I was going to do this every week but well life seems to keep happening. There are a lot of things going on right now and blogging has been the last priority on my mind. I won't go into details- none of it particularly bad just been stressed and tired.
Last weekend we took the kids to Fort Loudon- a British fort from the French and Indian War. They were having a garrison weekend with re-enactors on hand. It was not very busy and was so awesome to see the "Redcoats" and Cherokee at the fort. They shot off cannons and muskets. Daniel was in heaven. Then we went to Sequoyah's Birthplace Museum, it wasn't too hot but did have a few interesting things to look at.
Reading- Daniel has been reading Little Bear this week-his first chapter book. Tera has been working on Cricket in Times Square. She is such an avid reader that I am checking out books I remember from childhood and rereading them, then passing them on to her. She has read Stuart Little, Strawberry Girl, Skylark, Encyclopedia Brown and others in the last month.
Math- Last week, Daniel was introduced to the card game War in math. He taught it to Tera and they just love playing. It teaches and reinforces number recognition and greater than/less than. He also has been working on addition and I just introduced tangrams today. He has found a new fun thing about math. Tera has been reviewing higher level multiplication and equivalent fractions this week.
Science- Last week we finished our plants unit. We have grown bean seeds in glass jars and ziploc bags. We planted potato eyes which never came up. The kids also picked a flower and herb to plant. Tera planted marigold and Rosemary (because she loves the movie Ratatouille) and Daniel planted marigold and lavender. Some did not come up so we will replant those soon. We started a unit on Rocks and Minerals this week and the kids learned about sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks. We will be doing some experiments on these in the next few weeks. Tomorrow we are going to try our hand at rock candy. We are also going on a field trip at the end of the month to Tuckaleechee Caverns which is fifteen minutes away. It is an underground cave that is suppose to be really cool.
Social Studies- This week we talked about the differences between a map and a globe. We showed this on a Venn Diagram. We looked at how communication has changed over history. We continued studying Egypt- we talked about pyramids today and next week will make a sugar cube pyramid. We are also making Egyptian collars, headbands and a bracelet using a template I found online. They colored the Egyptian flag as well. They reviewed the difference between goods and services/producers and consumers.
Arts- We started our study of Mary Cassett an American Impressionist Artist. We read poetry every week and also review our current composers. We are studying Aaron Copeland and John Philip Sousa. I also started teaching the kids to play the recorder this week. They were almost begging to learn how.
Bible- Our verse comes from Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord, always! Again I will say rejoice! This is a verse that we truly need to remember. Our Bible reading is in Exodus- the story of Moses since we are studying Egypt right now.
Read A Louds- We are always reading through a BoxCar Children book. Tera and Daniel cannot get enough of those books. We finished the Houseboat Mystery and started the Caboose Mystery this week. We finished Wind in the Willows a couple of weeks ago and started the Chronicles of Narnia series. The Magician's Nephew is done and we are halfway through The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe.
Well, that's it for now. I hope it's not a month before I blog again.
Kathy if you are reading this Tera wrote you a letter but we haven't gotten it in the mail yet. She sure enjoys being a penpal.
