Butterflies, Explorers, Music and Sunshine.

Our week went a little better this week than last. I think mainly this is due to the fact that I just didn't stress and let things flow the way they would. Sometimes I try to make school work happen the way I envisioned it should and it just doesn't work with my kids. They have such minds of their own.

History - We read our Story of the World Chapter which was about Christopher Columbus and Magellan this week. We listened to the audio book Who was first by Russell Freedmen. It reviewed a bit about the Vikings which we had already studied and talked about other people or groups that may have come to America before Columbus. It was very interesting. We read a number of books about Columbus and one about Magellan.

Science - We read a few books about Asteriods, Meteorites and Comets this week. But mostly we have been reading books about butterflies. Our caterpillars climbed up to the top of the cup this week and have formed some nice crysalis. We are still waiting for the fourth one to finally form before we transfer them to their little habitat. This was taken early in the week when they were just hanging from the top and hadn't yet changed.
There were originally 5 caterpillars in the cup when they came but one mysteriously disappeared. We think he must have been dinner one night for the others.

Math - Sophie has been flying through the last few sections in her Singapore Math books. We did Graphs and Geometry this week. Both were very easy for her and she enjoyed playing with pattern blocks and Tangrams this week as part of geometry. She is getting really close to finishing the 2B book. She sees the light at the end of the tunnel and is running to the finish.
I am not doing a whole lot of Math with Ian at the moment. He needs more help with reading and writing before trying to solve math problems so his math book tends to just sit on the shelf. But all the kids enjoy the math games and activities we try to fit in.

Language Arts - Again not our strong point this week. We didn't do any of the formal Grammar lessons. But Soph did write in her notebook about our Science Club class we went to on Monday and also wrote on her blog. When her National Geographic magazine for kids arrived this week she read me some of it and then wrote about her favorite article. That is about all I can claim as actual writing work. She just really didn't want to do copy work this week and I didn't want to fight about it so we did something else instead.
Ian is close to finishing his Explode the Code primers. He has just a few more letters to work through. He also did a number of Learningpage.com worksheets that were all about vowels. Explode the code primers have stuck to consonants and we haven't done any vowels yet so we really worked on vowels and what those 5 letters are. Sophie of course had to chime in and tell us about how Y is also a vowel.

Music - I was just going to continue our study of Haydn through March since we didn't finish the biography we have of him. We we never picked it up. Instead my kids have been listening to all the Classical Kids CD's we have floating around. We listened Tchaikovsky Discovers America, Beethoven Lives Upstairs, Mr. Bach Comes to Call and even Mozart’s Magic Fantasy. (Sophie spent the rest of the day singing magic flute songs after listening to the Mozart. She loves the Queen of the Night's songs) The kids just love these CD's.
This week at the library while glancing through the book shelf of all the new books I spotted this book...
This was a great biography of Vivaldi and after reading it the kids decided we needed to listen to The Four Seasons. I got out our CD and they danced and danced and put on quite a show. They were birds, leaves and snowflakes dancing to the music.

Art - I know we colored a lot this week and drew a lot of pictures. Ian has been drawing a lot of pirate maps lately. But nothing formal was done. We did break out the paints again this week so the kids could paint their race tracks that they made last Saturday at the Home Depot's kids workshop.( April's project is going to be a bird house... fun!)




We have been spending a lot of time outside this week. The weather has been so nice. Sunny but not hot. The kids have been out playing in the yard, shooting baskets, building little worm and slug habitats, riding bikes and climbing trees.
On one of our rides around the neighborhood the kids decided they needed to roll around in the sour grass that covered the yard of one of our neighbor's houses. Then Henry got the great idea to climb the tree. If there is a way to get up into a tree he will find it. Then the other kids of course had to join him. I am sure glad we have nice neighbors.

We also went to the park twice this week. I came home with a rather brown neck after our first park trip so knew it was time to be diligent about sunblock and hats again. When heading out for the next park trip I tried to find all our sun hats. Those that I could find looked rather worn so I knew we had to go and get some new ones. Hurray for Longs Drug Store. They had some great ones on sale this week!

That about sums up our week.