Weekly Wrap Up #14

This week in first grade...

In Poetry..
Poem of the Week~  Hiding Places.  A sweet poem about all the many places animals use to find warmth in the cold winter.
Poem of the month~ It Fell in the City.  The kids really like the repeating style of this poem, and seem to be very enthusiastic about memorizing it.
Silly Poem~  this week we read a poem about Guzzlesumps.  It's a nonsense poem that leaves you to figure out what you think a Guzzlesnump is.  Afterwards Ava chose to write her own poem.

A Gusolsnup

I love Gusolsnups.

Gusolsnups are mean!

Do you love Gusolsnups?

Gusolsnups can tell time.

Gusolsnup what time is this?

The end.

In Social Studies....

This week we talked about the first people of America.  The natives, the vikings, and the English explorers.  We talked a little about what brought each group of people here, and read stories about life long ago.  I read while we worked on our paper quilts. 

(the stories mostly came from the Core Knowledge series, with embellishments from me.  Core Knowledge isn't something that I highly recommend, but I have found them useful as a quick occasional guide.)

In the Kitchen..
Our school week stretched in to the weekend.  Matt had the kids help him make the paneer for our palak paneer.  Paneer is a very simple fresh cheese.  Pretty much you heat up the milk, add vinegar, separate the curds from the whey, squeeze, drain and form.  So simple, so delicious, and so fascinating to watch.

 

In Music...

First thing, I made a mistake last week when I started to introduce the instrument families.  That's supposed to be next trimester.  Whoopsie. 

This week, back on track we talked about some of the influential African American musicians through out our culture's recent history in honor of MLK's birthday.  I made a playlist on youtube of songs that I thought my children would like. 

(out of the 15 artist I chose, the hardest turned out the Micheal Jackson.  For some reason I seem to know nothing about his music.  yikes)

In Art..

We made paper quilts.  We we talked about different styles and patterns that we've seen, and how quilts have been used for so many years as a way to reuse materials and keep a home warm as well as beautiful.  We each came up with our own unique design.  Our new quilts now decorate our binder covers for this season.


In Art Study..

We explored a photo of Victory Quilt by Dorinda Moody Slade.   Ms Slade made this quilt after her four year journey from Texas to Utah.  I think that the years spent traveling impressed Ava more than anything else.  She told me she prefers to look at painting of  "views and pretty gardens.  Or, one of a live fairy."   Ava did like hearing some of the more colorful names of quilt patterns like "my grandmother's flower garden" and  "toad in a puddle".   Ava also thought this quilt may be better named  "My Father's Pizza Garden".

In Science We..
made Crystal Flowers!  (sorta) Our second experiment with the kit.  Because of my little mistake last week, we didn't have quite enough sodium acetate for the experiment.  Due to this, I had to change things up a bit.  As a result the crystal didn't exactly "flower".   (It was still very pretty, what ever you call it.)

In Math We... 
~Constructed the Cotter Tens Fractal.  To help further appreciate the 10 for 1 pattern of our number system.

This was such an exciting lesson.  We spent a large portion of our whole week dedicated to this Monster.  It was such a big deal that I'm writing a whole blog post about it!  More on that later.
Edit:  Here's the link to the biiig fractal post!

This week was everything I love about homeshcooling.  We took on a large project, worked as a family and 'school' was an all day, all week family event.  I love homeschooling.