Homeschool Week in Review

With all the hubbub of Holy Week and Easter, and then the gorgeous weather we've been experiencing here in the foothills,  I have neglected the blog. I didn't post what we did last week, so this post will be sort of highlights from the last two weeks.

It was quite timely that our studies in Little Hands for His Glory lined up nicely with what we studied about Christ's death and resurrection in the A Sense of the Resurrection series.

Gabby learned about how the sky went dark when Jesus died, she drew this picture of things in shadow and things full color in the sunlight:

She's very proud of finally being able to draw a star well

We also did an art project that depicted the scars in Jesus' hands after reading about doubting Thomas.  Gabby dipped her hand in brown paint, made a handprint on one side of paper then folded the paper over to transfer the print to the other side.  Then she used a Q-tip to make the scars.

We also discussed how Jesus told the disciples when He appeared to them after His resurrection to go out and preach the Good News to all nations and to baptize all the new believers.  After using a globe to locate Jerusalem and North Carolina to get a visual of just how much ground would need to be covered to spread the news to people where we live from where Jesus ascended, I used Wondermaps (read my review of that here) to print out a map of Israel and North Carolina and had Gabby circle both Jerusalem and the town we live in on them.

When we read about the Holy Spirit entering the disciples during Pentecost, Gabby made her own flame collage.  Here she is holding her flame above her head:

We've been enjoying The Adventures of Grandfather Frog by Thornton Burgess during our storytime.  Gabby loves this series of animal stories and reading of all the mischief they get themselves into in the Green Meadow and nearby places.   After reading of how Grandfather Frog avoided being dinner for two hungry birds by patiently waiting and playing a trick on them, we talked about the things that Gabby believed she was good at doing.  She (of course!) chose ballet and she said that she was good at helping me cook as well (she definitely IS a great little sou chef!).

The ribbon is like a winner's ribbon

In math, we've moved away from place value and we've been reviewing number words.  Her favorite activity was when I drew five circles on a piece of construction paper with various numbers in the centers.

Then I had her match some number word flashcards to the correct circles.

 

Once she'd completed that, she glued the corresponding number of dried beans around the circle to make the petals to a flower. 

 

Hands down, the most memorable event of the last few weeks was this simple science experiment.  After reading and discussing Jesus' ascension(he ROSE to Heaven), I placed a small handful of raisins in a glass of water.  Next, I added some white vinegar and some baking soda in equal amounts to the water and had Gabby mix it up.

She was a little impatient when I asked her to wait and watch the glass carefully for a few minutes.  At one point, she exclaimed, "But it's only making little air bubbles!  That's not exciting!"

THEN the raisins slowly started to rise up to the top of the water and her eyes got wide and bright.  She watched that glass for nearly twenty minutes, gasping and commenting every.single.time. a raisin bobbed up and then floated down.

She told Daddy all about it the next day.  Can we say success? 

Moving on to Aron who has still been moseying along in his letter of the week/animal themes.  We've now complete "K" and "L."

Here's our "Kissing K"

Yes, the red felt is supposed to be in the shape of lips, but let's just say that I'm apparently not very adept at cutting simple intricate shapes out of that stuff.

We learned about kittens and kangaroos that week.

Our craft was to make a "Katie Kangaroo" using paper plates, scotch tape, and some markers.  He thought it was so neat that we made a little joey to go inside the mama kangaroo's pocket. 

 A great book to read for this unit would be, Katy No Pocket.

We also reviewed some basic counting and numbers by having Aron set up a tea party complete with place settings for his stuffed animal friends.

Many of the math concepts we are working on are review for him, but he has so much fun and he's only four, so I'm not in a hurry to get him jumping into a full on math curriculum just yet.  We've been going over the differences between "big" and "little," so I had him go on a scavenger hunt around the house to find both big and little items.

Here are his little finds( he borrowed the Cheerio from Lydia's snack bowl)

And here is what he brought back for BIG

For the letter "L," we learned about lizards and lions.

Aron coloring a picture of a lizard whilst wearing his superhero cape

And while dressed as Larryboy(isn't that hat fantastic?), he constructed this lion from a toilet paper tube and construction paper.

wearing his cape again, complete with toothpaste stain

Roar!

And finally, to add to our ABC and 123 notebook, we made a "Lovely Lacy L" using bits of some ribbon that I had lying around.

We've reached the midway point in our regular curriculums (yay!), so I decided that we were going to take a break from them for the next four weeks and do a unit study on gardens that I purchased on sale from Unit Studies by Amanda Bennett. It is very timely as we have just started planning to begin planting in our garden in the next week or so. I've been collecting ideas to add on from all over the internet and off of Pinterest for the last few days.  The kids are excited to be able to spend a few weeks working on something together and I'm excited to see how much we can learn while we grow our own food.

What are you learning?

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