Friday, September 7, 2012

Week 3: Loving Elemental Science

Well I planned for school to happen on Monday without realizing it was a holiday.....and Daddy would be HOME!  AND Nathan was out of school!! {we happily took the day off}

We had a great weekend with out-of-state (and in-state) family. Then on Monday after Daddy and Nathan did a little goose hunting, we took off to visit a brand new Cabelas close to our area. Daddy was thrilled!!

Waiting on Nathan and Daddy to get home...minus Gabriel who was busy playing.
 

In the car about to head to Cabelas. Love this man!

A great little break and, by Monday night, I was rested and ready to get on with some school!

Tuesday was the most FABULOUS school day!! These are the kind of days that make me SO thankful we can homeschool, and help keep me going through the not-so-fab days.
  • We began Elemental Science. LOVE IT! We already know SO much about our earth, thanks to Apologia Astronomy, but we still managed to learn a thing or two today.  We learned that the earth is surrounded by the atmosphere that protects us from the extreme cold in space and a lot of the sun's heat and light.  We created the first page of our Science Journal.  This wasn't an activity in ES but I wanted them to have a visual of the atmosphere. 
Drake's Earth. He said he put our home and the pond on his earth. :)
Kaleb's Earth. We chose yellow to highlight the atmosphere.
Gabriel's Earth. It's taking Gabriel a little bit of self-disipline but he's getting into the journaling. :)
 

  • We had another fun (kind of MTM) lunch. The boys had forgotten about all of the picks a sweet lady made for us a couple of years ago. 
  • We completed EVERYTHING I had planned!!  YES! Kaleb is loving measurements in math...just like I knew he would. Gabriel did a great job with his phonics lesson. Drake had fun with some ETC pages (his absolutely FAVE right now).
Wednesday was a full day of schoolwork, an unplanned errand, me constantly reminding the boys to do their chores, and numerous emails to and from members of our homeschool group about co-op.  It was exhausting....but productive. We didn't get to start the craft project I had planned which was disappointing but it happens. :)  Really felt like we're getting into an easy morning groove with schoolwork.  The morning flowed nicely and we had very little problems.  Drake and I are both learning patience, and Joshua so far has been great.
  • Scripture Adventures: Began learning about Noah. I asked the boys to write or draw what they knew about Noah in their faith journals before we got started. All of them talked and talked about the ark, the flood, and the animals.  I was surprised that nobody mentioned the rainbow, but when I read that particular part of the story, Kaleb smiled and said "oh yeah the rainbow!"  We talked about all of the different animals and how it might have been like to live on the ark for so many days.
Kaleb's page. Noah is on the right upper side with birds flying around him. The little bit of yellow in the window is a giraffe. :)
Drake's page. The ark floating in the water with birds flying all around. I think that is Noah at the very top with the birds. :)
Gabriel's page. This is the ark. He admittedly got a little sloppy. :)  We're working on slowing down and doing our best work. The little bit of blue on top of the ark is a peacock.


  • LA is going very well except that I've misplaced Kaleb's R&S English book.  I have NO idea what I did with it!!  Hopefully we'll find it soon!  Drake loves loves loves ETC primers! He asked to do 3-4 pages a day. He just wants to "do school" with his brothers!  As we get into a routine, I'll add more for him. Gabriel struggled with his OPG lesson....it was LONG. We decided to break it up into to smaller portions.  He reads well but doesn't believe it.
Oops! Got this one turned the wrong way. :)
Page TWO of Wednesday's lesson. YIKES!
  • Signed up Kaleb and Drake for Little League football!!  They are SO excited!  I missed the deadline so I met the guy running the program in a Walmart parking lot. He was SO kind and I'm very thankful...otherwise I would have had two very upset boys.
  • Realized at bedtime that we did NO math! Who forgets MATH?! Ha! Oh well, I didn't hear anyone complain. :)

Thursday was another good day. We got in our morning time, decided to go to a local kids consignment sale, decided against that idea on the way there, detoured to one of our fave pizza places, and had a good lunch before going home to finish school work.
  • We talked about Noah, the flood, and God's covenant in SA. The boys added to their faith journals.  Kaleb pretened to be Noah's grandson and wrote a letter to his children about the covenant.  Gabriel and Drake drew a picture.
Kaleb's page. He always has to add a little humor to the story. :)

Gabriel's page. Love the backward S. We're correcting this in handwriting but faith journals are not for correction.

Drake's page. I added the words for him.
  • Kaleb did two lessons in Wordly Wise so he would finish Lesson 3 on Friday. He had more fun with measurements in math.  He used a pair of Nathan's size 12 shoes to measure the "feet" of different things around the kitchen, himself, and his brothers which he then converted to inches. He also used a ruler to measure small objects in inches and centimeters.  Fun! Since we lost two days of math between a holiday and my forgetfulness, we'll continue with measurements next week. He is doing very well with cursive although he admits that its a lot harder than he thought it would be.
  • Gabriel gets so frustrated with all of the writing in math so he and I decided to team up. He answered the questions and I wrote them done.  This worked a lot better. We'll do it this way for a little while and then share in the writing later on. Whether he believes it or not, he is totally rocking OPG!! 
  • Joshua entertained us with his new skill....bubble blowing.

It's amazing that anything gets done with all of the playing and staring at this little guy that we do.
 
Friday is a short day. We slept in a little bit. Did our morning wall actvities. Tackled the last bit of Lesson 3 in Kaleb's WW...a crossword puzzle. Reviewed much in Gabriel's OPG. Colored many pages in Drake's coloring book. Worked on our weekly bible verse which proved to be a bit of a tongue twister for the boys so it will carry over into next week. Going to town for a bit and then we'll do some math, science, and history this afternoon. 

Memory Work

Celebrated 11 days of school.
Any week that consists of a lot of Bible and the three R's with a generous sprinkling of everything else and a ton of fun is a GREAT week in my book.  This was definitely a GREAT week!!

Next week will be FULL of the activities and crafts that didn't get done this week. LOTS of cool history projects, a restart on GtG by baking an apple pie, a paper mache Earth, and a couple science experiments....along with our usual studies. Also......CO-OP begins next FRIDAY!!!! K and G start little league football practice so should be a fun busy week!

Have an AWESOME weekend!
 
 
 

6 comments:

  1. I'd be distracted by staring at your little guy too! I'm impressed with all you managed to get done.

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  2. Looks like a really complete week! I'm kind of jealous.

    I'd be completely distracted cooing at the baby.

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  3. It was a great week indeed! I tend to lose books from time to time as well ;).

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  4. We love Elemental Science too :) I am doing the Earth/space grammar, and physics grammar with my 2 boys. It's so easy to do. They're both learning so much.

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  5. We used Elemental Science for Biology in First Grade. Loved it! Looks like you had a very productive week! Way to go!

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  6. It does sound like you had a great week!

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