Oct 21, 2011

Weekly Wrap Up #6

This week in first grade...
We are half way through our fall trimester!  
In Poetry..
Our poem of the month is pretty simple, and I think we've got it down (pantomime included) so we skipped it this week.  For our poem of the week we read Poem.  I've had this book, and have been reading this poem in particular to my babies since 2004.  It's finally grown on me.  (that's the reason I picked it to read to them)  Ava isn't on board yet.  She wasn't a fan.  I'm not worried, she'll come around!  Our silly poem was as silly as ever, but it was gross too.  That is so perfect for my little ones.  They loooove some raunchy humor.  For our activity we wrote our own rhyming poem in the same fashion (involving babies eating things that rhyme with ew) and drew some pictures to accompany the words.  Ava was so very very proud of her gross poem.  Delightful!

In Social Studies....
We talked about Africa.  This was our first official week exploring the continent boxes!  Ours are a work in progress.  I figure that every year I'll try to add more until we're satisfied.  Our Africa box contains:
~A wooden elephant that was a childhood gift that a missionary brought from Africa
~South African penguins
~A coin from Sierra Leone (1964), and  East Africa (1937)
~A few animal cards
~Children of the world cards
~Anansi the Spider, an Ashanti tale from Ghana
~A papyrus painting given to us from a family member who frequents Egypt
We read the story, talked about all the many types of diversity in land, animal, and people, practiced how to say hello in like 30 languages, and went over important facts about the continent.





In the Kitchen..
We read a fairytale about the little mermaid, then made the corresponding recipe Seaweed Stuffed Shells. (just regular stuffed shells with spinach. Supper yummy)    "mom, did you just walk down to the ocean all the way in California and pick up the shells for lunch?"  Was a frequently told joke.  Ha.   They worked hard and really enjoyed the results.



In Music...
We danced to videos of African tribal music!  Thanks to the play list feature on youtube, I was able to set up around a dozen examples of different traditional pieces.  Our computer is networked with our television so this worked great.  We watched examples of wedding dances, war dances, dances with out names, and children's performances.  Ava was impressed with the emotion expressed.  She though it was ..."cool how happy they all sound, but it looks like life might be hard for some of these people."


In Art..
We discussed ancient Egypt, and their love of cats.  Using this as a guide we drew, colored, painted, then decorated Cat Portraits.  We had some very elaborately costumed royal cats!



In Art Study..
We explored the Repast of the Lion, by Henri Rousseau.  Ava's final assessment was that she ..."liked it, but everything makes everything else seem the wrong size.  It's hard to tell what's happening."  I thought it was just disturbing, but this isn't about what I think!


In Science We..
Didn't get to it... Ugh.  I'm surprised I got as much done as I did.  Sorry science.  (more on this later, hopefully!)



In Math We...
Played math games!!  Due to circumstances that are Entirely my fault I didn't have ANY of the manipulatives that I needed for either of this weeks lessons.  I didn't want to skip ahead too far, so like science, math also got short sided.  Honestly this worked best for our family this week, but I do feel bad.  Math and science are very important subjects to me.  Ah, well. 





So admittedly there were a few times this week that I felt a bit like a homeschool failure, but looking back on everything we did (the things I post about, and the things I don't) I somehow managed to pull of a pretty full week.  True, math and science got the boot, but seriously I wasn't feeling it this week, so over all.... I am so happy to be a homeschool family!

1 comment:

Phyllis said...

Looks like a very lovely week to me. The weekly wrap-ups are good for me to see that things are getting done on those weeks when we felt as if not enough got done. We had one of those weeks this week, too.

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East Bay, California, United States
I am a thirty something mother of three. Hoping to raise my little ones to love the the slower things in life.