Friday, August 9, 2013

Week 2 ~ And So It Begins

Time flies when the learning is fun! This second week of school flew by. We are all just loving our new learning environment. Little Red Riding Hood and Tom Sawyer really enjoy each other's company during lessons, and Goldilocks is loving the peace and quiet  in her room. She also loves the small TV/Video player being dragged into her room for educational videos a few times a week. Ha!

What Goldilocks Did Alone This Week ~
  • Read the Magic Tree House book, Thanksgiving on Thursday
  • Filled out a book report template
  • Wrote a book report draft and then final book report
  • Completed many language arts work book pages
  • Attended math tutoring
  • Completed math assignments each day
  • Watched videos on Rosa Parks and Magic School Bus dinosaurs
  • Worked on a 200 piece puzzle
  • Did the first Baroque Squilt Lesson
  • Did eight lessons in Draw Write Now book 2
What Little Red Riding Hood and Tom Sawyer Did This Week ~ 
  • Did three lessons in Teaching Textbooks 
  • Did Xtramath.org everyday
  • Did two Lessons (18 pages) in Explode the Code (Little Red)
  • Studied how to write a really good topic sentence
  • Finished Life of Fred book, Edgewood
  • Started Life of Fred book, Farming
  • Did a unit study on skyscrapers using A Kaleidoscope Kids Book Skyscrapers ~ this included building with Wedgits; building a cardboard city; learning about city planning; and learning about building materials, structural strength, what an architect does, and much more.
  • Continued learning about the Wright brothers and read a Landmark book about them. Warning~ if you read this book with your children, they will become mad inventors and drag every piece of metal and wood scraps you have into the yard for their laboratory! LOL
  • Squilt lesson 1 ~ They loved it!
  • Started exploring wood carving
  • Burned our freshly built city down and talked about fire safety, how fires spread, and why cities are safer now than they were during the time of the Chicago Fire and Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
  • Watched the movie, From Time to Time ~ about a boy during WWII who is able to talk to his ancestors from the 1800's and saves the family home when he finds lost treasure.




Out and About ~  We had two play dates this week. We also spent a lovely afternoon at the pool and another at the roller skating rink. It was the first time at a roller skating rink for Tom Sawyer and Goldilocks, and they spent lots of time trying not to break their necks. Tom Sawyer and Little Red Riding Hood got the hang of it, but poor Goldilocks came home with an unfair amount of bruises. I couldn't get a single picture of Goldilocks to come out. She was embarrassed by my photo taking anyway. They can't wait to go back. Tom Sawyer also had physical therapy.



Lastly ~ The kids really wanted to earn some extra money and we had a yucky job that required little bodies. It was a perfect match. The kids cleaned out our crawl space (which is under about one-third of our house). It was filled with metal, wood and other building materials from the 1950's. They were really brave and got it done in two hours. They each earned $10 plus a trip to the pool (using the money the metal brought us at the scrapyard). I was proud of them for sticking with it and doing a good job. Goldilocks is grimacing in this photo because she didn't want to wear her dust mask, and her Daddy said she had to.

I am joining ~
Homegrown Learners

Blessings, Dawn

7 comments:

  1. That was an awesome and busy week. I'm definitely going to get Firecracker the Skyscraper book. He loves those Kaleidoscope kids books.

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  2. The rollerskating looks like fun! I'm impressed you got any pictures to turn out.

    We did that same marshmallow activity last year when studying earthquake architecture. It was fun!

    The face your daughter is making during the crawl space cleaning is priceless. Good for them to stick it out and earn the extra money.

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  3. It sounds like you've found an arrangement that's working for all of you - I'm so pleased for you. I can imagine Goldilocks feels very grown up and responsible, learning in her peaceful room :-)
    We love marshmallow and cocktail stick building too.

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  4. You are off to an amazing start this year! I can't believe all that was accomplished in one week!
    Love the look on that face under the crawl space!

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  5. What a wonderful week!! My kids love to roller skate. I'm so glad your new plan is working well for you. That is really wonderful!

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  6. It looks like such a great and productive week. We have just bought in our first wedgits and the children all love them. I like the green building boards you have. Did you buy those in separately- we don't seem to have any of those in our set?

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  7. Not sure if you want to do this, but Uprising is a great book about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. We read it with our teen girls book club. May want to preread for content.

    Thanks for the movie rec. We are studying the world wars and I'm going to put this on my list.

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