Our Week: Netherlands, Metamorphosis, and Rembrandt



This was our third week of school. We are almost back to a full schedule. Things are still going well. Having Colin do more of his work independently is making a huge difference in my day. I'm able to start immediately with the girls instead of them having to wait while I work with him. I hope we are able to continue that as he gets further into his curriculum.

 

The Three Rs

Colin did three lessons in RightStart Geometry and two chapters in Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents. I decided to have him repeat some lists from Spell to Write and Read. He finished it last year, but I want to make sure he has the phonograms and rules down. He started with list T this week. He's also doing some dictation, summarizing, and reviewing capital cursive letters.

Caleigh's math is still mostly dealing with multiplication. She started back with grammar and is continuing with learning capital cursive letters. She did two spelling lists this week and the "My Wise Grammar Book" pages that went with them.

Molly started back with The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. I can see that her speed in reading has improved over the last few months. I'm still introducing new phonograms to her and she's learning them really well. Her math is still in the reviewing part so it's been very basic.



Science

This week we read about insects' life cycles, finding a mate, the different types of metamorphosis, and the defenses insects use to protect themselves. We went for a walk on a trail in our neighborhood where the kids hunted for eggs. They actually found quite a few on the underside of leaves.

Molly being an egg detective

Caleigh looking at some eggs

We were supposed to do a can trap experiment, but we're having some cool weather so I thought we might have a better chance of getting more insects if we wait until next week when it's supposed to warm back up.

While we were at the park on Friday, Molly found a cricket. She would hold a leaf to its mouth and it would chew the leaf. She said it definitely had a chewing mouth, which she learned about last week. She also told me all the reasons she knew it was an insect.

Our ladybug larvae arrived this week so the kids have been watching them and we'll be studying them more next week.

History

We learned about the Dutch revolt and Mary, Queen of Scots. We did a unit study about the Dutch. 

Unit Study



We did a unit study to learn more about the Dutch. We used the Hana in the Time of Tulips study and lapbook from Homeschool Share. They learned about dikes, tulips, windmills, the Netherlands, and Rembrandt. They also made windmills.

Windmills

Art and Music



To go along with our unit study, our artist was Rembrandt. We read books about him, looked at many of his paintings and did an activity from Discovering Great Artists about drawing faces with different expressions.

Molly making faces at herself in the mirror to draw

They also used watercolor crayons to draw a picture with tulips.

In music, we read about string instruments in The Story of the Orchestra.

Everything Else

We visited the Carolina Raptor Center. Colin had two hockey practices. He and Molly had tennis lessons. They played with friends at the park after tennis. We went to our homeschool group's park day on Friday.