Monday, November 2, 2015

Virtue

We are working on being helpful this week. I am trying to get the boys to see when tasks need to be completed without me having to ask them. If you see a wrapper, pick it up. If there are dishes on the table, put them away without me having to nag to get it done. So, this will probably be our virtue for a few weeks until I feel like we have enough practice.

Tea on Tuesday

More awesome poems for our tea time. I loved the one about the layers of a rain forest. I will have to post it, because it was perfect for little ones to understand, but ended with a deep thought.

Tropical Rainforest Poem

Dark and damp,
On forest floor,
Fungi grows,
mushroom

Wait, there’s more!
Bugs and bugs,
Of every kind,
I'll go on,
If you don’t mind…
Jaguars, and amphibians,
blue poison dart frog

The forest floor,
Where it begins...
Next level up?
The understory,
There’s a huge inventory,
Birds, and bats, and butterflies,
blue morpho butterfly

Bananas, tarsiers, meet our eyes,
Capuchin monkeys, boas, skinks,
The chocolate used in chocolate drinks!
Next level up?
You will see,
Is the great green canopy,
Not a place for cans of peas,
can of peas

Just the tops of tall, green trees!
Two-toed sloths, and maybe three,
Move so slow, you’ll agree,
Epiphytes!
Orangutans!
The colored beaks,
Of cool toucans,
And all those wise old, graceful trees,
Produce the oxygen,
Which we breathe...
Emergent layer?
Tops it all!
Sit up there,
You'll see it all,
The amazing forest,
Stuns and awes,
But people cut it,
With chainsaws...
chain saw

We hope it doesn’t all get wrecked,
It’s a place we must protect!

100 Book Challenge #53

We are almost through with The Penderwicks, and I am so sad for it to be coming to an end. I am really relieved that this is a series because I want to know more about this family. They are such well-rounded characters and you truly feel like you are making friends while reading about them. Greyson wants to read the whole series and I thought this might be a great way to spend some one on one time with him and read it together.

Image result for The Penderwicks

Geography

We traveled to Louisiana this week and stopped for Mardi Gras in New Orleans. We learned about the holiday and why the festival is celebrated. And we finished off with an amazing meal of fried chicken, Louisiana pasta, garlic bread and New Orleans Beignets. It was delicious!

Autumn Theme

Instead of working on a new FIAR book this week, Britton and I learned about Autumn. Since Britton has lived in Thailand most of his life, he really does not have a very good concept of what Autumn looks like. We read books about Autumn and Fall leaves. His favorite was Leaf Man and we ended up making our own leaf man. It's so much fun to see how long children can play without toys. He loved doing this activity.

Science

Greyson and Lincoln are having a wonderful time working through their chemistry lessons. This week, they had to run chemical and physical tests on three different powders to decide what they were.

One afternoon this week Britton and Lincoln pulled the science kit down and mixed liquids for at least two hours. They were playing so well together that I just couldn't interrupt them. At the same time, Greyson was teaching himself to play Beethoven's Fur Elise on the piano. It was a nice homeschooling afternoon.

FIAR- Albert (Greyson & Lincoln)

We have come to our last week of working through Albert and I am sad this book is finished. We have had so many fun lessons and learned so much just by reading a picture book. If you are trying to figure out a curriculum, I highly recommend FIAR. It has been my very favorite thing we have used so far.