Week of 9/13-9/17: Rome and lots of time outside

History
We have moved on to studying ancient Rome. This week we read about the legend of Romulus and Remus, Roman gods, gladiators, the Colosseum, the Punic Wars, Julius Caesar, and Cleopatra.

The kids weren't sure they understood how an aqueduct worked so we made one from a cereal box and a paper towel roll. Here the kids are pouring water along the top to see how the water was brought to places needing it.

Colin and Caleigh played a game from the SOTW activity guide called Ransom Caesar. Colin said it was similar to Battleship.

Math
Colin: reading gas prices, working with fraction of a cent, estimating square roots, and rounding for sales tax
Caleigh: Roman numerals
Molly: equilateral triangles, seeing 10 as a unit (learning to see 20, 30, 40... on abacus as 2 ten, 3 ten...)

Spell to Write and Read
Colin: two spelling lists and a test
Caleigh: spelling list, test, silent final e reference page, introduced more multi-letter phonograms
Molly: guess the word game, still working on memorizing the phonograms

Grammar
Colin: reviewing adjectives
Caleigh: started working with pronouns

Phonics
Molly: beginning sounds file folder games, blending sounds in 3 letter words

Writing
Caleigh: cursive letters a, c, d, g
Molly: finally holding her pencil correctly so we're working on capital letters in Handwriting Without Tears
Colin: In Writing Tales, he read Aesop's story, "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse." He did copywork from that, looked up vocabulary words, retold the story in his own words, and then wrote his final draft adding in his own details.
Science
Colin has been studying the eye, how it works, and problems that can happen to it for his First Lego League group.
The girls have spent a lot of time chasing, looking at, and catching the many butterflies that are attracted to a tree in our backyard. That counts as science, right?

Art
Besides a coloring page of Romulus and Remus being found by a wolf, we didn't get to art this week. My plan is to do it on Fridays, but we stayed at the park longer than usual and then had some errands to run after that.

Extra Stuff
The kids are trying to get all they can out of these last days of summer. They've spent lots of time outside.

playing in the sandbox

playing in sprinkler

We spent a few hours at the park today playing with friends. Now that we've been here for a few months, the kids have made some friends and many of them were at the park today so they had a great time playing.

Colin climbing tree

Girls with a sword being chased by the boys

This little boy chasing Colin was so funny. The big boys were playing with swords. He took Colin's little sword and chased them around most of the day.

This evening, we went to a Greek festival that's going on nearby.