'12/13 Week 33 Day 2

Today was the big day we started our 'very serious' book reading/analyzing. I have noticed that book after book our Reading Comprehension time has become more and more intense and detailed while still being a lot of fun. I believe, we dissected  the first chapter of "Mr. Popper's Penguins" to the bare marrow. From my part, it took longer to prepare the night before, but with good materials at hand, it was easy. I so appreciate homeschoolshare.com for the excellent resources. Theirs is the unit study of "Mr. Popper's Penguins" I am using with Andrew (and Saara).

Truthfully, although very good, other classes paled compared to our 'penguin time'. I believe, all of us are looking forward to chapter 2 tomorrow. Oh, yes! - because I am doing a much more thorough study of the book, I am going on a much slower reading pace than the curriculum calls for. It looks like we will be reading well into the summer. But that is again one of the things that I enjoy about homeschooling - we do not have to rush through materials, but we can enjoy and bask in them as long as it takes.

Here we go! All about penguins for weeks to come now.

Andrew coloring 'new vocabulary' penguins. Each penguin has a new word from the story written on its belly and when Andrew hears the word in the story, he starts coloring. Keeps him busy while I am reading.

After reading the first chapter, we talked about the different jobs that were mentioned. We also pinned down what characters we met and when and where the story was taking place. Also, we looked up on the map the different places mentioned, plus discussed various maps and why we have many different maps.

The chapter ended with Mrs. Popper's worries about money. I printed out some play money and pictures of breakfast foods with prices. Andrew had to 'buy' breakfast things when he had lots of money and had to figure out what to buy when he had little money.

Both kids thought the last activity with money was so cool they wanted to play shop during the break time.

Saara's Eight Game: Volcanoes vs Raptors

It was a good game as long as it lasted. Parallel to watching Saara, we also observed a very menacing storm brewing on the horizon. Pretty much as soon as Saara got done batting, the game was cancelled. I thought, it was a good call. The storm did come with thunder and lightening.

'12/13 Week 33 Day 1

We finished our fun journey with the storks from "The Wheel on the School" today. Oh, it was a great book and we all were sorry to say good-bye to the folks in the village of Shora. Our consolation was that this book belongs to our personal library now and we can read it again any time we want. 

Our Science lesson today was a lot of fun. We continued with our experiments with reflection and mirrors. Today, we created endless reflections with two or more mirrors. We even tried to build our own kaleidoscope. It did not work as well as our real one. None of us could get enough of creating endless patterns of colors and the scope got handed back and forth between us for a long time.

At the end of the day, we had a fruitful art class. We talked a bit about still life and looked at some pictures and then I asked the kids to paint a still life with a flowerpot and strawberries. I thought, it would be an easy task as both of them have been copying drawings or images before very successfully. I was rather surprised when I had to direct both of them to get the right perspective on the two objects in front of them. For example, Saara wanted to paint plant leaves out of the sides of the pot. I also had to help her recognize the shape of the pot and remind her that she needs to not just trace the outlines, but also fill in the image with color. So, we worked though all the points and for their first still life, I think, they did a pretty fair job.

Language Arts. We continued learning about the possessive nouns. Today, we reviewed rules to form plural nouns and studied the difference between them and possessive nouns. I downloaded the worksheet and activity from Teachers Pay Teachers.

Andrew took his 12th test in math. Scored all the 51 points.

Science with mirrors. Andrew had a blast experimenting with and creating endless reflections.

It takes just one stick (or match) and two mirrors to make many shapes.

The children and I busy making our own kaleidoscope.

It did not quite work that well.

Our own kaleidoscope worked miracles.

Our sill life of the day.

Andrew's and Saara's second attempt to paint sill life.

Not too bad for a first time.

Saara's Seventh Game and Andrew's Sixth Game: Bulls vs. River Dogs

Saara and Andrew had a special treat this time. Their friends came to watch them play! 
When Saara's game was over and I headed over to Andrew's field, I got there just in time to watch him bat and run all the way round to the third base. I did not have my camera ready or anything to record that awesome moment. Andrew's was a close game to the end. The Dogs won by one point, but Bulls did a great job and had a good game. 

Andrew in his 'winner' third base.

'12/13 Week 32 Day 4

We started our day off outside. Saara's Bible story was about how Jesus healed a blind man. So, we headed outside and acted it out beside our driveway. Before the little play, we talked about people who can not see and how they would know the world around them. I brought along a bag with some familiar objects and asked the kids to close their eyes and guess just by touching what those objects were. 

The rest of the day went really well. So well that we were done way before our normal 'school's over' time.

Saara guessing the objects she is touching.

Andrew and a birthday candle. Some of the objects were not that easy to guess.

Saara playing the role of the blind beggar by the road.

Jesus was passing by and the beggar started shouting His name.

"What do you want me to do?" "I want to see!"

And the not-blind-any-more beggar followed Jesus praising God.

Saara practicing her subtractions and coloring. The sheet is from education.com.

Our last class was Estonian. We practiced saying E and learned some words that start with E.

The school day is over!

'12/13 Week 32 Day 3

Another good day. Dad was home, but this fact did not distract us at all. Rather helped, I think. Andrew was more focused than he had been in a few days. He enjoyed his reading and writing tasks. 
Later on, when he and Saara were out in the woods with Dad building a fence, Andrew gave Dad a long and detailed lecture on the history of Rome, starting from Romulus and Remus all the way to gladiators and aqueducts. Dad could not believe the boy could talk so much. Knowledge empowered. Not a bad thing at all, I think. :o)

'12/13 Week 32 Day 2

Our Math lesson was centered around shapes again.

We had a good start to our day and everything was going well until we had to run to town for a very urgent errand. Thankfully, we got most of our school work done before we had to leave and I had only a couple of tasks to postpone till tomorrow.

'12/13 Week 32 Day 1

Earth Day! We did our Earth Day part yesterday. Saara helped me to replant some miniature roses and Andrew was a great help planting a crape myrtle bush. For both projects we used our very own compost! All the kitchen scraps, garden left overs, other clippings and things have finally (after three years) started to yield wonderful rich compost. Although we have talked about plants turning back into soil a bit, Saara seemed to have a real 'light bulb' moment when she saw the compost soil. 

We worked hard yesterday and we worked hard today. In fact, I almost lost my almost-back voice again. That is how much reading I did. It was all good though and all of it was interesting material. 
Our LA class was probably the most intense today. We read a long portion from the "Wheel on the School" and discussed the story even longer. Also, Andrew started  a new book in his reading practice. And he got a new portion of spelling words. We finished our class with an introduction to possessive nouns. Again, I found a very good material on Teachers Pay Teachers website.

Language Arts. Both children had activities that required cutting and pasting. Saara had to group words that go together ...

... and Andrew had to group words that go together, too.

'12/13 Week 31 Day 6

Our school day just flew by. We had the most fun with the storks story again and with mirrors as we continued our studies on reflection. The kids loved learning about symmetry and completing pictures using a mirror. They could not get enough of the secret messages they could read only in the mirror. Science is fun!

In our LA class we focused on words with sh, ch, and th sounds in them.

Learning more about reflection and mirrors.

I printed out a number of secret messages for the kids to read in the mirror.

The last secret message read ...

'12/13 Week 31 Day 5

We all - children and I - are loving "The Wheel on the School" book. We started out day out with storks. I served the kids a breakfast of hard boiled eggs in a shape of a stork. I wish, I had had some olives to add a bit of black to the feathers - something I will do next time for sure.

We did not stop there. The kids made some paper storks and I hung those up in their rooms. All this launched a morning-long game of 'storks on their nests'. Andrew and Saara built two nests from pillows and blankets, added some baseballs as eggs, and sat on them hatching. Cute.

Math. Saara practicing her counting by fives.

Math. Andrew reviewing liquid volume measurements.

I printed the stork template and instructions from Krokotak