Our Week: Ireland, Saturn, and Navigation

Three Rs

Colin will be finishing his math book in a couple weeks and his spelling in about 4 weeks. I still want to do some kind of spelling review of what we've done this year, especially since they recommend going through each list twice. I haven't decided whether to go right back to doing that by dictating the lists again, finding some other way to review, or just waiting and starting back again in August giving us both a break.
Caleigh is happy to only have one more math lesson that includes drawing for a while. Needing to make all those lines exactly right has been driving her crazy.
In addition to her regular math this week, Molly also did a fun graphing exercise with Lucky Charms.

Science

This week we learned all about Saturn. Some of the things we learned about were how it's similar to Jupiter, the rings, its fast rotation, how long it takes to revolve around the sun, its moons, and the Cassini mission. A Centaur rocket helped Cassini go into space. We made our own Centaur rocket.

In this one, you can see the rocket coming off the ground.

History

We read about Spain and Portugal. We learned how Ferdinand and Isabella united Spain. We also learned about the prince of Portugal, who was known as Henry the Navigator. He sent ships down the coast of Africa in hopes of getting to India. To go along with that, we made a compass using a bowl of water, a magnet, a circle of paper, and a needle.

Colin magnetizing the needle

The needle pointing north

Ireland Unit Study

Since St. Patrick's Day was this week, we studied Ireland mostly using the Download N Go study, Expedition Ireland. We watched many videos with pictures of Ireland, listened to Irish music, and watched Irish dancing. We also went to a parade last weekend where we got to actually see live Irish dancing. During our study, we learned about some Irish animals, important places, Irish words, St. Patrick, leprechauns, and hurling. We also made Irish soda bread and had stew. We added some mini books to our notebooks to go with the study.
We had fun celebrating St. Patrick's Day with some holiday shirts, hats, making a leprechaun, finding gold chocolate coins all over the house, and a fun lunch.

Everything Else

It felt like we were out of the house a lot this week.
On Tuesday, we went ice skating with friends. It was the girls' first time and they did so well and had a great time.
Wednesday the kids had their basketball skills class.
Thursday Colin had a hockey game, where he insisted he needed to wear a green jersey in celebration of St. Patrick's Day.

Friday was homeschool park day and it was a beautiful day to be outside. The kids played with their friends, had a picnic lunch, and Colin found a group of boys there to play football with.