Uhhh, been a while. What did we do??
Oh yeah... We studied BOATS.
We printed off some boat flash cards from homeschoolshare and played go fish to familiarize with different names and styles of boats. Then we did a classification sort, which boats use sails, motors, paddles, steam, etc.)
We read about: tug boats, "I'm Mighty", fireboats, "Fireboat, canal boats, "Mr. Gumpy's Outing", schooners, sailboats, and cruise ships, "Toy Boat", and more that I can't remember right now. But I tried to spend more time reading fictional/picture books that we could indirectly learn from instead of the picture non-fiction so we wouldn't get bogged down with too much info.
We learned the parts of a boat, stern, bow, starboard, port, hull, mast, etc. and labeled our little people pirate ship.
Matty built a boat out of old diaper and wipes boxes, masking tape, wrapping paper tubes, packaging bubbles, and construction paper. He named it the "Comit' (comet), complete with flag and scope. He worked really hard on his boat and then we took it to the lake by the Northgate apartments to see if it would sail. It floated! But it was a little top heavy and tipped over after awhile in the wind. Katie got to sail a boat Matty made for her too. Funny thing, right before the Maiden Voyage Matty started looking a little nervous and asked if he could take his blanket with him. I told him no, of course, since he'd need his hands for sailing instead of carrying around a blanket. But then I realized he thought he was going to have to test out his boat with him IN it. Yikes! What kind of mother would I be? There are snakes and gators in that lake! He was much relieved to just sail the boat on its own.
We did an experiment with playdoh and pennies. I taught matty about the scientific method and we made hypotheses about whether or not he thought the play doh ball and penny would float. They don't. But if you shape the dough into a boat it can hold air and it will float. If our play doh wouldn't have gotten so soggy we might have floated the penny on top. Next time we'll use clay. We had fun making a big gooey mess in the sink though and recorded our findings and observations.
We played a fun game called, "Row your Boat". We all sat on the sofa like it was a boat and threw a bunch of pillows on the ground next to it. The person in the front of the sofa was the "captain" we sang "row, row your boat" and then the captain says, "(name) overboard!" and the person captain calls falls out of the boat (onto the pillows). Then the rest of us have to say "1-2-3-4-5 your alive!" And reel our drowning shipmate back in. Then that person becomes captain. Katie had a lot of fun with this game too.
We also did some workbook stuff, learned that there have to be two parts to a sentence, 1. a naming part, and 2. an action part. We learned skip counting by threes and practiced finding them on a one hundreds chart and chanting them in the car. We learned about even and odd numbers and how to tell the difference. Demonstrated with unifix cubes that evens have a partner, odd numbers when grouped by twos one is left without a partner. He picks up on all the math stuff so quickly it never takes long to teach these concepts.
Since Katie's got letters and letter sounds down pretty good, we are working on number recognition with her. "What number is this? Let's trace it with our finger." She's getting good at counting and can almost do to 20, but she gets to 18 and then says, "beleventeen" and starts over again at 12. Its so cute - I don't know if I want to teach her what comes after 18 - I'll miss my new favorite number, "beleventeen." :)
For our writer's workshop this week Matty began a book, "How to Trap a Bad Guy". He's compiling all the pictures he and Tyler draw at church about trapping bad guys and writing descriptions of his evil design next to it. It seemed like a natural way to get him to do some creative writing- describing his engineering ideas. He's writing.
Also introduced the kids to Berenstain Bears and Amelia Bedilia at the library. Matty thinks they are hilarious and will read them on his own. I read the kids "The Littles" on the way to San Antonio. Matty loved that too and he wanted to read another book in the Little's series this week.
This week we're using our weekend vacation to Sea World to jumpstart our study of oceans and sea creatures.