Saturday, January 31, 2009

Weekly update.

I just thought this was a cute little picture. My 2 yr old patiently waiting time to leave for the field trip. Baseball helmets make the wait go faster, you know.


WHAT A PRODUCTIVE WEEK!!!! The best yet since the holiday season!! =) lol Probably the best since we started homeschooling last July.
Nathan was a little worker bee this week! So exciting to see him starting to get more involved in his schooling, taking the initiative to get his work done without constant reminding.

He FLEW through a chapter in math. Really it was mostly a review for him from last year. He loves measurements and easily (re) memorized all the different units of measure. Tested fantastically out of the chapter so we are AHEAD in math now!! He is going to fly out of the next chapter too....More review-long (and longer) division and money review. It's a good review and great for his self-esteem.

Nathan is doing well with everything else too. We started doing some of his reading comp orally because of the time it takes just to write all the answers down. With his short attention span, it just makes things easier on him and me.
The only thing we didn't get done this week was spelling. Nathan is such a terrific speller, though, that I'm not too worried about it right now. We dropped it when we got into the fractions that caused him such a headache (literally). We'll pick it back up next week.
History was lacking during those tough fractions weeks too. We picked that back up this week with some library books.

All three older boys are learning about volcanoes right now. Next week we'll finish that up and make our own volcano. We were suppose to do it Friday, but we went on a little field trip instead.
Our field trip was with a local homeschool group to a local old army base. It is still used for training practices and preparations, but it isn't the lively camp it once was years ago. It was so cool for the boys to learn about the history of this base. They loved it!! I did too...very interesting.

They LOVED the helicopter!! It was one actually used in combat so it looks a little beat up in places.
This tank was also used in combat years ago.

The old prison yard on base. This place once housed German pows during WWII and Vietnamese pows during the Vietnam war. Our area now has a huge population of both because when they were released after those wars, a good number of them made this area their new home. You can tell it is no longer a functioning prison.

A year or so ago, there was a huge fire on base. Several buildings were burned to the ground. You can see smokestacks here...this shows about a fifth of the damage. Instead of rebuilding these old bunkhouses, the insurance money was put toward several other new buildings for resevere services as well as funding for the museums on base now. A lot of the land that is no longer used for military purposes is being turned into residential and commercial areas. Our area needs the space for both, but it's a shame to lose the history.

Kaleb is doing great with his math. Nothing formal, just a few worksheets and a lot of oral math practice with simple addition and subtraction. I bought one of the suggested math play books and received it in the mail. So many fun ideas!! We've done a few and I have many more planned for next week.

I also received the Explode the Code books in the mail this week, but haven't shown them to Kaleb yet. Following some great suggestions, I am looking for the Leap Frog Letter Factory video (sold out in all the stores around here right now) for some super fun learning.

Gabriel is busy soaking up every little bit of *school time* he can. =) I love watching him sit at the table, "doing school work" with his little fun books. Since he still insists Gabriel is spelled "K-B-B-B", we're working overtime on his name song. lol

Oh our nightly read right now is Stuart Little. My oldest comlains. "I've already read this" while the next two are totally loving it!

I love that everything came together this week. I know it won't happen every week and probably not next week, but it really helps boost our homeschooling confidence. Daddy loves to see all the progress too!! With this being our first year, he is still a little worried.

1 comment:

  1. It looks like you had a wonderful week! The field trip sounds really neat-my kids would love that.
    I love all of the pictures especially the one of your two year old in his baseball helmet-that is so cute.
    ~Have a blessed week.
    ~Rhonda

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