Week 6

So, it's true, I was off by a week!  Our start-of-the-year post actually captured our first week pretty well, and my posts for Weeks 1 through 4 are mislabeled, and they will stay that way as I'm not about to change them now. 


Here's Week 6 of our Happy Homeschool!


1) It's Fire Safety time!  The elementary kids spent Monday morning reading books about fire safety, completing their fire safety booklet, and drawing their escape plans.  But mostly, they practiced crawling blindly down stairs and out doors, and unlocking, opening, and crawling out windows.  The tot played outdoors with waterbeads, tiny diggers and LEGO boats. 

2) Tuesday is Science day for the elementary kids!  We block science into one day per week so we can really dig deep and focus on topics.  The first few weeks of school were spent studying Plants in depth, and the kids got to choose their next science topic by browsing the Science section of the children's library.  They picked Gems, Rocks, and Minerals.  We had so much fun with this!  We've amassed a giant collection of rocks and gemstones over the years from various gem-mining places and hauled them out for magnifying-glass inspection along with a half-dozen good library books and our dear homeschool friend, YouTube.  Tuesday is also kinder kid's OT social group at the library (this means we can generally get our books back on time now since we go weekly!).  Usually the tot plays with the toys and the 3rd grader reads, but this week we brought a new multiplication fact game that she and I played at the table while kinder kid was in OT. 

Multiplication Fact game

Storytime during OT was about Firefighters with a visit from a firetruck

Inspecting rocks

Imitating the creation of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks using dark chocolate chips and gummy starburst candies.  Edible fun!

Tuesday night we took a walk to a local open park to run around after dinner, and then realized that the cool sound we heard was the marching band practicing on the field across the street!  We walked over to check them out and see our own favorite Band Nerd.

3)  Wednesday the 9th and 6th grader have history and geography together, and it often involves smaller children climbing all over the place and the books and me.  They are currently mapping Africa, learning about the various cultures, climates, and variety of people within the continent as well as researching current events.  Wednesday afternoon is also our regular Field Trip Day, which we are doing a heck of a lot better on this year than in previous years.  There are so many free or low-cost places nearby to see and experience that it would be a shame to be homeschooling and not head out and explore!  We visited the Peter Wentz Farmstead and attended a program built for younger children to experience an hour of life on the farm in 1770.  The elementary kids carried firewood, hauled water, fed the chickens and "made" their bed out of straw.  We also had an unplanned field trip to Urgent Care when kinder kid accidentally tried to use the hot muffler of the just-used push-behind leaf blower to climb into the bike trailer.  Later that night, after he was medicated and wrapped up with raw honey, we attended our town's big Fire Prevention night with the younger 3 kids while the older 2 attended the school's Powderpuff football game as part of Homecoming week.  They love being homeschooled, but connected to the school with these community and student events. 
     

Crowd control during big kid history

Peter Wentz Farmstead field trip

2nd degree burn.  The poor guy hopped and yelped and screamed for a good hour.

Fire Trucks!

4)  Thursday was back to normal, math, language arts.  We are reading Stuart Little together as our read-aloud.  Kinder kid is breezing through BOB books and loving the fact that he can read some real words.  3rd grader is working on reading comprehension, grammar, and phonics from various sources.  Kinder kid had his TheraPlay appointment, which is normally on Fridays.  We have no pictures, it was just that kind of regular day.   They relaxed with PBS in the afternoon for a bit to counter our busy-ness from the previous day.  

5)  Friday we were still talking about rocks and gems, and Friday is normally our day for Art, then Health and Physiology, so we found a way to combine our science unit with Art, and discussed verbally some health issues while we worked.  Bam!  Love when it works out so smoothly.  We took shoebox tops and made dioramas (anyone else used to LOVE those things in school??) to represent some of the ways on the Earth that the 3 types of rocks could be made.  We then sorted some of our smaller rocks into the 3 types and glued them to where they might be found.  They hot-glued balled-up paper to make volcanoes (igneous), painted them brown, then cut out construction paper to be a river (sedimentary) and they didn't really have an easy way to show hot magma beneath the Earth to form the metamorphic rocks, but they glued them nearby to the volcano in the assumption that a pocket of magma could be there.  I'd say Art was highly successful this week!  

Nursing that wrapped hand while painting

In progress

Finished projects