Another fun filled week of learning

Monday was Labor Day.  The public schools were not in but our school was.  We had a simple day of reading, writing, and math.  I knew the girls would want something to do anyway or they would be bored.

For math Mackenzie has been working with money this week and last.  She is doing really well with counting it.  We have been using real money to learn with.  I found a couple of money games online for her to play.  We also played store!  We are going to continue with money until she can give correct change back.

Mackenzie's reading skills are excellent.  She has found a new passion with the Berenstain Bear Books.  She is also reading chapter books now.  I usually send her to her to a different room to read while I work with Lorel.  Then later in the day she reads to me or to Lorel out loud.  She needs help with a few words here and there.  I am very pleased with her reading ability.  She loves to read! 

This week Lorel learned how to count to 100 by ones and tens.  We are still working on counting by twos and fives.  She also learned to say the days of the week in order by singing them in a song.  We are working on the months of the year.  We are still working hard with her beginning to read.  She makes progress daily

We have started to learn the parts of speech.  This week we worked with nouns.  We watched the School House Rock video about nouns.  Mackenzie caught on quickly.  We made a list with 3 columns-people, places, and things.  Mackenzie highlighted nouns in sentences that I created.  We created a "noun town" poster board and labeled all of the nouns.  We had a lot of fun learning about nouns.

 

For writing, we continue to write in our journals.  The girls made a comic strip.  We have written a few letters.  This week we ate alphabet soup for lunch and found letters to create words.  Writing is the only subject that I feel like I have to force.  I have tried to create fun opportunities to write but it always seems like a hassle for the girls.  If anyone has any ideas for writing it would be greatly appreciated! :)

We made play-dough this week.  The girls helped measure the ingredients.  They did almost everything.  Who doesn't love play-dough?

This week in Science we learned about life cycles.  The girls created a life cycle using the play-dough we made.  Mackenzie made a tadpole life cycle and Lorel made a butterfly life cycle.  We also made a poster board with the life cycle of a spider. 

We learned about the 7 continents this week.  We colored a map of the 7 continents, played online games, listened to a continent song, and while playing catch with a world beach ball we had to name a continent when we caught it.  Next week we will start studying each continent in detail. 

This week for art we studied line.  We read Harold and the Purple Crayon.  We discussed the different types of line, made squiggle art, and created a crayon etching using line.  We studied the use of line in Van Gough's "Starry Night" and Munch's "The Scream".

Tuesday we went to see the woman's soccer team play at the University of the Southwest.  It was a lot of fun.  The girls were quite impressed when the players bounced the ball off of their heads!  We signed Mackenzie up for soccer so I thought it would be good for her to watch some games.  Mackenzie's season starts September 18th.

This week the girls had the chance to watch and listen to Grandma Stewart play the clarinet.  I thought it would be fun since we have been studying instruments.  We got to watch her through Sykpe.  Thanks Grandma Stewart we loved it!

We found this really cool place where there are wild prairie dogs living.  Right when we turned onto the campus of University of the Southwest there is the huge field and they put up a sign that says prairie dog crossing.  So we started to watch for them and we spotted a few.  After we looked a while we saw tons of them.  We have only seen prairie dogs in a zoo and never out in the wild!  It was so neat and probably the best experience of the week!