weekly wrap up #17

This week in first grade...

 In Poetry..

Poem of the week~   Animal Crackers, illustrated by Jayne Dyer.  I love her soft watercolors.
Poem of the month~ We started our poem for February, Candles.  I like the imagery of warm candles glowing on a cold winter day, even if our days are not that cold or wintery.
Silly Poem~ It's Alright, in the Dark!  A poem about  being afraid at night in the dark.  One of Ava's options was to draw the scariest thing she could imagine.  She really surprised me with her art.  They both did.  All of her work before this has been beautiful, or silly.  I had no idea she could make such a scary picture.  Either of them.

In Ava's picture we see a green witch coming inside a dark house with her magic wand.  "Yes!" she says, as she realizes everyone is asleep.  A large monster with red eyes, horns, wings and a spiked tail is holding a shining sword, a can of glitter magic ("like a sleeping spell") and an evil pet poodle on a leash.  He's saying "Let's get to work!"  The work of scaring, and eating people.  His little pet in blue is saying "BOO!"

Cyrus's winged red mouthed monster is holding a flaming sword over his head.  It's dificult to see, but he added BOB in the dark area.  It was supposed to say BOO!, I just think it's adorable that his monster is saying "BOB".

In Social Studies and Art combined....

For the next few weeks we will integrate Social Studies with our Art and crafting.  We are starting our United States Binder. (a work in progress that I'll talk about later) Each week we will talk about 6 states.  Using coloring pages from here (after editing the size some), information from this website and, once it arrives in the mail, we'll start using this book.

In the Kitchen..
We skipped the kitchen this week!

In Music...
We skipped music this week..

In Art Study...

We explored The Old Violin, by William Michael Harnett.  This painting is remarkably lifelike.  It looks very much like a picture, and less a painting.  In Ava's words "ooooh, it look real.  It's a very realistic painting.  I like the violin it has so many colors.  This painting must have taken says to get it perfect, and a lot of sketches of it too."

In Science We...
Started to talk about Gravity, and Air is a Substance.  We were able to briefly play with the experiments, but were really unable to spend very much time with science this week.  Household viruses caused many shifts in our program.  I was able to pick up a lot of books for us to use next week when we go over the material again with fresh perspectives, and NO MORE COLDS.  (please)

In Math We... 
~ found the number of days in a year, and leap year

~ practiced trading quantities on side 2 of the abacus
~ worked with the math balance
~ used the terms balanced and level
~ started the Bead Trading game. (a solitary math game)

Our house was hit pretty hard with colds this week.  We were able to get a fair amount of school taken care of.  We haven't fallen behind anything that runs on a schedule, but we did have to cut out a lot of fun activities this week.  Thankfully we were able to make up for a lot of it over the weekend.

It's all about balance!