Colin's First Ice Hockey Game

Colin has played roller hockey for a couple months, but he just started ice hockey. He only played goalie in this game, which is also all he has played in roller hockey. His ice hockey team has two goalies though so he'll be trying some other positions.

Colin loved this part. After they won, his team ran over to him hitting his helmet and hugging him.





Happy First Week of Spring

In celebration of the first week of spring, I made the kids flowers for lunch.



Strawberries and kiwi with sour straw stem.
Grilled cheese sandwich cut with cookie cutters and celery stem.


The kids decorated their own cupcakes. In addition to flowers, they made some faces.

Colin's

Molly's

Caleigh's

Signs of spring

Kids working in their garden

Our Week in Review

History

We learned about the African kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. We read about how Ghana and later Mali taxed the gold and salt that went through their countries to be traded.
We also learned about India during the Moghul Dynasty.

We made salt blocks and gold nuggets to use for a game from the SOTW activity guide.

The kids took turns running from the salt blocks to the gold trading them to find out if it was better to pay the tax and take a short cut or go the long way and keep all the gold and salt for themselves.

Science

Our planets this week were Uranus and Neptune. We learned about their discoveries, moons, rotations, revolutions, atmospheres, and size.
To understand more about the clouds covering Neptune and Uranus, we made clouds in a jar. The kids were much more interested in seeing the match lit. I don't think they had ever seen one before.

We got a head start on next week's chapter by reading about the Kuiper Belt.

Last weekend we spent some time observing the moon. We had some trouble with clouds, but were able to see it some.

Three Rs

Nothing too exciting going on for this. Molly did start using the traditional names for numbers 11-19. She learned all the tens last week. Caleigh worked on adding long columns of numbers. Colin has been working with fractions and some long division.


Today I had the kids decorate cupcakes like flowers to celebrate the first week of spring. I'll be posting pictures of their finished cupcakes along with our flower lunch pictures soon.

Everything Else

Things didn't work out as planned for many things this week. Robotics Club was canceled at the last minute so I decided to take the kids ice skating. They're always wanting to go, but homeschool skate is on the same day as Robotics Club. Colin needed to take a spelling test first. While we were doing that, he kept wrapping a blanket around himself. He said he was freezing and felt a little tired. I checked him and realized he had a fever so ice skating was out even though he kept trying to insist he could go. He spent the rest of the day in bed. His fever was gone the next morning, but he didn't seem 100% so we didn't go on a planned field trip.

In the last week, Colin has had 3 hockey games. He started ice hockey and loves it. He thinks being the goalie on ice is easier and more fun because you are able to slide. They've won both of their games so far so he's very happy about that. He finished his roller hockey season Thursday. They came in second in their tournament.

Girls' First Time Ice Skating

Last week I got to take the girls ice skating for the first time. They've been asking to go for a while. I wasn't sure how well it would go though because I've had trouble getting them to try very much when they've been rollerskating. One of their friends was there and they went right out with her. They did so well and immediately started asking to go again.

Here they are at the beginning staying close to the wall.

Caleigh fell. I was so amazed that she didn't get upset at all. When she fell roller skating, she quit.

Caleigh didn't take long before she made it to the middle of the rink.

Molly made it away from the wall too.

One of Colin too.

Ireland Unit Study

We spent the week learning all about Ireland. We used stuff from Homeschool Share and the Download N Go study, Expedition Ireland.

Books we read during the week



We were able to watch videos showing the beautiful landscape of Ireland. We also watched vidos of Irish dancing and listened to Irish music.
Some of the things we learned about:
Geography of Ireland
Animals of Ireland, including Irish setters and Connemara ponies
Famous places, including the location of the Blarney stone and the Giant's Causeway
Irish words
Saint Patrick
St. Patrick's Day
Leprechauns
Sports in Ireland


Notebook Pages
Mini books: flag, map, famous place in Ireland, why do people kiss the Blarney stone, animals, legends of leprechauns, process of making crystal, colors of the rainbow, St. Patrick card (kids got at parade)

We had Irish soda bread and stew, but I forgot to get pictures. The girls painted their own Blarney stones. The kids made leprechauns. We had a fun lunch and celebrated St. Patrick's Day. We also got to go to a St. Patrick's Day parade and see lots of Irish dancing.

Caleigh's is a rainbow (on right). Molly said there was a flower on hers, but I'm not sure what else.

Lunch: leprechuan sandwich, pot of gold, lime punch

Molly did some graphing with Lucky Charms. I got the graph here.

Caleigh is supervising Molly for me to make sure she doesn't go wild just putting anything or eat them.

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.

St. Patrick's Day Lunch

I saw this fun leprechaun sandwich and just had to make it for the kids. We also had a pot of gold, some rainbow colored goldfish crackers, a fruit rainbow, and lime punch.

The pot of gold is pineapple and lemon jello jigglers cut into squares. The punch is lime sherbet with Sierra Mist poured over it.

The sandwiches are made by cutting the bread in a circle. The eyes are white M&Ms. I used food writer markers to draw on the mouth and the eyes. Carrot sticks for the beard and hair. An apple for the hat with a cake decoration flower.

Caleigh doesn't eat bread so I used a tortilla to make hers.