Weekly (??) Wrap-up

Hi all <<waves hello>>  I’m back.  I feel like it’s been forever since I last posted but it’s only been two weeks, so I guess that’s not TOO bad.   Of course, my last weekly wrap-up was a week before that.

We’ve been pretty busy.  Some school stuff (or at least educational in the broadest sense), some not.  The not stuff involved cleaning out the garage so there’s someplace to put all of Steph’s crap when she comes home from school for the summer, making changes to our school set-up (yep, again <sigh>), and organizing all my school games (I have 39 different games, that I printed, laminated and prepared for Georgie but hardly used because he never needed the practice, that I reorganized so I can easily use them for Vicki). 

The last posts two weeks ago were about our Fish study with 4-H Cloverbuds, including our field trip to the Pequest Fish Hatchery.  Lots of fun and very educational. 

We also learned about the Respiratory System.  This means we only have the Nervous System and the Five Senses, Genetics and a little bit of Reproduction to finish up our Human Body study.   I am trying to decide between electricity and space for our next topic.   Electricity because  Georgie received a Snap Circuits set for Christmas that I really want to break out.   Space because the kids have been playing a lot of space themed games lately.  We are scheduled to go to the planetarium with Cloverbuds in July so space may be better done then.

We have done lots of informal nature study in the past few weeks.  Spring has definitely exploded with color around here (despite frost warnings at night up until last week)…

we’ve been learning all about the different birds visiting, including a few new ones, like a rose-breasted grosbeak….

and a grey catbird….

as well as our favorites, like our red-winged blackbird.  It turns out we have at least two of these that visit regularly.

We also have what we think are house wrens building in a couple of our bird houses.

The kids both received binoculars in their Easter baskets so we’ve been looking at lots of birds while they learn how to use them, and how to look things up in the field guide.

The other field guide getting a lot of use around here, is the one for Insects and Spiders.    They have been searching the yard diligently every day for new bugs to make pets.  Since I won’t allow them in the house, they live in a big pot of dirt on the deck.  They’ve turned over just about every decent sized rock in the yard (including all the slate stepping stones) and I just love hearing my little girl exclaim, “awww, look at the adorable maggots!”.

They decided that they had so many bugs, they needed to sell them.  So, they started their own company, Bugs Inc., and made flyers advertising their services as bug babysitters and procurers of pets, that they planned to hang all over town.  When mommy showed little enthusiasm for hanging posters containing her cell phone number along with our last name, they decided they would sell the posters.  So for $1 you could get your very own poster, telling you how to buy a pet bug for just $10.  Add another $7 for a bug book, and our family receives a $5 discount.

 

We took a walk down to the river to see if we could find some different bugs, and to see if we could spot some of the peepers we would hear each evening.  We didn’t find either but Vicki had fun playing in the mud (Georgie was pouting because he got in trouble for pouring a bucket of water on me.  Lucky for him the bucket had a leak and I didn’t get that wet).  

Daddy picked up some more varieties of tomato seeds to get started, and the kids decided they wanted to plant something too.   After lots of deep thought and contemplation, George planted one pea and one cucumber. He named them Albert and Panner, and wrote out a schedule for taking care of them.
"What to do with my plant.
11:30 Water Albert and Panner.
1:07 Story Albert and Panner.
2:00 Story Them Again.
3:09 Water Them.
4:20 Music
5:00 Story"

Vicki planted a couple of cucumber seeds.  I’m still holding out hope that hers will actually sprout, but Georgie’s pea already has.

As part of our New Jersey study, we learned about Thomas Edison and took a trip to his laboratory complex in West Orange.   I will do the full write-up about that sometime this weekend but for now suffice it to say it’s a trip they may appreciate more in a couple of years.

Okay, since none of that counts as “school” <<insert eye-roll here>>, here’s what else we did the past few weeks…..

LANGUAGE ARTS

Vicki

OPGTR:  I’m giving up on OPGTR.  Vicki is still stuck on beginning blends and endless review is just not doing it for her.  I ordered All About Reading 1 and we will start it next week.   Even though she’s pretty good with CVC words, we are going to start at the beginning and work through the early lessons quickly.  I think the reinforcement with sounding out each letter will help since she has a habit of throwing random letters into a word – for example, pronouncing c-a-t as cart.

HWT K:  she is up to page 52 and has gotten much better with writing her name.  We’ve moved on from just writing her first name to writing her first and last names.   She is still likely to whine, and cry, and moan while doing it, though.  I will be returning to using the lined chalkboard more, along with the little sponges.  

ETC2:  On hold until she breaks through the beginning blends barrier.

George

HWT 2:  He is up to page 70.   After I made him do a whole second page for “forgetting” to write in lower case, he has been much better at watching his formation.   He did a couple pages that were all homonyms, so got some grammar in there too.

Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Spell and Write Gr 3:
He scored 100% of the latest spelling test.  The latest unit told about Washington DC, worked on capitalization, and rhyming. 

Evan Moor Daily Reading Comprehension Gr 4:  He is up to page 40 in this book.  All except one page he did well, any mistakes were ones he could explain his reasoning and we were able to discuss why a different answer was correct.  That one day it was clear he paid no attention to what he was reading.

The Wand: We finished the first week of Harry and the Lady Next Door.  He is doing better than I thought with the copywork, the dictation is still pretty easy for him.  This weeks activities included some narration, and learning about adjectives and adverbs.

Scholastic Analogies Gr 4-5: He’s having a little bit of trouble with these.  One day it was because he misread the directions.  I can’t really blame him because when I looked at them, I didn’t understand them either.  But we were able to figure it out, and he did well once he knew what he was supposed to do.  He is having a little trouble when some of the terms are unfamiliar.   So far we’ve run into gingham, beret, tam, and a couple of bird names.  I gave him a dictionary to use when he needs to figure out what a word means.

Evan Moor Daily 6-Trait Writing Gr 3:  We haven’t even finished the first weeks worth of these.  He did okay with the couple of days we tried.   I’m thinking about adding some writing using journal prompts, and letting him type in on the computer.

MATH

Vicki

Math Mammoth 1A:  Still working on addition, but almost ready to move on.  I’m going to be adding in a lot more games, and doing a lot less worksheets.

Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Math Gr 1:  Up to page 26.  Has worked on coin sorting, symmetry, ordinal numbers and graphing.

George

Math Mammoth (3B, 4A, 4B):  Georgie started division in 3B and found it “too easy, the is probably the easiest thing you ever gave me”.  So we may skip a few pages and move fast.   He’s also not having any trouble with fractions or place value but evidently they aren’t the easiest thing ever.  Whatever.

Beast Academy 3A:  up to page 61, which is balancing problems. 

Scholastic Algebra Readiness Made Easy Gr 4:  So far, there still easy but I can definitely see that they are getting harder fast.  He did make one mistake when he doubled 19 to 28.

Scholastic Solve the Riddle Math Practice Multiplication and Division:  He’s up to Riddle #6, although he is using his multiplication chart quite a bit.

Scholastic Logic Posters, Problems and Puzzles:  He is really enjoying these.  We finished up the garden themed puzzles and started flag themed puzzles (which of the four flags match the clues).  I have had to explain primes, squares, and cube-roots to him.

Human Body: Respiratory System

We finally got around to doing the next system in our Human Body study – the Respiratory System.   The kids really enjoyed this one since they were able to play with water and make a total mess.

We started off with the kids coloring pictures of the respiratory system, while I read from REAL Science Odyssey and our Science Encyclopedia.   Both colored pages from the Evan Moor Giant Science Resource Book, but George’s was a labeled diagram of the parts of the respiratory system, while Vicki’s was the heart and lungs to be added to our giant body poster.

We then read A Tour of Your Respiratory System (a cute book in a comic strip format, that covered the information quickly and simply, I believe they have them for the other body systems as well)….

and from our Scholastic Kids Science Encyclopedia.

I really wanted to build the model of the lungs using a 2 liter bottle, balloons and play-doh from Science Sparks, but no matter where I looked, I could not find our balloons.  I’m pretty sure we still have some around here somewhere……

Instead, we pulled out a couple of paper bags and the kids breathed in and out while holding the bag to their mouths.  The bags expanded and collapsed, showing how the lungs expand and collapse as we breath. 

 

Then came the fun, messy demonstration.  I found this activity in our Usborne Internet-Linked Children’s Encyclopedia.  We took a bowl of water, a 2-liter bottle full of water (which I found while gathering supplies for the model we could not do), and a bendy straw.  We turned the bottle upside down into the bowl of water, stuck the straw into the mouth of the bottle and blew into the straw to watch the water get displaced by the air.   The idea was to see how much air they could hold in their lungs.  The reality was they kept taking extra breathes so they could see how much air it would take to overflow the bowl of water.

They took turns doing this a few times since they thought it was completely hilarious.  It probably would have been smarter to do it outside on the deck instead of in the middle of my living room.

George then read on his own from Look at Your Body: Lungs and wrote in his “research journal”.   After each of our science or history topics, I am having him make an entry in his composition notebook.  I don’t tell him what to write, or correct it in any way.  I’m just trying to encourage him to write more.  .

4-H Cloverbuds: Fish

We had a great time learning about fish (along with other animals native to NJ) this month.

We started our meeting at the library by discussing the characteristics of fish.    With lots of discussion, we determined that fish:

-live in water – both fresh water and salt water
-have fins that they use to move through the water
-have gills instead of lungs
-have scales
-are cold-blooded
-lay eggs (mostly)
-eat bugs, smaller fish, and other small creatures
-not all fish have bones (sharks are among the cartilaginous fish)
-have a swim bladder that works like blow-up floaties to help the fish control their depth

We also discussed a little bit about the rules for fishing in NJ.  A license is required if you are between 16 and 70, to fish in fresh water.  No license is needed for salt water fishing.  There are limits to the size and type of fish that can be kept.

We then played a true/false trivia game.  The kids stood in a line.  When I asked a question, they would give a thumbs-up if they thought it was true, and a thumbs-down if they thought it was false.   I picked unusual facts and unusual fish for most of the questions, but some apply to local fish to prepare to our trip to the fish hatchery.  Here are the questions I used (answers will appear at the end of the post so you can see how well you would do).

T/F – A swordfish can swim as fast as a car.

T/F – There is a fish that will shoot spit to knock out it’s food.

T/F – Some fish can climb trees.

T/F – when you go fishing, the box that holds hooks and lures, is called a lunch box.

T/F – The primary food of trout is acorns.

T/F – A group of fish is called a flock.

T/F – the part of your fishing pole that holds the line is called the reel.

T/F – You can use a bow and arrow to go fishing.

T/F – A baby fish is called a guppy.

We then played a game that totally didn’t work, where I made bubbles using a bubble gun and the kids were supposed to pop them without using their hands, like they were fish going after bugs.  The gun didn’t work fast enough, there was no air circulation in the room so the bubbles went straight to the floor, and the kids couldn’t resist using their hands.  So, it was only a few minutes of the kids surrounding me jumping for bubbles before I called that one off.

Our next game went better.    The kids stood about 6 feet apart from a partner.  Each of them had a bucket, and each group had a stuffed fish.  They tossed the stuffed fish back and forth attempting to catch it in their buckets.   They had a LOT of fun with this one, even if most of them were pretty bad at catching the fish and a some of them seemed to be trying to hit their partner more than get the fish into their bucket.

We finished up with our craft – decorating fish shapes cut out of watercolor paper using dabber paints (the only kind of paints we can use in the library), markers and crayons.

For this months field trip, we went to the Pequest Fish Hatchery in Hackettstown.    The hatchery is run by the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife.  They raise trout to be released each year into the public waterways of NJ.

They offer structured programs for groups and the first program we did was Sensory Safari.   We learned about some of common animals found in New Jersey, including black bears, coyotes, striped skunks, red and gray fox, bob cats, white-tail deer, raccoons, great horned owls and barn owls.  

We learned about scat, including touching fake bear scat.  The kids were able to touch some pelts and see which animals felt softer than expected and which were coarser.  George also felt the need to smell all the different pelts (a big switch from his usual avoidance of strong odors).   We were shown some replica skulls and discussed what we thought they would eat based on the teeth. 

For many of the animals, our guide had recordings of the sounds they would make.  And of course, the kids had to join in on the howling, grunting, bellowing and squawking.    It was definitely a multi-sensory experience that hopefully taught the kids a lot.

  

We stepped right outside to the trout pool and the kids learned more about what they eat, why the bottom of the pool is concrete (they won’t lay eggs unless there is gravel and they don’t want them laying eggs there), and how to tell the difference between a Brook Trout, Rainbow Trout and Brown Trout.

We then took a walk up to the nursery, where the young fish are kept.   The fish are fed by truck and our guide had the kids stomp their feet and clap their hands to simulate the vibrations of the truck coming with food.  All the fish swam up and congregated in front of them, thinking they were going to be fed.

We finished up with Fish Fun Games.   The idea of the game was to have a couple kids as birds, and the rest of them as fish.  The birds would run around and attempt to tag the fish.  The fish could be safe by hiding under rocks (cardboard boxes) or by flowers (hula hoops) but could only stay for a count of 5.   At least that was the idea.  In reality, the kids ran around randomly, stayed on base too long, the two birds tagged each other, and Vicki cried because she couldn’t catch anyone.   Our guide attempted two rounds before giving up on it.  

 

We finished up by feeding the trout in the pool out front, and visiting inside the education center.    The trip was a lot of fun and very educational, but I think it was bordering on too much structured time for our gang. 

Answers to Trivia:

True – a swordfish can swim up to 50 mph.  I realized after that this question was awfully vague and could use some rewording.  A car can drive anywhere between 0 and 120 mph if you want to get technical about it.

True – The Archer fish spits at bugs to knock them into the water to eat. (I showed the kids a picture and then told them “no spitting!”)

True – There are actually a few fish that can climb trees.   The Mangrove Killfish found from Florida to Brazil, the Climbing Perch of India, the Snakehead of fish of Asia and Africa, and the Mudskipper found in Africa.  These all have various adaptations that allow them to breathe either through their skin or through specialized organs.

False – It’s called a tackle box.  (you wouldn’t want to eat worms and hooks for your lunch!)

False – Trout are carnivores and eat mainly flies and other insects.

False – a group of fish is called a school.

True.

True – bow fishing is legal in NJ.  You can bow fish for carp, eels and catfish.  Don’t forget to tie a line to your arrow so you can reel it back in.

False – although it’s common to use the term guppy for baby fish, a guppy is actually a specific kind of fish.  A baby fish is called a fry, a fingerling or a minnow.

2 Week Wrap-up

Another two week wrap-up but this time it’s not because we were so busy having fun and being productive.  This time it’s from being lazy and not getting much accomplished.  At least it felt that way.

We did no history, no science, no geography (although we almost went on a field trip), no art…. you get the idea.

We did manage a lot of nature study.  Partially because of the warm weather finally reaching New Jersey and partially because the kids have discovered a fascination with bugs.   George found a new friend, Dom, and while we let Dom stay in his room one night (in a tightly closed jar with a few air holes in the lid), the next day they had to release him back into the wild.  Dom appears to be a common black ground beetle according to our Field Guide.    George had a nice speech that he prepared for Dom’s release.

Vicki’s favorite creepy thing to catch is worms.   Those are not welcome in the house so she kept them in a big planter of dirt on the deck.

We learned about more of the birds we have visiting our yard….

I searched our field guide but couldn’t figure out what this guy is, looking online he’s maybe a bunting or a vireo, or maybe a specimen of another bird with more white than usual.  I’ll have to print out a picture and ask Grandpa Charlie.

towhees….

robins….

and red-winged blackbirds.

We learned about fish at 4-H (a full post about this will be coming next week after our field trip to the fish hatchery).

 

The kids also blew bubbles…..

and snuck the hose into the sand box.

As for our regular work…..I felt like we were getting into a rut again.  Just plowing through the worksheets to get them done.   I pulled out some games and extras for Vicki, while George was able to get back into puzzles, thanks to a Scholastic Dollar Days sale.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Vicki

Vicki is struggling a bit with OPGTR.  We are STILL on Lesson 50 after 3 weeks.  We already stopped ETC until she advanced a little more so I’ve been searching for some fun ways to review before trying to move forward again. 

I brought back her Word Book.  This is a three-pronged folder with pages that have blocks for each letter.  I write words on little post-its and any she can read, she can put in her book.   I made up a bunch of sight words and those with ending blends.  Once she can do those, I will add some beginning blends (which seems to be what she struggles most with).

I also pulled out our Hubbard’s Cupboard booklets again.  A lot of them feature words with beginning blends, and Vicki generally likes these a lot.

I’m also thinking of pulling out AAS1 and starting phonics back at the beginning to see if a different approach helps.

She is doing okay with HWT, although initially refused to do the “a” page.  I had her practice on the wider lines of the chalkboard before returning to the book.

She is doing MUCH better with writing her name.   Until today when she decided she wanted to change her name.  To “V”.  So all she would have to write is “V”. 

George

George is doing well with handwriting.  I can’t wait until he finishes his current book and we can move on to cursive.

He scored 100% on his spelling test for this week (we didn’t do spelling last week so only one word list).  This week’s lesson included punctuation.

Reading Comprehension is still going well.  There is an occasional question where he can’t decide between two possible answers.  When that happens, we discuss the wording and decide which is better.  One of the biggest things is telling the difference between a fact and an opinion.

One of the completely new things I picked up at the Scholastic sale for George was Analogies Grade 4-5.   So far he is enjoying them and they aren’t too difficult.  They start off with finding similarities between things on a list.   On a couple pages, we threw in some dictionary work since he didn’t know all the terms (not the page shown).

MATH

Vicki

Vicki is still doing one page of Math Mammoth and one page from Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners each day.   We are almost done with Chapter 1 (addition) in MM and will start subtraction soon.  I like the EMSS because it introduces a variety of topics.  This week she worked on Venn Diagrams, graphing, pennies and ordinal numbers.

I tried to shake things up with math this week by using more hands-on stuff.  She was having a little trouble with a MM page involving greater than/less than.   Since the page involved a addition problem on one side and a whole number on the other, I pulled out flash cards, Skip-bo cards, and made up index cards for the greater than/less than sign and the equals sign.  I would put out a flash card and a Skip-bo card and she would put the correct symbol in between.

We also used playing cards to practice the 10 facts.   I laid out the 10 card, then gave her two sets of 1 through 9 cards and had her pull out all the combinations that added up to 10.

I plan to look through MEP (which we have various parts of printed out from using it in the past) and the beginning pages of each Chapter of MM to find more fun games that we can do to work on math. 

I also pulled out the Judy clock to show Vicki time to the half hour this week.  

George

George on the other hand really likes his worksheets.   He was VERY excited to see that his algebra readiness and his math riddles were back this week.  He was less excited when he realized that the Math Riddles were now multiplication.   At the Dollar Days, I bought Algebra Readiness Made Easy in both 4th and 5th grade levels, and Solve the Riddle Math Problems – Multiplication and Division.   So far the 4th grade algebra readiness seems too easy for him but this book seems to get harder pretty quickly so we will continue along.

I also purchased Logic Posters, Problems and Puzzles from Scholastic.   The first of these involved looking at a poster of 4 gardens and answering questions to see which garden was the correct answer.  George had a lot of fun with these and loved it when he found the correct answer.  I did have to explain some terms to him since they talked about squares, prime numbers, arrays and 3 cubed.   This book also includes matrix puzzles, venn diagram puzzles and arithmetic puzzles.

He has completely finished MM 3A and we will be moving on to Division in 3B, in addition to working on Place Value in 4A (so far he finds it easy so we may move faster), and Fractions in 4B.

He is working on the balancing scales problems in Beast Academy.

OTHER

We didn’t do any Spanish in the past two weeks but they did both do a few pages from Evan Moor Beginning Geography.  Vicki is working on map symbols, while George is learning coordinates.