Yay, we finally made it to spring break! Even though I have been very busy deep-cleaning my house (which has been a disaster I've been trying to ignore for the past eight months, because there literally has been NO time for deep cleaning), it still feels so weird to have so much time in a given day. Whatever did I do with myself all day long before we started homeschooling?
We have switched gears this month from language arts to math. It has been a refreshing change! Our school days seem to go much quicker when our focus is math--not so many long projects and varied subjects to fit in. We've often been done with school by 1:00 pm.
Our block this month was taken again from Marsha Johnson's wonderful files. And this month, I've borrowed ideas from two great blogs, http://www.innateway.blogspot.com/ and http://www.homeschoolingwaldorf.wordpress.com/ . I've especially been grateful to have drawings to copy from both these blogs!
This has been such a fun block, and I've learned as much as Dallin has, probably more. Each week we've focused on a different mathematical process, for both review and continued learning. So this week was addition. Also, each week we've focused on a different sailing vessel from a different era of history and a different part of the world. This week was the Lateen from Egypt. I actually learned that Lateen was not the name of the boat, but instead refers to the type of sail. To lead into this block, Dallin and I have read two books from the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons and Peter Duck. Both are about kids in the 1930's having sailing adventures, one on a lake, and the next on the high seas with pirates, a desert island, buried treasure, and storms. Dallin has loved these books and is begging me to get him the next one in the series of twelve. The books also teach you a lot about sailing. It was the perfect lead-in to our math block!
To start the week, I told a story (Marsha Johnson's idea, from the files) about two boys in ancient Egypt who "accidentally" take their father's boat out for a spin on the Nile River and almost find themselves heading out to sea and eaten by hippos before being rescued. I actually wrote stories for each of the weeks this month--I'm pretty proud of myself for that feat!
We discussed what the boats were used for, which was mainly trading. We talked about some of the things that were traded, like dates and barley. The kids tried dates, and we actually made Date Oatmeal Cookies later in the week (which are really good, better than raisins--this from a person who hates dates!). We used the dates and the grains for counting and adding, and tied it into multiplication by showing how long it would take to add up a pile of barley grains one-by-one.
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| This is my boat. |
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| Here is Dallin's boat. On the facing page, I had him copy examples from some of the problems we did this week, both word problems and other. We continued work on adding numbers up to four digits, with carrying. I feel like he finally gets it! |
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| This was Sariah's boat. Pretty good for a four-year-old! |
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| We added in some science by learning about hippos (River Horses) and discussing their habits. Here was our pretty laughable attempt to model some hippos out of beeswax. I definitely need help in the beeswax department, but hey, at least we laughed alot! |
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| Every day we did word problems relating to the week's theme, as well as lots of problems in general focusing on the skills I wanted him to learn. We also reviewed place value quite a bit. |
We finished out our week by taking our first field trip since Preston was born. In honor of our sea-faring theme, we went to the aquarium, and had such a great time! I even managed all three kids by myself with no problems whatsoever. Preston slept in the wrap, and the other kids behaved unusually well.
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| I think they were looking at seahorses. |
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| Who knew that Dallin, my little sensory-quirky kid, loves to touch rays? I think he spent a good 30 minutes just here at the touch pool. Sariah had good intentions of touching them, but in the end she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. |
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