Mummies and Pyramids

Colin spent most of the week studying Egyptian mummies and pyramids. We read many books together and I gave him some books to read on his own about them. He watched Mummies Made in Egypt (Reading Rainbow). We talked alot about the process of making a mummy. We made a mummy with an apple. We left another piece of apple out without mummifying it and compared them a week later. We made our own pyramid with Legos. I think this was Colin's favorite part.

 

We also spent some time reading and learning about the muscular system for our human body study.

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World

We continued our apple study this week. We learned about seasons and how the apple tree changes during each season. We also talked about the different parts of an apple. We used picture cards to match the mode of transportation to the place the girl traveled to the item she got there. I cut open an apple so the kids could see the star shape on the inside. They guessed how many seeds would be in the apple and then we counted them. We finished up the week by studying Johnny Appleseed. We read books and went to a library program called Happy Birthday, Johnny Appleseed.

I decided to have Caleigh start making a notebook for all the things she's studying. This is our first attempt at lapbooking/notebooking.







Here it is with the apple tree she painted lifted so you can see the rest of the page.





This picture is with some of the flaps open.





The girls helped me make apple dumplings one day and an apple cake a few days later. They love to help cook. I forgot to get any pictures of them making the cake.

Visit to the Apple Orchard

Today we went to an apple orchard. The kids had so much fun picking apples and ended up with a huge bag. They also had an observation bee hive so they looked at that and we discussed how bees help apples.

Apples, Hieroglyphs, and Skeletons

The girls started studying apples this week. Caleigh had a stomach virus for the last couple days so we didn't get as much done as I had planned. We're focusing on "How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World" by Marjorie Priceman. We read that book each day and do an activity. We found all the places she visited to find her ingredients on our globe, talked about repetition, humor, and went over some vocabulary words from the book. In the story, the girl brings the chicken along with her instead of carrying eggs. We talked about why she would do that and the girls carried around their own eggs to see how long before they broke. Molly broke her egg in 4 minutes. Caleigh carried her egg around for 2 hours before she got tired of doing it. We read a book called "All in One Cookie", which also talks about where the ingredients come from. Then we made chocolate chip cookies together and used her unbroken egg for that. A few other books we enjoyed were: "Henry's World Tour", "3 in 1: A Picture of God", and "Ten Apples Up on Top". Caleigh even sounded out some of "Ten Apples Up on Top" by herself. We finished introducing the first 26 phonograms this week and she's doing really well remembering most of the sounds for each letter even though she was a little confused at first since she's only heard one sound for each letter before. The program we're using, Spell to Write and Read, teaches all the sounds of each letter first.

 

Colin is doing almost all of his writing in cursive now. He's still working on multiplication tables and is up to the 7s now. We studied the first writing in history. He learned about hieroglyphics and cuneiform and wrote his name in each. He made his own cuneiform tablet from clay and carved his name into it. Unfortunately, he and Caleigh were looking at it and somehow broke it before I got the picture.

He also studied the skeletal system. We read various books about the skeleton, skull, and joints. The girls seemed interested in this and listened in quite a bit. They all liked listening to the CD of Dem Bones. Chad helped Colin make a skeleton model that we hung in our school/playroom.    

 

We had gymnastics class this week. Caleigh didn't feel well enough to participate the whole time. Molly had a lot of fun and was able to walk all the way across the balance beam by herself. Colin just loves it. He wants to do it every week instead of every other week like we're doing now. I don't think the girls and I can handle that right now, but we might have to look into doing something if he doesn't lose interest.

Week 3 Review

Last week, we all learned about the five senses. We made popcorn while talking about how we can use all the senses with it. We also did taste tests for sweet (sugar), salty (salt), bitter (unsweetened cocoa), and sour (lemon juice). Of course, all of them liked the sweet and sour. We did a touch and feel game with each of them describing the things they felt. Colin learned about the parts of the eye and ear and how each of them work.

Colin studied Egyptians, the Nile River, and the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt.

I finished introducing all the cursive letters to Colin. He really likes it and wants to write in cursive all the time now. His cursive actually looks much better than his printing. We're working on how to connect all of the letters now. Caleigh has been writing her letters for a long time, but she does it her own way. I had thought about starting her with cursive, but haven't decided for sure yet. For now, I'm just showing her how to make the lowercase letter as we introduce that phonogram. I made her a salt box and she just loves making her letters in it. So does Molly, but she ends up spilling it.

We went to KY for a birthday party over the weekend so on Friday, we took a detour and went to the WNC Nature Center. The kids had a good time walking around looking at the animals. They had a table full of stuff you could touch and a man who worked there was showing the stuff to the girls. He would tell them what it was, let them touch it, and talk a little about it. I wish I had gotten a picture of Molly's face when he was showing them a wasp nest. She was reaching to touch it just as said what it was and she pulled her hand back quickly and started backing away. She wouldn't touch shedded snake's skin either. She and Caleigh did touch a turtle's legs. C and C touched a live snake. The girls also fed goats at my SIL's house.

Week 2 Review

We had finished all our review so this week we got started on new stuff for math, grammar, spelling, and writing.

The girls studied Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. We did lots of alphabet activities, learned about and sampled tropical fruit, read alphabet books, did alphabet puzzles, and made our own coconut tree.

Colin learned about the first nomads and how they became farmers. He liked reading through the book, "It's Disgusting and We Ate It" by James Solheim and even read some of it to the girls. For science, he studied skin and hair. We did an experiment to see how skin helps us by putting a slice of damp bread in a ziplock bag (our skin) and leaving one slice out to compare them.

We went to two different homeschool playgroups this week and all the kids did a gymnastics class that they really enjoyed. Colin was so excited about the Olympics and has been flipping around the house for weeks. He was very excited to get to use real equipment in the class.

Dinosaurs

Since Colin is studying archaeology and we weren't able to do the project I had planned because of all the rain, we decided to study dinosaurs and fossils on Friday. We read some dinosaur books we have and worked on a Dinosaur Discovery workbook. We also played Dinosaur Land Adventure Game, did a puzzle, played with our dinosaurs and matched them to our flash cards to identify them.

On Monday, we dug out dinosaurs from fossil kits and made dinosaur pictures with stencils.