Weekly Wrap Up-A Week of Perfect Timing

When I started writing this post I didn't know what to title it.  As I went through our week I realized we had some perfect timing. 
Some highlights for the week...
Our week started off with a much needed nature walk.  It always is relaxing and therapeutic to spend time in nature and appreciate His creation. 
I might be behind the times on this one but wanted to share a link I found.  It is an online field guide for identifying wildlife- enature.com .  Which is going to be useful to us being new to these parts.  We found this lizard sunbathing on some rocks in our front yard.  This website was great and user friendly.

the desert spiny lizard

Art this week, we stepped away from the picture study.  My kids love picture studies and are learning a lot about art and the artists. However, I chose to do a "lesson" from Incredible Art Lessons.  The objective of the lesson was to create a design by reversing positive and negative space. They used leaves that we collected from our nature walk to develop the designs.

This week in History we finished A History of US Book 3 From Colonies to Country.  Some

topics studied this week: the Constitutional Convention, Constitution, the Northwest Ordinance, and the Bill of Rights.  Perfect timing #1- learning about the forming of our government during election week.  We ended it with the question"Will you preserve America's democracy?".  Which lead us into thought and discussion about voting and some current events.     

Anywho, what an amazing time period!  We are loving this series.  Mrs. Hakim writes like she is sitting in the room having a conversation with you.  Anything that grabs their interest(and mine-he,he) and provoke's thought get's a thumbs up in my book.  The kids also worked on memorizing the Preamble to the Constitution, finished up their timelines(for this period 1735-1791), maps, etc.  I wanted to share a couple of links  The Constitution Preamble Song- Schoolhouse Rock video

Ratification of the Constitution- video accompanied by text

The Bill of Rights- a slide show naration



Sweet Girl's History notebook

Perfect timing #2-Sweet Girl  read some poems about autumn this week by Robert Frost.  She finished Traitor: The Case of Benedict Arnold this week for her independent history reading.  In Literature she began reading A Gathering of Days: A New Enland Girl's Journal, 1830-32 by: Joan W. Blos.  She also read the tale of Rip Van Winkle. 

Which leads me to her writing assignment.  It was to write two epitaph's for Rip Van Winkle.  One that might have been on his gravestone before he fell asleep for 20 yrs, and one that may have been written after his actual death.  Perfect timing #3-We set out for Silly Guy's dry seed hunt project at Fort Churchill.  At the fort they had a cemetary where she was able to read some epitaph's that were on the tombstone's there. 

She had a quiet week in Apologia General Science.  Basically reading and finishing up Module 3 with studying and taking the test. 

On to Silly Guy, this week in Science(Christian Kids Explore Biology) he continued learning about plants.  His lessons were focused on plant reproduction and fruits/vegetables.  Along with reading he had an experiment and a project.  His experiment was to dissect fruits and vegetables and then classify them first into either a fruit or vegetable.  Then into different groups:  dry, juicy, pomes or drupes/stone fruits.  The best part of this experiment was all of the taste testing going on by both Silly Guy and Little Man.  It was funny.  It was as if they had never tasted a fruit or a vegetable before.  Little Man ,who loves Science, was chiming in,"Ohh, it has seeds...Yup, it's a fruit!" 

Big knife but under my supervision!! Kids don't try this at home!!

Silly Guy's Science notebook

Then they(the boys) had a project- a dry seed hunt.  We pulled into the parking lot at Fort Churchill.  Which brings me to perfect timing #4- I almost didn't park in this lot and we wouldn't have seen these trees otherwise.  Little Man got out of the van, pointed up to the tree and shouted..."Seeds!!"  

We really didn't know what kinds of seeds we would be finding in the desert. Much to our surprise we did find some.  It was a beautiful place to go on a seed hunt too!!  Silly Guy added his findings to his Science notebook.   

Silly Guy's Science notebook

 Although he didn't want to leave, Little Man couldn't wait to make a collage with his findings. 

Silly Guy finished Sign of the Beaver at the start of the week for his Literature study.  Now he is reading Lewis and Clark Expedition by Richard L Newberger. For his independent History reading he read and finished If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution. 

I added Easy Grammar to his Language Arts curriculum last week.  I felt he needed more grammar practice.  The lessons are short, sweet and to the point.  It's great for him and he's picking it up(getting 100%'s ).  Now if I can get him to use what he learns in his writing!! In writing he had a few journaling assignments.  He loved this assignment!! He is my journalist.  He carries his journal with him everywhere; the house, outside, the car, to bed, to the store, etc. Always writing about something:)

Math went a little better this week.  Previously, I was having him complete his Math assignments in the school room/office.  Well, I decided I would move him into the kitchen. He said he likes having me in the same room with him for Math.  So that's what we did;)

  Always growing and learning what works best for them. 

 This week a milestone was reached in our house. I was in the shower and a little boy comes into the bathroom with a shirt on his head..."Mom, I am going to get dressed." I replied,"Okay honey.I'll be out in a few minutes to help you." "No mom. I am going to do it all by myself." I giggled as I peeked out of the shower door watching him walk away. A few minutes later that same not so little boy walked back in completley dressed from head to foot. He had picked out his clothes and got dressed all by himself. He knew how proud we all were and asked me to get the camera. This is his pose-he, he. We were so proud of him(holding back the tears)!!

such a proud big boy

Along with learning by his big brother and sister side, Little Man worked on writing some of his letters and numbers.  He is very interested in learning how to read.  He is pointing to words on the page and asking me,"What does that say?"  Also if a book has sight words listed he will ask me too. At bedtime after we read some books he will then  tell me a story of his own.  I can not express in words how much this excites me!!!

Ruins at Fort Churchill-more about the fort later:)

It was a great week where lesson plans worked with perfect timing!
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