Thursday, September 27, 2012

Sonlight K - Week 5 Day 4

One of Munchkin's favorite part of our schooling is traveling the world learning about other cultures.  This week we have been learning about the Vikings and each day, as soon as we start school, he dresses up in his homemade Viking costume...
...and listens attentively as we read about the clothes the Vikings wore, the food they ate, their homes, and finally, today, their ships. He loves it! And today and yesterday, Ditto even sat in on our lessons to read about what the Vikings ate and their ships.

To celebrate our week of learning about the Vikings, after I put Ditto down for his nap, Munchkin watched Lyle, the Kindly Viking. Then, while I was eating lunch, he came to me all on his own and asked if I would show him what Viking letters looked like.  I found this image and he wrote and drew this picture...
It has been a fun Viking week!

For our language lesson today (Lesson 73), I read Munchkin The Snow Man by Mildred Plew Meigs and then asked him to retell it to me.

He had such a tough time with this.  He kept asking me if he could just read it because he couldn't remember anything about it.  I told him we would just take a little break and try again later today or tomorrow.  (We'll see what I can come up with to help him understand how to do this better.)

In math today, Munchkin was introduced to fractions...
half
put together is a whole
taken apart is half
and then we enjoyed a delicious snack and...
...saved the seeds for a future math lesson
Number writing practice (we each circle our favorite and discuss why they are our favorites - we both liked all  number 16s)

this week we are asking ourselves, "Do all apples have the same amount of seeds? Does each half of an apple always have the same amount of seeds?" Throughout the coming days, we will be eating 9 more apples, recording the seed information, and then graphing our findings to answer our questions
 In All About Reading, we worked on the "nk" blend.
 And we finished our day with a little math review...
Short bead stair memorization work
 And finally, Munchkin worked with some Montessori materials...teens board. This is very easy work for him but I just wanted to make sure I didn't make any assumptions as far as his understanding of numbers.



Meanwhile, Ditto did not take a nap today so he joined us for some of our school time today. He kept very focused and busy by working on these Halloween/Fall pattern cards and manipulatives.  I am just working on matching with his right now and later will begin to work on continuing the pattern. 
Another great day!

My hubby and I are heading to Chicago tomorrow (our first couples trip since before Munchkin was born...that's 5 years) and we don't get back till Tuesday so we won't have any school posts for a few days.  

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Sonlight K - Week 5 Day 3

This week we "rowed" Storm in the Night.  Both boys (and myself)  really enjoyed this book. Today we spent a great deal of the day doing Storm in the Night activities.

In order to cement his learning on onomatopoeia, we made this craft (on each raindrop I had him think up a descriptive word for weather sounds)
There is a part in this book where the Grandfather describes a man...I had Munchkin draw, based on the Grandfather's description, a picture of what he thought the man looked like.
He also learned about italics and their purpose and we went on a italics hunt throughout the book...I then read the sentence so he could hear the affect italics have when being read.
 He then wrote this story to try his hand at using italics...
The Viking Ship
Once upon a time there were six Vikings on a Viking ship. They wanted to go catch a people. And one said to another, "Which landmark should we go to? Should we go left or right?"
And the other pirate said to that one, "I think we should go to the left."
And the other pirate said, "I think that's a great idea!"
So they went left and they all went out of the ship onto the landmark. The chief said, "We should look for food and bury our treasure."
And then they hopped out of the ship and buried the treasure. But then one big army Roman soldier came. And the Vikings were dead. And the Roman Army took the ship from the Vikings.
And they lived happily ever after.
 THE END


He loves writing stories!
For art, he tried using sharp chalk on dark blue paper to make raindrops like in the book
 
For science, we learned about deserts...
We watched a very interested and short video about fennec foxes...
...and then for a special treat the boys watched a Magic School Bus episode about the desert ...while eating popcorn...on the couch!
Great day!

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Sonlight K - Week 5 Day 2

We had a great school day today!  Among many other things, we went continued our journey through Sweden and learned more about the Vikings.  Today we learned about the clothes the Vikings wore.  Munchkin worked hard going around the house to collect what things he could to make himself a Viking costume...
Munchkin has all the necessary supplies: sword, axe, belt with buckle, wraps around legs, "pretend leather shoes", and cape. And a mean face (even though "he is a happy and nice Viking").
For our Saxon Math lesson today, I used some of our Montessori materials to help Munchkin gain a more thorough understanding of some math concepts.
We used the Short Bead Stair to begin to recognize quantities using colors (this will come in handy in future, more difficult math presentations)
Then he wanted to complete a worksheet to show off his skills (within two presentations he had memorized all of the colors and their corresponding quantities without looking)
Afterwards, we worked on a non-mathematics related activity (even though this is in his Saxon Math 1 Meeting Book)...
Here he is drawing a picture of a Fall tree (from memory)
His completed page. He decided to write a sentence about what a Fall tree means to him - "The Leevs chanj culer (the leaves change color).
Then we did a little bit of seasonal picture math (addition and subtraction) using leaf table scatter I bought at Target last year.

He loved it and was very good at it!
I also did a mirrored example on our whiteboard.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Mother Goose Curriculum - August Day

The boys had fun with the activities today...especially Ditto.
he loves these new "twistable" colored pencils we have (they are so easy to travel with too)
 He made a hammer "color-hunter" by coloring then covering the head with foil...
 

he really enjoyed cutting the foil...
...and using the rubber cement.
We played a game where I named a color and he had to look around the room, find the color, and hammer it...
Found yellow!
found orange!
He LOVED this game!
Found white!
and then my little Mozart needed to play a few keys...
We then played a movement game where Ditto threw this block and we had to do whatever action it landed on...



And lastly, we played a game. This was Ditto's first time playing a board game and he did "pretty" well.  I had to talk quite a bit with Munchkin about patience and then I promised him that we would play later the "right way".  I just focused on matching with Ditto.

Nevertheless, we all had fun!

Sonlight K - Week 5 Day 1

As requested by Munchkin, we began our day with History.  Today he received an introduction to the Vikings. After our reading he came up with a Viking costume...



We worked on math, reading, and developmental workbook.  That was about it for today because I wanted to focus on Ditto's school...so we spent the rest of the day doing some Mother Goose Curriculum...

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Sonlight K - Science Sunday

In order to get caught up on a few science experiments (and for Dad's help) we got caught up on our Science work this weekend.  We started by making a volcano with Dad...
Of course Munchkin wanted to add a vent to his volcano...

close-up of vent
the finished product...time to set outside to dry.
In the meantime we started our next experiment...observing the components of our soil...



Munchkin really liked shaking up the jar.

Jar being set out to begin the separation process...
While we wait for the volcano to dry and the soil to separate, we begin our third science experiment...observing leaf litter.

In the meantime...our soil begins to separate.

examining our leaf litter...
we were both hoping to find something living in our leaf litter...
...no such luck! Nevertheless, it was interesting.
Munchkin then spent a little time recording our experiments in his science journal
the next day, our soil had completed the separation process and showed just what makes our tomatoes, peaches, tangerines, green beans, and hopefully apples (in a year or two) taste so good...sand (the bottom layer is mostly sand)!
 In the evening, after our volcano had dried, the boys got to take turns making it erupt...






the boys loved this so much...they wanted to do MORE...out came the baking soda


the final hurrah.
 

happy boys!