C week wrap up....

This week in our homeshcool we covered the letter C...

In  Poetry...
~We read the Song of the Columbine Fairy as our poem of the week.
~We started our new poem for February, The Return, by Barbara Juster Esbensen

 Our themes of the week...
 Groundhogs Day, and Winter turning into Spring.  We read A Garden for Groundhog, an adorable story of an older couple and their little farm.  They have too much zucchini, which they try to pawn off on their local groundhog.   Inspired by the plight of the farmers we made zucchini bread, and zucchini- carrot -apple muffins.  We explored Groundhogs day by reading Groundhog Day, Groundhogs, and What Makes a Shadow.

We experimented with shadows making shadow puppets,  and shadow profile art.

After we took turns tracing each others profile we each had our own take on how to finish.  Ava filled hers with beauty and color, I kept mine simple filling the shape in with shadow (I had two, one from Cyrus, and one from Ava) , and Cyrus drew a few lines before declaring himself  "done".

In Math....
 Our profile art worked seamlessly with one of our main topics in math this week, the introduction of the concept of half.  We discovered new geometric shapes semicircle, pentagon, octagon, and trapezoid (along with some more familiar shapes).  After we found ways to cut these shapes in half Ava decided to make some "Half Art".




















We continued to work with pennies, nickles and dimes.  Associating dimes with 10s and nickels with 5s using the abacus.  Sol thought this work was AWESOME.  It was his first time exploring the math manipulatives.

We turned our work with half into an estimating game.

 




















In Art Study...

 

~We explored The Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks.  Ava had an interesting perspective on the animals, she thought the wolf was very intimidating, and didn't get the feeling of peaceful union that the artist was aiming for.  I really couldn't disagree with her, personally the lion and the cheetah creeped me out a bit.

This was another great week in our first year of homeschool.  I have immersed my self into the world of curriculum set up for next year, First Grade!  There are so many possibilities, and so many choices to make.  I think I've got everything settled, all that's left is to fine tune the social studies areas.  I discovered online used book websites, and fell in absolute love.  I saved so much money, and have so many packages to look forward to in the next few weeks, I can hardly contain myself!!!  Good fun.