  We made body cut outs with blank newsprint (from our field trip to the newspaper last year) and then hung them up in the hall.  All four children have one (no one wanted to be left out!).

Then, today, we started learning about bones.  

We read A Book About Your Skeleton and looked at the pictures in Bones by Seymour Simon.  The printable on the left is from a lapbook I printed from Currclick (not affiliate).  The lapbook cost me 10 cents and is still on sale today (it's normally 50 cents, so still very affordable!).

 I purchased a used copy of My Body a couple years ago and we are finally putting it to use!  

Using the templates in the book, the kids cut out legs for their bodies.

Happily added them to our traced people who are currently adorning our stairwell (and are kinda creepy).

Mustang checking out the leg bone she just cut out up against our Halloween decoration that makes a PERFECT addition to our skeleton lesson.  

I really wish we had more time to learn about the skeleton-there are weeks worth of information and experiments we could do, but we only have THREE weeks left of our school year, so we must keep moving.  Next week should be a ton of fun, however, as we go further into our human body study.  I'm really looking forward to it!

I hope you had a wonderful week!

Thanks for stopping by!

God Bless,

Lisa

Weekly Wrap Up Week 13 {2014}

Like I mentioned in my little girl's post, I'm a bit behind on my wrap ups.  I may never catch up, so I'll just move forward like it never happened (except the part where I skip from week 10 to week 13).  I figure I could go into all the reasons I got behind, but I think I'll just stick with the part where I'm 30 weeks prego and am homeschooling 4 kids.  That seems good enough for me ;).

I also appears that I have all of four photos to show you from this week.  But, hey, that is 400% better then the zero I had a few weeks ago, so at least we have improvement, right? Right.

So let's see...

History

Our biggest activity this week was learning about Abraham Lincoln.  We've been reading a little page about each president and we finally made it to Lincoln.  I decided that we should spend more then 5 minutes learning about him, so I checked out Abraham Lincoln by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire. 

Really, I just chose it because it had cute pictures, but it turned out to be a gem {maybe if I had noticed the part that it was a Caldecott award winner before we read it I would have been clued in}!  Man, am I glad we got to read it!!  It's super awesome and the kids loved it!! Of course, it totally avoids parts like... Mary Todd Lincoln was a bit nuts...and....Abraham Lincoln got shot....but overall, it had a ton of fun info.  


We will probably read another Lincoln book this week that fills in the (kinda important and memorable) gaps.  I highly recommend this one, though!  


Science

We're still using our Space calendar cards and the kids begged me to bring out the planets model that we have.  I can't blame them, it's really cool.

The lights were actually off when I took this (cause the sun lights up).  I can't believe how bright my flash is!

We also watched Bill Nye's The Planets {Yes, I'm a Creationist, but this is what our library had.  Thankfully, he just talked about the current properties of the planets-which is what I was hoping for}.

Math

I introduced triple addends with the beads.  I love how simple Montessori Math is to explain, understand, and work through!  

We also started the multiplication layouts, but no photo. Actually, we don't technically have enough beads to do the entire layout at once.  I'm hoping it won't scar the kids forever.  I've now got more beads on my want list!

Both Mustang and Charger have finished the basic addition strip board and charts.  Mustang knows her addition facts well, and Charger is working on memorizing them.  We've been working on IXL to solidify their memorization (instead of flash cards and games).  They are doing well and love it.  (We received our subscription free last fall for doing a review).

Language Arts/Reading

Charger has been asking to work on his Primary Arts of Language (PAL) a lot lately.  Though, I guess in this particular photo it looks like he is interested in the glue.  He is solidly reading now, though still needs help with bigger words.  

I'm always amazed when I realize that I {by the grace of God} taught 2 kids how to read.  It really does help with confidence to believe that this homeschooling thing really is working out!

Everything Else

I signed both Mustang and Charger up for baseball and softball.  For the month of June they will each have 2 ball games a week, and I'll have a new baby.  Should be interesting, but it's actually local (which is rare) and Mustang has been begging to get out of the house and make new friends.  Hope she likes it!

Charger is one verse away from finishing his AWANA book and Mustang just has a couple more.  I was actually concerned they wouldn't finish since we missed a ton last fall when I was sick and then this winter with all the snow.  So, I'm really excited that they are going to finish!

I've also finally started getting ready for the new baby.  Hard to believe that if she were to come as early as Charger did (I hope not!) she could be here in just 5 weeks.  Eeek!  At least with the 5th child you know you don't need much :).

I hope your week has gone well!!  We are planning to start our human body unit next week.  It will be our LAST unit before our 2 month baby break, so I'm just amazed it is coming so soon!

Have a great weekend and God Bless!

Lisa  

Things we used this week (amazon affiliate links in this widget).