Last Week

Week beginning February 7, 2010

Language Arts and Foreign Languages:
*I read aloud a different classic fairy tale each night (including The Red Shoes, Little Match Girl, and The Emperor's New Clothes) and then we discussed the stories. Also, Dad read East of the Sun, West of the Moon and Puss In Boots.
*I read Brown Bear, Brown Bear each night for the boys, and also the Spanish translation, Oso Pardo, Oso Pardo, for everyone.
*We all practiced fingerspelling the ASL alphabet each night.
*Sarah and Mia read Eat Your Peas, Louise (Guided Reading Level E/DRA Level 6-8) aloud, twice each
*Sarah and Mia read The Mighty Little Lion Hunter (a "We Both Read" level 1 book) aloud, twice each.
*Sarah copied sentences from a phonics reader that is slightly above her current reading level (Animal Adventures, which is Theme 6 in the Houghton Mifflin Phonics Library) as well as from a book that is in Spanish (Hablo Espanol con Perico)
*Mia worked on starfall.com doing the Valentine "Connecting Words" (Reading/sentence creation using phrases), "Word Hunt" (finding the correct word to finish the sentence), and "Zac the Rat" (phonics based story using short A)
*Adam copied an "A."
*Adam matched Spanish shape words to the matching shape on the literacycenter.net Early Childhood Spanish page
*Aaden repeated numbers in Spanish up to ten, and tried to copy the ASL fingerspelling alphabet.

Math:
*Sarah and Mia learned a little about banking and were introduced to budgeting.
*Sarah practiced counting by twos and fives to 100.
*Sarah practiced telling time.
*Mia worked on counting to 100 (first on starfall.com and then with me) and on basic addition.
*Adam began to show interest in counting everything he saw.

Physical Education:
*Sarah, Mia, and Adam went to gymnastics classes on Thursday, and at home practiced: forward rolls, forward rolls with straddle, forward rolls with pike, cartwheels, bridges, handstands, tuck jumps and straddle jumps. (Aaden participated in this.) [The children were dissuaded from rigging up a makeshift balance beam in the house, so they got no practice in that area.]

Social Studies:
*Sarah and Mia and I read about different climates around the world (desert, tropical, temperate, etc.) and discussed living in those areas.
*We briefly reviewed continents, and talked about the Equator and Poles.
*We looked at a series of photographs of people living, working, and playing in India, China, Vietnam, Laos, Tibet, Pakistan, Cambodia, Peru, and Ghana, and discussed the photos.
*Sarah and Mia learned about desert living.
*Sarah and Mia learned a bit about gender roles in the past.

Science:
*Sarah and Mia investigated batteries online, to find out how they work.
*Sarah learned about carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores with Dad.
*Sarah, Mia, and I read about camels and their adaptations to their climate.
*We discussed climates (see Social Studies above) - this includes weather, animals and plants, and orbit/tilt of the earth.
*Mia learned about decomposition and decay.

Art:
*Sarah and Mia have been making Valentines and related crafts, using the book Valentine's Day: Things to Make and Do.
*Adam made a pasta necklace.
*Sarah has been working on drawing people without using solid outlines.
*Both girls are working on improving their mermaid drawings, and have been doing a lot of telling elaborate mermaid stories with drawings.
*Sarah sketched what she saw going on around her, such as Mia and Adam playing on the couch, or Mia twirling a cloth above her head.
*Adam has begun to say "black" when he means black, instead of "brown" which was covering both colors.

Religion:
*Sarah and I discussed some Muslim and Hindu beliefs, as well as some cultures' beliefs about spirits and protections/wards like bells on a baby's cap, etc.
*In RE at the beginning of the week, Mia's class did the second half of lesson 15, My Family: All Kinds of Families. The book read was Heather Has Two Mommies. Sarah was in Children's Chapel with the older children, and they discussed treating people kindly. Afterward, they all made Valentine's together in the nursery with a few other children while the parents were in a meeting.


We missed our homeschool get-togethers last week, but Sarah, of course, has spent a few afternoons playing with her neighborhood friends when they get home from school. We're looking forward to seeing our hs friends a couple times this coming week, starting with an After Valentine's Valentine's party tomorrow afternoon, homeschool playgroup on Thursday, and the last gymnastics class of this session on Thursday.