In the Garden 5/8/11

One of Brennan's zinnias

Lettuce

Connor's carrots

Marigolds

More marigolds

Lettuce

Tomatoes!

Green strawberries!

Cilantro (with petunias to the left and carrots above)

 

"My" garden
From top, L-R: cucumbers (no pics yet), carrots, cilantro
bibb lettuce, petunias
black seeded simpson lettuce, strawberries\
marigolds, strawberries

The boys' garden
Top row (right in front of Connor): carrots, lobelia, lettuce, zinnias
Bottom row: johnny jump-ups, marigolds, lettuce, zinnias

Our Weeks in Review: 4/25 - 4/29 and 5/2 - 5/6

I didn't get a post done last week (we had a looong day Saturday--last soccer games of the season!), and then this week we had a short week since I worked one day and Aaron and I went to the homeschool book fair in Arlington on Friday.  So I figured I'd catch up with one post for both weeks!


Connor

Math:  We've been having fun playing math games and doing worksheets from fun workbooks.  I ordered RS level C on Friday at the homeschool book fair--10% discount AND free shipping.  Glad I waited for it!

History:  Over the past couple of weeks we've been back in ancient Greece, learning about Sparta and Athens (SOTW chapter 22).  I'm hoping to get to a couple of hands-on history projects this week.  It seems that I can manage to do hands-on history stuff OR hands-on science stuff, but not both!

Reading (literature):  We finished up Black Ships before Troy and started The Wanderings of Odysseus, also by Rosemary Sutcliff.

The illustrations by Alan Lee in this edition are incredible.

I'm thinking through how I want to handle reading with Connor.  He reads well (probably about a 6th grade level based on the assessments I've seen, at least as far as decoding skills), but I haven't been expecting much from him as far as reading on his own for school.  Most of the read-alouds I want to continue to do as read-alouds, but I know he needs to be doing more required reading as well.  He does read a good bit on his own, but it's not always high-quality stuff (which is fine--I don't want to micromanage his free reading.  At least not too much!).  So I'm mulling over how to work this into our day.

Grammar:  He finished lessons 86, 87, and 88, covering capitalization in poetry, writing dates, and a story narration.

Spelling: He's working on step 12--plural v-c-e words.  Spelling has been the first thing to go recently when we don't get to everything, so progress has been slow.  He's doing fine when we actually get to it, though!

Latin: We've continued playing games with the flashcards and then he had fun doing the end-of-the-book giant crossword puzzle with all his Latin words.

Handwriting:  He started working on cursive capital letters last week after finishing the lowercase letters the week before.  The capital letters move much faster than the lowercase, so he should finish the book in the next couple of weeks.

Memory Work:  Connor has the books of the OT and NT down!  Mrs. Mary at church (the children's church leader) offered prizes to kids who could recite each of them, so that was quite a motivation.  Brennan is very motivated to learn them now too, and he can get up to Proverbs almost all by himself!  Connor has Ephesians 6:13-18 down, but Brennan still needs a little work, so we'll stick with it for a couple more days.  We'll be starting a new song tomorrow ("God Is Good All the Time"--one they requested after I sang it to them a couple of weeks ago) as well as a new catechism question.  Connor has been working on the poem "Mr. Nobody."  He's doing well--he still needs a little help with the transitions between stanzas (there are three), but I think that's a GOOD thing.  He gets frustrated SO easily (and SO dramatically!) when he doesn't get something immediately--this is a good example that there are some things you just have to keep working at.  We've also been working on the definition of a plant and the parts of a plant.

Brennan

Math:  We've done much better about getting Brennan's math done over the last  couple of weeks!  He finished lessons 37, 38, and 39 in RS A (usually doing 1/2 a lesson per day), and he actually fussed one day because there weren't enough problems on his worksheet. *grin*  Of course, he also fussed another day because he had to DO a worksheet, so I guess you just can never tell!  He's been working on addition, and it's been fun to see how the RS methods are working.  Several times when I've asked him about a  problem after he did it, he's talked about "moving one from this one to that one and that makes 5 and 2 which is 7," which is *exactly* the kind of thinking RS encourages.  He's going to be so excited to find out that he gets to play "Go to the Dump" (similar to "Go Fish," but you match cards that add up to 10) in just a couple of lessons (he's seen Connor play it)!

Phonics:  He's still working on -vce words.  We started long "U" -vce words last week.  He's doing well, he just still need a good bit of practice.  I printed some cards with -vce words to play games with, so I need to sit and cut them out tonight.  He can read any -vce word pretty easily, once he realizes it *is* a -vce word.  That seems to be the issue at the moment--noticing the silent "e" as he's reading.  I'm really glad we're hitting the phonics pretty heavily.  He is a born guesser, and I think if he'd been taught using sight words, he'd run into some serious trouble later on.  I'm constantly having to make him go back and read a word that he's fully capable of reading but he just guessed based on the first letter or the context.  He really is doing very well, though--he just read A Kiss for Little Bear to me tonight with almost no trouble and very few corrections.  Yay!

Handwriting:  For copywork over the last couple of weeks I've been having him copy the first stanza of "O Worship the King, " and he asked for "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee" after that.  So we started that one last week, and we'll continue it this week.

Reading (literature): We're continuing to read The Adventures of Reddy Fox.  Some days his attention and discussion are good.  Some days, not so much.  Such is life with little boys, I think!

Together

Bible: Over the last couple of weeks we've learned about Jesus' resurrection, the road to Emmaus, doubting Thomas, Jesus' ascension, Pentecost, and the stoning of Stephen.  Lots of reading, discussion, and coloring pages, as well as a few fun review games.

Science:  We've still been learning about roots!  A couple of our experiments haven't gone too well--the avocado pits are growing mold (grr . . .), and I think I had too much water in the lima bean jar.  So I restarted that one tonight, and I'm debating whether or not cleaning off the avocado pits will work.  We also started another experiment to measure how much water the roots of a plant will soak up.

Drawing a plant w/its roots for his notebook page about roots.

He had lots to say about roots--had to continue on the back!

Brennan just had to make a notebook page too.  *grin*

Uprooting a plant to use in our experiment

We measured the water so we can check in a few days to see how much water the roots have soaked up.

Aaron and I had a good time at the book fair last week.  It was fun to get away and spend the day together, just the two of us.  We found some good deals as well as some Hank the Cowdog t-shirts--the boys were thrilled. *grin*  And I faced some serious temptation at Jim Weiss' booth--he records audio books and his own versions of folk tales, fairy tales, tales from literature, etc.  I think the only thing that saved me in the end was not being able to decide right then what I wanted.  I need to sit down with the catalog and make a wish list!

Snaggletooth!

Finally!  That one's been hanging on for a while.  The lisp is totally adorable!  *grin*

Our Square Foot Garden Adventure

As I sit here trying to remember just what it was that made me want to try a garden this year, I'm having a hard time putting my finger on it.  I know part of it was wanting to work on eating better and hoping that growing our own veggies would encourage that.  And of course, the educational value of it, especially since I knew we'd be studying plants this spring.  Nothing like hands-on learning!  I suppose the other contributing factor was hearing that the square foot gardening method was simple and could be done on a small scale (remember the cucumbers, mom? *grin*).  So, off to the library I went!

After reading Mel Bartholomew's All New Square Foot Gardening, I was chomping at the bit.  It really sounded like something we could do--so much less intimidating than plowing up a section of the yard, figuring out if the soil was good for planting (probably not, from what I've heard) and treating it if not, and then spending lots of time planting, weeding, watering, harvesting . . . the smaller scale and simplicity of the square foot method sounded like fun.  Plus, each square would be small enough that we could try several different things--surely *something* would work!

So we decided to go for it.  We got the supplies to build a 4x4 ft. square (divided into 1 sq. ft. sections, as you'll see) for me and a 2x4 ft. rectangle for the boys to share.  The initial outlay this year was a little expensive (for our budget, anyway!), but pretty much all we should need to pay for in the future is compost, seeds, and any plants we want to buy to transplant.

Aaron built the frames (thanks, hon!) and then we put together the soil mixture suggested in the book, filled the frames, and watered the soil.

A few days later (after Aaron had added the grid to mark out the square foot sections), the boys and I got busy planting seeds.  I let them choose what to plant in their squares (keeping in mind the growing season and nixing a couple of things that would've been too much for the small space).

Connor chose carrots, johnny jump-ups, marigolds, and lobelia, while Brennan chose lettuce (which he won't eat!) and zinnias.  The bigger plot has (or will have!) carrots, lettuce, marigolds, cilantro, cucumbers, and petunias.  After just a couple of days, we started seeing sprouts!  (I do have pics, but they're really hard to see.)

We bought some strawberry plants already started and transplanted them, along with some petunias (I had gotten the petunias to use one of them in a science lesson, and I figured we'd just plant the rest in the garden).

After about a week and a half, we had some pretty good sprouts--we were all excited. *grin*

Brennan's zinnias are definitely the front-runners, size-wise

Carrots

Marigolds

Cilantro

Connor and I will be working on thinning seedlings, planting cucumbers, and adding to his garden journal tomorrow, so we'll get some more pictures then.  We also have a tomato plant (in a container).  I had planned to plant our own or transplant a small one, but when I saw one already well along (with flowers and even a few tiny tomatoes already growing) that was less expensive than what it would cost to get the stuff to do it myself, I figured we'd go that route.  

So far we're having fun, the boys are getting some hands-on learning about plants, and hopefully we'll get at least some home-grown produce out of it!

Our Week in Review, 4/18 - 4/22

We've had a pretty good week--lots of fun, hands-on science, including a field trip to the botanic garden.


Connor


Math:  We're continuing to review, making sure he's comfortable with a few things (especially subtraction) while we relax a bit before starting RS level C.  We've been playing lots of the RS card games to work on facts memorization.  He's definitely got his addition facts down.  Subtraction isn't there yet, but it wasn't covered extensively in level B (RightStart's scope and sequence is different from most tradition math curricula--lots more subtraction coming in level C!), so he's doing fine.  I think he's realizing (thanks to the way RS teaches partitioning numbers) that if he knows an addition fact, he also knows related subtraction facts (i.e., if 8 + 2 = 10, then 10 - 2 = 8 and 10 - 8 = 2).


History: Taking a mini-break from Greeks to peek at what the Medes and Persians were up to during the same general time period (SOTW chapter 21).  We only got the first section done this week (reading and narration), so we'll finish it Monday and then head back to Greece for a few more chapters.


Reading (literature): Continuing with Black Ships before Troy.  Today he really enjoyed the story of how Odysseus sneaked into Troy to steal the "Luck of Troy" (a stone the Trojans believed was from Athena and would keep them from defeat as long as they possessed it).


Grammar:  He finished FLL lessons 84 and 85 this week, which included addressing an envelope (practicing abbreviations, capitalization, etc.).  I still need to get it in the mail to Nani and Papa!


Spelling:  He finished AAS Level 2, step 11 this week.  


Latin: Review games with the flashcards--we've played Go Fish, Memory, and Charades.

Brennan really wanted to play, even though he's not "officially" doing Latin.  He's going to know it all before he "officially" does Song School Latin!

Handwriting:  He did cursive X and Q this week.  He's been doing his copywork in print since the WWE lines are much bigger than what he's using for HWT, so I need to get him doing some copywork on the side in cursive.


Memory Work:  Memory work has mostly been a bust this week.  We've been pushing it to try to get the basics done, and I think we only got to memory work once (maybe twice).  We'll do better next week!  Here's what we're working on:
Ephesians 6:13-18, books of the New Testament, catechism question, "O Worship the King," "Mr. Nobody" (poem), pronoun list, definition of a verb, definition of a plant, Latin phrases, and history chant.


Brennan


Math: We've done better about getting math done this week!  He's been working on RS A lesson 36 (we broke it up into several days), working on writing equations with tally marks and then numbers.  We also played a smashing game of Go Fish today.  *grin*

Making an abacus bracelet

Phonics:  He's continuing to work on -vce words (magic "e").  


Handwriting: His copywork this week included a sentence about him and the parts of a plant.


Reading (literature): Continuing to read aloud The Adventures of Reddy Fox by Thornton Burgess.  I've also been reading him Uncover Nature (Hide-and-Seek Visual Adventures) by Olivia Brookes, which we've really enjoyed.

Together


Bible:  We've been focusing on Jesus' entry to Jerusalem, the Last Supper, and the crucifixion this week, mostly just reading and discussion.  We did do a fun activity to go with the triumphal entry (from Little Hearts for His Glory--Heart of Dakota's K/1st grade program).  We spread jackets on the floor to cover the "path" and then they pretended to be donkeys trotting, galloping, walking, etc. along the path according to the instructions I gave.

Science:  We're continuing our plant study, learning about the parts of a plant and focusing on roots (follow links for the details!).

We've got a busy weekend coming up (no soccer, though--thank goodness!), but hopefully we can head into next week ready to go!

Science: Learning about Plants, Lesson 3: Roots

Today we learned in more detail about different kinds of roots and what roots do.  We read the information about roots on p. 11 in What is a Plant?, and just before he started mowing the yard, Aaron brought us a week he'd uprooted that was a great example of a plant with a taproot.

Then we started a couple of experiments that will (hopefully!) let us learn more about roots.

First we extracted some avocado pits and looked at them, noticing the flatter side and the more pointed side. I told the boys that we were going to put them in water so that they'd begin to sprout, and I asked which end they thought would sprout the root.  Brennan said the pointed end and Connor said the flat, which worked out nicely since the experiment was to try it both ways.  It's supposed to take several weeks, so I guess it's good that we'll have plenty of other things to do in the meantime!  This experiment is from Flowers and Seeds by Ramona Bates.

We also started an experiment from Experiments with Plants by Salvatore Tocci.

 We soaked some lima beans and then put them in two glass jars between the side of the jar and some paper towels.  We added water to soak the paper towels and put one of them by a window to watch for the stems to sprout.  The other is the one we're watching for the roots (which should come first).  Once we see the roots growing down, we'll turn the jar upside down and see what happens to the roots.  We'll do the same thing to the stems when they start growing in the other jar.

There's another root experiment that I want to do with them in this book that shows that a plant's roots absorb water, but it calls for a potted plant, which I don't have a the moment.  So I'll be picking one up soon!

They also did a lot of leaf rubbings with leaves we collected the other day at the botanic garden and last Saturday at a local park.  Doesn't have much to do with roots, but some of the leaves were starting to get dry.  I think we're going to go ahead and press some of them tomorrow.

And more sprouts in our garden!  We're going to need to thin some of them soon.