This whole week was all about the human body. We started our study last week and will finish it in 2 weeks (after Easter). I'm loving this unit. Everyone is interested and learning a lot. We are using all the resources we can. We have quite a few for the human body.
We are continuing on with our My Body book. Adding to our cut-outs every day or two.
This week we added our muscles, heart, and brain.
We learned about the skin by making a strange eatable skin mold. A little too much sugar and red dye for my taste buds, but it was a lot of fun. I found the recipe at Oklahoma After School Network.
We also read Your Skin and Mine by Paul Showers.
We read a number of books this week. Muscles by Seymour Simon.
Hear Your Heart by Paul Showers. GREAT book.
We also read A Drop of Blood by Paul Showers. Equally as great. I love the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science books.
We tried to put together this cool 'Visible Man.'
That is, until I realized it was a TRUE model and needed cement and everything!
We still had fun looking at all the body parts, but we are going to have to put the model together sometime in the future (it's a bit above us now).
I also found this super cool online website that helps with learning all about the skeleton. Charger, especially, loved it!
This next week we are playing the game 'get ready for Easter.' And also 'look through what we have to do to finish our work by the end of April (last week of May at the latest). So, I don't know if there will be a wrap up or not!
We didn't have a real theme this week. We just tried out a few things and had some fun!
I read about a website called Chalk Preschool last week. It is free and they have a bunch of free online video clips to help teach concepts. We tried it out on Monday and I had high hopes that the girls would enjoy it. Explorer (2) did, Mini Cooper (4) kept asking if she could 'do it'. She thought it was interactive like Starfall. When she realized it was just movies, she didn't have any more interest.
I've been trying to find more online activities for the girls so that they have some learning options when I am on 'maternity leave' from teaching :).
A few years ago I had read about this book, The Berenstain Bear's Big Book of Science and Nature, on the Sonlight book list. I thought it sounded neat, but could never get my hands on it. While walking past the end cap at our library a couple weeks ago, I saw it and checked it out. It is SUPER cute, the girls (and the big kids too) love it, and it has tons of info. It's now officially on my own it wish list. We've been enjoying reading it over the last week and will continue this next week until it's finished.
One of the days the girls decided they needed to wear aprons while they did their 'work'. Whatever works, right? Explorer was checking out ALLL the tangrams.
I had intended to bring out this bulb ordering last week during our spring theme week, but we missed it. These are free from Homeschool Creations.
Then we made all kinds of things with the knobless cylinders. You can see our spring creations here.
Of course we also built towers.
This puzzle is from 3 Dinosaurs. I used it as another way to introduce counting to 100 by tens. I plan to introduce the 100 board this week and I wanted to work on this concept a little bit before I brought out the board.
And on April Fool's, we did a lot of silly things including using our magnet faces book to make silly monsters.
We joined the big kids in tracing our bodies for our human body lessons next week (but I forgot to take pictures of the girl's tracings). Lots of human body fun coming up!
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 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!
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).
Well, it was bound to happen. A week where there was more life then school. But, well, that's life, right? :)
Our week started with our annual gym night at the gymnastics center in town. This is the night that all the kids look forward to and talk about all year long! They get 3 hours to run, jump and play on all the gymnastics equipment. The parents get 3 hours to sit, talk, eat some yummy snacks, and let their kids run wild. It's really a great night! (Yes. This is homeschool socialization).
Sunday night we went to Mustang's Spirit Squad recital. To mark the end of their season, the team hosted a pizza and awards night, and then the girls performed their routines for all their family and friends that wanted to come and see. Mustang received a certificate for participation. Sorry that the picture on the right is a bit blurry, I had to crop it close so that the other girls on the team weren't in the picture.
The rest of us enjoyed pizza, snacks, hanging out with other families, and a performance. (Also considered homeschool socialization, ha ha).
On a not as happy note, we received word that our Great-Grandpa passed away on Wednesday night. He lived far away, so we will not be attending his funeral. But, we have spent a lot of time this week remembering him and discussing what happens when we die. We, thankfully, have the hope of knowing that he knew Jesus as his Lord and Savior, and someday we can see him again if we, too, know Jesus as Savior. So, we've had some conversations about how one gets to Heaven, too. It's been a good week of discussions.
For the 'official' school front, we were able to spend 2 days doing work.
This week we learned about Vincent Van Gogh. I found a wonderful book (left) of huge and colorful prints of his work. It was great for giving the kids a true chance to view and appreciate his paintings.
We started watching a biography about Van Gogh and really enjoyed it (but we need to finish it on Monday-it was kinda long!). I learned a lot of things I never knew about Van Gogh. Did I mention that I LOVE homeschooling my kids? I learn so much!! :)
The booklet to the right is free from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I added this booklet to their workplans. Mustang chose to do it right away, so this is her book.
One of our two days of school included 'outdoor learning' AKA soak up the 72 degree day in March! Well worth it!
We've continued with our calendar days about space. The space cards are from 1+1+1=1. This has been a blessing, because on his days off school. Charger has begun his own learning about space exploration, space stations, rockets, and more.
He brought me his homemade NASA station (interesting because I didn't even know he had seen a picture of it). Apparently Daddy had shown him a few photos online that I didn't know of.
I have to be honest I was rather impressed. No one told him to make this, or how to do it. On the right you see the space station control center-with a window to see out to the rocket launching. Not sure if that's exactly how it looks in real life, but Charger thinks it should.
To encourage his interest, I picked up a nice stack of books at the library this week. He seemed very interested, but has yet to start reading them. He has been more interested in building instead. So, we may end up reading a few of these together this coming week.
Mustang turned her free days to reading American Girl books. I'm always pleased at the history she learns from reading them. These were her picks for the week.
We did get some math in. I thought I'd show you this photo just in case you have a kid that just doesn't do well with the Montessori layouts. If you have the strip board, you know that all the little sticks are supposed to come out of the boxes and layout next to it. He refuses to take them out of the boxes and say that it's too much work-he will just take out the one he wants wen he needs it. You also know that the idea is to put the rug UNDER the work-not wadded up next to them. But, he got a rug, right? LOL!! Good news is that he completed his subtraction problems and got them correct.
Mustang used the gold beads for a review of various math problems.
We continued reading Leprechaun in Late Winter (Magic Treehouse) and read about Franklin Pierce, but pretty much this was our week. I hope to get back on track this next week and hopefully spend 4 days doing school. But, overall, I am quite pleased with the learning that went on this week.
I hope your week went well, too.
Thanks for stopping by!
God Bless,
Lisa
Things we used this week (Amazon widget contains affiliate links).
