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Sunday, March 25, 2012

Sunday Morning Art Lessons

Week 2 of Sunday Morning Art Lessons: Artists Imagine
J opened the lesson by talking about how artists use their imagination to create art: they begin with ideas and gather information for their artwork. We then went on a walk around the neighborhood to gather some inspiration. We made some sketches of what we saw in our imagination when we looked at something ordinary in our world. When we got back we talked about the painter Marc Chagall (specifically in reference to two of his works: The Birthday & I and the Village) and how he used his imagination to show ordinary things in his life. Then, using our ideas from our sketches, we drew a picture of something we saw and used our imagination to show it in a different way. After our drawing was done we filled it in with watercolor pencils and then the fun really began! Using water and brushes we were able to blend our colors together to make a masterpiece!

learning about how artists use their imaginations
off on the walk
T sketching a flowering bush -
in his imagination the flowers were huge teeth
J talking to M about texture on the bark of a tree
my artwork for the day
T doing some more sketching
J talking about the reflections on water -
mainly the clouds/sky and trees
sketching away

T hanging out in the gazebo,
sketching a bit more before returning home
Marc Chagall - The Birthday
Marc Chagall - I and the Village
watercolor color wheel 
watercolor pencils
sketching out our final drawings
watercolor pencil time
J's version of the spray from the water fountain
M's imagination showed a whole beech seen at the pond

M's finished masterpiece -
(T's attention span was shot after only a few minutes back,
he did a bit of coloring/painting and then was DONE)

The Nile River

(Our Saturday Project got pushed back to Sunday afternoon due to the previous days' sleep over.) We made a Nile River terrarium! So much fun. Using an aluminum foil pan we filled it will potting soil, dug out the Nile River, lined the river bed with foil (so the water would stay contained), planted grass seed along the banks, and then watched as the Nile "flooded" and watered our seeds. Hopefully in a few weeks we'll have some nice green grass growing in there!

filling the pan up with dirt

lining the river with foil
gravel/rocks to help keep the foil on the bottom of the pan
(plus some  extra for decoration)
planting the grass seed
flooding the Nile

King Pins

Saturday M had one of her old classmates spend the night. We spent a few hours at King Pins before dinner, movie and bedtime. And, man, was I super rusty at my bowling skills. J beat me! Don't think that's ever happened before. Nevertheless, everyone seemed to have had a great time. And the sleepover is over so M can stop asking for one for a while at least. (Seriously, it's going to be a while before I say yes to something like that again. WOW.)

T used the ramp to help roll his ball -
super cute to watch him bowl


M's turn

Field Trip: Jump Around

By Thursday I was still not feeling so great, but the kids were going stir crazy. We had to get out! We spent the afternoon at Gaga's: low-key enough for me, but plenty of running (and jumping) around for the kids. 




Science Experiment - Reflectors

Our science experiment this week was on reflectors. We used two toilet paper tubes - we covered one end of the tubes with aluminum foil and the other with black construction paper. Then we took the covered tubes and a flashlight and went into a dark room. We shinned the flashlight into each of the tubes to see which one would shine. (Hint: it was the one with the foil.) We learned that the reason the tube with foil shined is because the foil reflects light, and that cat's eyes also reflect light which makes them appear to glow in the dark. 

Kick Back

Wednesday morning/afternoon was rough for me. Thankfully one of the perks of homeschooling is that we can literally "do" school anywhere. So, we camped out in the family room for a good part of the day, instead of going down to the classroom. We did everything we could on the couch and when needed spread out on the floor. 

T working on math
M working on writing

Field Trip: Bonnie & Clyde

I really want a pet chicken. Tuesday afternoon we got the chance to meet our friends' chickens - Bonnie and Clyde. They were so cute. Did not help at all with the wanting to own one as a pet. Not sure J is on board with that plan though. 




Lapbooking Through World History

We love lapbooks in this house! They are fun to put together and they provide an excellent way to quickly look back over important information from things we've studied. Monday afternoon we worked on our world history lapbook.

Muffin Tin Lunches

Monday's Lunch

Friday's Lunch

Weekly Wrap-Up

Week 3 (March 19-23) is a wrap. It seemed that everyone was a little off this week. Monday T wasn't feeling so well, Tuesday it was M's turn, and by Wednesday & Thursday I was feeling it. We were all back to normal by Friday, thankfully, but it was a long week. Here's what we did:


M:
Reading - Listen Up! Alexander Graham Bell's Talking Machine, Eat My Dust! Henry Ford's First Race, Lewis and Clark: A Prairie Dog for the President, Dogerella & Francis Scott Key's Star-Spangled Banner (The book about Alexander Graham Bell was her favorite this week.)
Reading Comprehension - She worked on identifying story elements in the story Best Friends, and developing vocabulary in the story Redwood Trees
* Grammar - Lessons 7-9 (She learned about pronouns and memorized a list of the most commonly used. She also reviewed common/proper nouns, plurals and on Friday she started a poem memorization of The Land of Nod.)
Spelling - Steps 8-13 (She's completely got down segmentation of words, and it has helped so much this week with her spelling in other areas of work.)
Phonics - Lessons 11-13 (She finished the book this week and also took the post-test. The next book was delivered on Thursday, and she was ready to jump right into it. However, upon completion of the post-test I noticed that she still got a bit hung up on vowel digraphs, so we are going to spend the upcoming week reviewing those before moving on to the next book. Also, I am seriously going to limit the amount of pages per lesson she can do in one day - down from an entire lesson (10+ pages) to 2 pages a day - that way each lesson is stretched out over a week giving us more time to focus on the new phonograms/digraphs that she is supposed to be learning. I'm pretty sure that's why she had some trouble with the digraphs on the post-test, she just rushed though the lessons to quickly for anything to really stick with her. She was just so excited, and I was thrilled that she actually wanted to work on phonics that I let her go ahead and threw out my previous plans. Should have known better. Oh well, a week of review and then she should be more than ready to move on.)
Writing - Lesson 3 (She worked on action verbs and using strong verbs in her writing)
Copywork - Parts 2 & 3 of Young Night Thought
Geography - Week 3 (Parts of a Map)
Math - Lessons 11-18 & a quiz (Pretty bummed out that Life of Fred has not arrived yet. Hopefully by the beginning of this upcoming week.)
* Handwriting - Letters g, h, and t

T:
Math - Lessons 13 - 20 (writing numbers up to 9, counting up to 20, counting pennies, along with review of facts already learned)
Reading - Endings -ob, -og, -ug, -un & -ut and lots and lots of reading (T really has CVC words pretty down pat. He's ready to start adding in some beginning blend sounds, but we're taking our time and only doing a lesson a day so that he doesn't get too overwhelmed. We should be done with book 2 in about another 7-8 days and then we'll move right into the first grade workbook 1.)
Writing (Handwriting Without Tears) - I added in Handwriting Without Tears this week (The book only arrived on Thursday morning, so we only got two lessons in this week. This will take the place of a "formal" writing program with him for now - between writing he does in science/history/phonics it's more than enough.)
* Phonics (Explode the Code Book 1) - I had been planning to hold off and wait to introduce ETC until this fall because there is quite a lot of writing involved, but he's ready for the material now, so we'll just do some of the pages orally. This also came on Thursday, and he has completed the first 4 pages so far.
* Language Arts (Spectrum Language Arts K) - Also a workbook I had planned on waiting until the fall to start, but he found it and wanted to start. It's a very easy introduction to language arts, so really at this point it's more like busy work (ex. circle the capital letters, cross out the lower case letters, match the upper case letter to the lower case letter etc.) but he loves it. (Eventually it does move into more formal language arts and introduces nouns and verbs, but that's not for weeks and weeks.)

Both:
Readings - Chapters 12-16 of Charlotte's Web (We made it to the fair) & Poetry (Holding Hands & The Field Mouse)
World History - This week we started our introduction to Ancient Egypt. We learned about Upper & Lower Egypt and the king that united both kingdoms (King Narmar); the Nile River (why it was so important to the ancient people and why the ancient Egyptians believed that it flooded every year); we also learned about some of the gods the ancient Egyptians believed in. We read selected readings from Eyewitness: Ancient Egypt, Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile, Egyptian Gods and Goddesses, and a book of Egyptian Myths (T's absolute favorite this week). We also read tales from Cuba, Puerto Rico & Mexico. From Children Just Like Me we read about Gabriel from Alaska, Levi from Canada, Ari from Europe and Monika from Hungary. Plus an end of the week test and work in our lapbook.
Biology - We moved onto a formal study of mammal animals this week. Specifically, lions, cheetahs and elephants. Both M & T memorized a poem about mammal characteristics, filled out pages on each animals studied for their notebooks, and started on the animals lapbook. We did a fun experiment on reflectors (like cats eyes). This week we also stated our animal study project. For the next 17 weeks we will be studying an animal in its habitat to see the changes it goes through and write about those changes. M picked ladybugs, and T picked an ant farm. (I'm so thankful that neither picked frogs.) I ordered the kits on Monday, but they still have yet to arrive - hopefully soon. M/T also took an end of week test.
US History - This is the area that suffered this week due to our not feeling so well. We finished up our study on Christopher Columbus and read Exploration and Conquest: The Americas After Columbus: 1500-1620, but that's as far as we got this week. We were also scheduled to read/learn about Pounce de Leon and then of course our state study (New Jersey). We'll catch-up with what we missed on Monday morning.

Picture post of our week to follow...

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Sunday Morning Art Lessons

Art Teacher J started his first lesson today! He is using Artistic Pursuits K-3 Book 1 (love this curriculum!). For the next 10 weeks they will be talking about "What Artists Do". Today M/T learned that artists compose. They looked at Pieter De Hooch's painting The Courtyard of a House in Delft, 1658. Plus other paintings that Teacher J used from his college art book to show composition. (It helps to have an art major husband!) And then he asked the kids to think of something that happened yesterday; once they had a specific idea they talked about what was involved in that "scene" and then drew all the elements. Yesterday we were at my in-laws for a St. Patrick's Day dinner, so M choose to draw a scene from dinner & T choose to sketch a scene from when he played outside.

looking at paintings from daddy's college text book
the beginning stages of the sketching process
hard at work

Habitat Lapbooks

This week in science we learned all about habitats. After learning about a specific habitat M/T created a mini-book to place inside of their habitat lapbooks. This is what the finished product looked like after completion on Friday:

the covers of M/Ts lapbooks
inside T's lapbook
4 mini-books of all the habitats we studied:
forest, grassland, desert & arctic
inside M's lapbook
each mini-book has 4 parts to it:
cover, location, characteristics & animals that live there
(this is the location page in M's forest book)
characteristics page in M's forest book
and the animals page in M's forest book