Apple Tasting

We're starting an apple lapbook based on the book How to Bake an Apple Pie and See the World, and we did our first activity today--an apple tasting.  The boys helped me pick out one of each of 7 different varieties of apples, and today we tasted each one.  We decided whether they were sweet or sour (or neither) and whether or not we liked each one.  The clear favorite was the honeycrisp apple (too bad they're $1.97/lb!!), and the red delicious was definitely the least liked.  Brennan still held out for Granny Smith as his favorite, though I suspect that's because it was his proclaimed favorite before today rather than because it was really his favorite one that he tasted today.  The only one he asked for more of was the honeycrisp!

Then they wanted to plant a couple of apple seeds.  Not sure they'll do too well in this climate, but hey.  What can it hurt, right?

Finally--our Farm Lapbooks!

We finished these a while ago, but I just took pictures of them Saturday.  We had a lot of fun learning about farms, and as usual, I can't do anything the easy way, so they're pretty detailed.  Most of the things in each of them are the same, but there are a few things that I tailored to each of the boys.  Here we go!

Connor's Lapbook

Orange flap open

Green flap open

Blue flap open

Clockwise from top left: "Different Breeds of Horses" flag book (homeschoolshare.com), "Farm Animals" barn shape book (I used the barn outline here but changed the pics),  "Egg Story" sequencing book (kizclub.com), "Apple Life Cycle" sequencing cards (montessoriforeveryone.com)

  

"Farm Jobs" exploding book, "Little Red Hen" story sequence cards (sparklebox.co.uk), "Types of Farms" layer book, "Books We Read" accordion book.  Not opened: "Farmers in the Bible" triangle book

"Barnyard Songs" accordion book (L), farm field trip book

"Farm Buildings" flag book, story narration matchbooks

Bible verse copywork (left, Psalm 104:24), "What Does It Come From?" tri-fold book with matchbooks inside (montessoriforeveryone.com, "From Plant to Food" cards under "cultural" category in free materials)

Clockwise from top left:  "Farm Tools and Machines" tri-fold book, "Crops Grown in Texas" shape book,
"What is a Farm?" trapezoid shape book, "Farm Words I Know" fan book

  

"Types of Crops" shutter book

"What Horses Eat" accordion book (L; homeschoolshare.com, under the "Science" section ), "Animal Families" tri-fold (top right; I made the mini-book myself, but he found the names for male/female/baby animals here at Enchanted Learning), "Why Do Farmers Grow Crops?" matchbook (bottom right)

"Where Does It Grow?" layer book (got this idea here but made my own version)

Brennan's Lapbook

(just a few pics to show different mini books)

Yellow flap and blue flap that was under it both open

Green flap open

"What Grows on a Farm?" triangle fold-out book (top), "Animals on the Farm" fan book (center), "Is It a Farm Animal?" shutter book (bottom), "Life Cycle of a Pumpkin" sequence cards (bottom right; montessoriforeveryone.com)

"Farm Machines and Tools" tri-fold (top), "Animal Families" T-book (bottom)

Clockwise from top left: "Seasons on the Farm" quilt square book, "Types of Farms" layer book, story narration matchbook, "Egg Story" sequencing book

Here are some of the books we used:

Nonfiction:

Our Farm by Michael J. Rosen

Farm Animals by Angela Royston

All About Farm Animals by Brenda Cook

Farms by Jason Cooper (Great Places to Visit series)

Farmers by Dee Ready

All Kinds of Farms by Ann Larkin Hansen

Busy Farm by Gabby Goldsack

Fiction:

Big Chickens and Big Chickens Fly the Coop by Leslie Helakoski

The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County by Janice N. Harrington

Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin

Mrs. Wishy-Washy's Farm by Joy Cowley

Haystack by Bonnie Geisert

Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown

Whew.  Actually, after looking over all this and getting everything together to post, I don't feel so bad that it took us such a long time to finish it!

Our Week in Review 10/4-10/8

 I feel like we've found our groove--it's been a good week, and we got a lot done.  And it was (mostly) pleasant!

Connor
Math:  He's got his 9's addition facts.  He doesn't exactly have them memorized yet (that will come as we review and play RightStart's math games!), but he can stop and figure it out mentally pretty quickly and consistently gets them right.  I really like the way that RS teaches addition.  Once he "got" adding 9 to another single digit number, we immediately moved on to adding 9 to 2-digit and 3-digit numbers.  All the previous work with place value made it easy for him to see how to apply the same strategy to larger numbers.  Then we moved on to "sums equal to 11" (all the ways to add 2 numbers to make 11) which was also easy since we spent so much time solidifying the sums equal to 10.  He also had fun with the geoboard this week making congruent and incongruent rectangles.

Reading:  We finished The Family Under the Bridge!  It was a great book, and I think we'll have to revisit it when he gets a bit older to really dig into it with more depth.  I also had a head-slapping moment this week.  Connor is very independent (just like mom, hence the need for head-slapping: I should have known better!), and one day I gave him the option to write his narration down himself.  I'd been holding back on this for several reasons--I was afraid he'd get halfway through it and give up, or that his writing wouldn't be able to keep up with his ideas and the quality of his narrations would suffer (MY writing can't keep up with his ideas, which I think was one of his sources of frustration with narrating!).  Or, that it would be harder for me to guide him as he narrates if he's writing--it's always his ideas, but I'll often prompt a bit if he gets stuck, or ask a question so that he remembers a major point, and I'm also working on helping him learn to hone in on the important points as he narrates.  Anyway, I finally decided to just let him try it.  He was so excited, and he did great!  It was a little long, but not really much longer than narrations he often dictates to me (when you take handwriting into consideration).  He loved the independence of it, and I was still able to guide him some as he wrote.  I think we'll keep on trying this, or at least give him the option when he narrates.  I'll have to print some paper with appropriate lines, though!

Writing his narration

The finished product

History:  We only got one day's worth of history done this week.  I was subbing one day at the high school here in town, so he did mostly independent work supervised by Daddy that day, and I didn't have anything history-wise on hand that he could do on his own.  We read and he narrated SOTW chapter 13, section one about the New Kingdom Egyptian pharaohs Thutmose and Hatshepsut.  He chose to narrate about Thutmose, I think mainly because the reading talked about how he conquered so many areas but stopped at the Euphrates river because he didn't want to tussle with the Babylonians.  He had learned about Babylon during a Bible study last spring (my mother-in-law did a study of Daniel for the kids in childcare while the moms were doing Beth Moore's Daniel study), and then we'd covered it in history a few chapters previously. So any time Babylon comes up, he's interested!  We also had fun looking up pictures of statues of Hatshepsut (one of very few female pharaohs)--and her mummy!  He thought she looked kind of gross. *grin*

Science:  We finished up learning about snails, and here again, giving him a bit more independence paid off.  He filled out most of his notebook page himself, and he also wrote a narration about periwinkles (a kind of sea snail) on his own.

 He also worked on his spider lapbook.  He's finished all the stuff I had for him, but he's still got a bit of room in it, so we'll have to see if we can find something interesting to stick in that spot!

Grammar:  More action verbs this week!  He did a couple of worksheets the day that I subbed, and he did really well.

Spelling:  We didn't get to spelling this week.  It was on the agenda yesterday, but I ended up having to take Brennan to the doctor, so it didn't get done.  We're still not really into the groove with spelling yet, but he's pretty far ahead, so I'm not too worried at the moment.  Better next week!

Latin:  He did chapter 17 in SSL.  The vocab in chapters 16 and 17 have been words relating to Christmas, so he made a Christmas card and labeled his picture with Latin words as suggested in the book.  It was all I could do to keep him from plowing on through to Chapter 18!

Copywork/Handwriting:  He hasn't done any copywork since we started cursive.  I need to get back to doing that with him, though--his printing has been VERY sloppy lately (see narrations above!).  The problem is that he is *very* resistant to fixing mistakes/sloppiness or rewriting, so I've been avoiding it a bit.  Sigh.  I really need to bite the bullet!  Cursive instruction is going well.  He's really enjoying putting letters together--he's done lowercase c, a, and d so far.

As part of our revised schedule/routine, we take some "recess" breaks and some "school" breaks.  The recess breaks are true breaks where he can go play outside, play in his room, etc.  But I was finding that giving him too much time to go play while I worked with Brennan was leading to a lot of resistance when it was time to get going again.  Plus, he was missing out on the fun/interactive independent activities I used to plan for him to work on during those times.  So we instituted the "school" breaks.  During a school break, he can choose from an assortment of fun, independent activities (file folder games, puzzles, workbooks that he enjoys, wikki stix, etc.) until I'm ready to work with him again.  He likes getting to choose, and it's much easier to get him back on task than when I'm trying to tear him away from Legos or playing outside.  Here he is playing one of our file folder games--"Snail Mail."  He has to read the directions on each piece of mail (2 north, 3 east, one south) and figure out where to deliver all the letters.  I found this game (and many others!) at http://www.filefolderfun.com/ .

Brennan

Math:  He worked on RS A lessons 17 and 18 this week, learning about 10s and equilateral triangles.  Let me tell you, it's fun to hear him say "equilateral."  *grin*  I love the way RS teaches 10s.  The students learn to think of 20, 30, 40, etc. as 2-ten, 3-ten, 4-ten, and so on, which really helps them understand how numbers work and how to manipulate them.  The concept works really well with our straw-counting activity that I mentioned in this post, because he can *see* that 20 really is two tens.  RS includes activities to help them grasp the concept as well.  Here, he's building two tens with tally sticks (and again, I love it, because it's laying the ground work to show that each of those 10's is made up of two 5's) and then entering 6-ten on the abacus.

Phonics:  We're still on final consonant blends, reviewing and practicing for fluency.  He can pretty much read any of them, but sometimes he gets a little distracted and reads the incorrect vowel sound.  I'm planning to pull out some games next week to help with the review/practice.  I need to find my Rotten Banana cards--a fun review game that can be used for almost anything.  I don't know where I put them--they've been missing for a while . . . 

Science:  He finished his spider lapbook!  He had a lot of fun learning about spiders.  I just have a couple of pics--I'll post more in a few days.

Handwriting:  Still loving it, still frustrated that I won't let him sit down and do the whole book!  He worked on  Z, O, Q, G, and 2 and 3 this week.  

Together

Bible:  Our big hands-on Bible activity this week was with our lesson on Ruth.  We talked about how God provided for Naomi and Ruth and blessed them by allowing Ruth to be King David's great-grandmother and an ancestor of Jesus.  After we talked about how much hard work it was for Ruth and Naomi to get and prepare food, we made bread, pointing out how much easier it was for us to do it with a mixer, a gas oven, prepared flour, etc.  They really enjoyed it, and it was a great tie-in to a science experiment we did with yeast a few weeks ago.  We had put yeast, warm water, and sugar into a bottle and then waited and checked later to see that the yeast had given off gas as it multiplied, inflating the balloon.  I was able to explain how the yeast did the same thing in the bread dough to make the bread light and springy, and they got to see the dough rise. And it was a yummy snack!

Adding ingredients

Punching down the dough after 1st rising

Separating dough into balls for rolls

After final rising

Fresh out of the oven

Taste testing

Yum!

It was definitely a hit!

We also finished reading aloud The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett and began The Enchanted Castle, by Edith Nesbit.  They *loved* The Secret Garden, which surprised me a bit (but also thrilled me, since it was one of my favorite books as a child!), Connor especially.  We had some really good talks about all the secrets that are revealed in the book and how many things and people change and grow just like the garden.  We've just gotten into The Enchanted Castle, but I think it's going to be really good.  I was a bit nervous at first because of the vocabulary (it was written in 1907), but they seem to be hanging in there pretty well.  I'm always amazed at how much they just absorb.  

We've also started Little House on the Prairie (this is our school time read aloud; The Enchanted Castle is for bedtime), which, believe it or not, I never read as a child.  We finished Little House in the Big Woods a couple of weeks ago, and we've enjoyed the first few chapters of Little House so far.  I love reading aloud with them!

Our Week in Review, 9/27-10/1

Our schedule and routine changes (and stronger consistency with discipline!) have paid off this week.  And lots of prayer, too, which I'm convinced is the biggest factor.  God is good!  We finished all of the planned work every day but one (and finished all of it by 1:30 or 2:00), and that one we didn't finish because we took a trip to the zoo in the afternoon.  School has been much more pleasant this week, and I've gotten more done with Brennan too.  I'm so thankful!

Connor
Math:  He worked this week on 9's addition facts.  I was a little worried that he'd struggle a bit since it took him a  little longer to "get" adding 10 to a number, but he picked up on it right away.  RS teaches the 9's facts by having them "complete the 10" (9+4, take one from the 4 to make the 9 a 10, then add the remaining 3 to get 13), and I'd modeled this for him a few times before, so he caught on right away.

Reading:  We're still working on The Family Under the Bridge.  Between our had-to-return-it-to-the-library hiatus and not getting it done a couple of days, this book is taking us a reeaaalllly long time!  It's good, though.  I think we have one chapter left.  Maybe we'll just sit down and read it tomorrow!

History:  We're learning about the Middle Kingdom of ancient Egypt this week in SOTW chapter 12.  He was rather captivated with the story of the Egyptians running of their Hyksos interlopers and reenacted it with Legos later on. *grin*

The Egyptian princes preparing for battle!

Narrations have been going much more smoothly this week, I think as a part of the general more peaceful atmosphere.  For our hands-on project, I'm planning to make sock monkeys with them (which will look nothing like traditional sock monkeys!),  one of the activities suggested in the SOTW activity guide.  (The first section in the chapter is about the Egyptians conquering Nubia, and the Nubians brought monkeys as part of their gifts/tributes to the Egyptians).

Science:  The boys saw live snails for the first time (I think!) last weekend and were fascinated, so guess what our current animal is to study for science?  Yup!  We read from our animal encyclopedia and he began a notebook page.

Grammar:  He started learning about verbs this week with FLL lesson 52.  He can just about recite the pronoun list from memory--I need to remember to review it with him!

Spelling:  (alternates daily with grammar) We finished step 1 in AAS level 2, which was almost all review.  He's got the rules down pat as far as reciting them, and he caught himself making a mistake while writing words from dictation (and it's one that I've noticed in his independent writing), so he seems to be applying them as well.  On to step 2!

Latin: He finished SSL chapter 16 this week, and Wednesday night he informed our pastor that he's a shepherd ("pastor" is Latin for "shepherd").  *grin*   He also drew a picture of a polar bear (using Learn to Draw: Animals from Walter Foster) that he wants me to copy and send to several people and labeled it "Ursa" and "Ursa means bear in Latin."

I LOVE how much he's enjoying Latin and I hope I can find a good follow-up program for when we finish this.

Copywork/handwriting:  (alternates daily with Latin)  He's been wanting to learn cursive for a while, so when I got Brennan's handwriting book, I picked up a cursive book for Connor.  He's using Handwriting without Tears as well.  I really wasn't set on sticking with HWT for cursive--I like the approach, but it's not very compatible with other workbooks/paper, and he'd do fine with another style.  But when I looked at the other cursive handwriting books available, the pages looked so *busy*.  It was hard for ME to figure out what he was supposed to do, and most of them didn't "talk" you through the steps like HWT does, at least as far as I could tell.  The white space on the HWT pages was like a breath of fresh air!  Anyway, after a little rebellion over mom's insistence that he do the work carefully and correctly (which I'd been getting rather lax on with copywork, I'm sad to say!), he's doing great.  And the emphasis on taking care with his writing has been easy to transfer and use to remind him to write neatly in other work.


Brennan
Math: He focused on the concept of zero and continued with odd/even in RS A lessons 15 and 16.  Here he put the cards in number order (he caught his mistake a few minutes later!) and "labeled" them with the colored tiles according to odd or even.  I was supposed to guide him into seeing the alternating pattern, but he picked up on it on his own.

Phonics: He's still "officially" working on final consonant blends, but he can pretty much read them all, and his reading is starting to take off beyond what we're working on in the book.  He asks questions all the time about what words or letter combinations say, and much of it seems to be sticking.  I love this part of teaching them to read!

Reading/Literature:  We read one of the stories in Poppleton in Fall by Cynthia Rylant and he narrated it back to me; we also did a narration for his lapbook on Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock by Eric Kimmel.

Handwriting:  I just about have to pry the book out of his hands to keep him to doing only two or three pages a day!  He LOVES it, and he's doing really well.  I've noticed a sudden change in his coloring and drawing too--much more attention to detail and working carefully.  He drew this just the other day:

I love the details--the windows, the smoke coming out of the chimneys, the flowers . . . it just makes me smile.

Science:  He's almost done with his spider lapbook!  Only one or two more mini books to go.  Thankfully.  I'm tired of looking for pictures of spiders on google and having to scroll past pictures of people's spider bites--ick!

Together
Bible: This week we learned about Gideon and Samson.  They played a game pretending to knock down the idols in Israel (I got it from Little Hearts for His Glory), by knocking over blocks with sock balls, which was great fun, but I forgot to take pics!

Also this week, Connor discovered the idea of highlighting in his Bible.  So he just *had* to go through and highlight all his memory verses. *grin*  It was a great, totally independent/self-led way to review his verses and practice finding books and verses in his Bible.

It's been a good week--soccer games tomorrow!