Week in Homeschool #10

The theme of the week : 

Leaves. 
~We read:
Leaf by Leaf: A collection of poems from master poets.  We started reading this a few weeks ago (for Fall) and continued again this week.

Leaf Jumpers: Rhyming text, and still pretty informative.  Ava asked how I find such pretty books.
Why Leaves Change Their Colors:A nonfiction book about leaves changing colors.  Some of it was a little over their heads, and other parts seemed to be too childish.  I didn't really like this one.  But we did learn that yellow and orange is already there, just hiding behind the green.

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf: A classic, and a favorite.  It's simple, pretty, and still informative.

Our Letter of the week:

 

  F
~Snack: Fig bars
~Flower Fairy Poem: The Song of the Fuchsia Fairy
~Book :  Frederick I also found this on you tube, which is super great.

 Our Poem of the Month:

 

Hallowe'en 
It's coming along.  There's some tricky wording, but I know that they'll be ready in a few weeks for their big reveal!

In Art:
This week we played with leaves. 
First we dipped them in beeswax.  We've done this before, and really like the results.

Next we laminated them.  This was very rewarding.  I'm interested to see how they hold up.  But for now, they're super pretty hanging in our window.

Art Study:
 we examined  Pinata, by Diego Rivera.

Cyrus: "I think that there's a lot of candy.  It reminds me of our friend's parties.  I think pinatas are fun.  I just want to grab all that.  And I wish the streamers, and the candy were falling out of the picture."

Ava: "this picture reminds me of a party at our neighbors house because they were Mexican, and they parties with big pinatas full of candies.  I like the nighttime sky, it's full of colors and it's pretty and I like the flower at the bottom of the woman's hair, and  how she put a pink ribbon in her braid."


In History:

 We began reading about the ancient Indians of the Indus Valley.




In Math:
Ava:

Continuing with review we:
*found doubles and near doubles on the addition table
*covered the even and odd rules for adding
*tens, and hundreds
*mentally adding
Ava's not a huge fan of review.  But she has loved the timed review sheets, which she charts her time, and charting the daily weather highs.

Cyrus:

*value of dimes
*ways to make 15 cents
*rearrange groups into tens
*estimate number of a collection
*introduce the term half
*cut figures in half

In Music:

  I never actually mentioned Debussy to my children, but I did use a collection of his piano solos to relax our home every morning this week.  Thank you Claude!

composer cards, (Montessori Materials)


In Our Nature Journals:
Cyrus: 
Giving Cyrus different materials to create with did get him excited, but I'm not exactly sure that this is what I had in mind.  It's a car park in front of a brown house with a street, and some grass.  "that's what I see in nature!"

 

Ava: 
with pumpkins on her mind, Ava wanted to try out a jack o lantern plan.  She's told me that this is no longer her plan.

In Peace:


We read a little about ancient India this week, so I thought it would be a good time to talk about Hinduism.  I read a small passage, from this book. 


Field Trip:  
We walked around our neighborhood collecting leaves to examine.  There was a drizzle, and a chill in the air that made everyone feel like we really were experiencing fall! 

We had our first rain of the season this week!  That was super awesome, and it made our house feel cozy and full of autumn cheer.  That also made it very tricky to make it through this week.  It's hard to think about school when you just want to curl up on the couch, or in bed and drink tea.  We did a lot of that too!  We are taking next week off, which is also super awesome, and also made it harder to get through our week!  Honestly Friday was just a spelling test, reading Harry Potter, and playing with leaves.  I'm excited to have our first school break this year.  We made it through our longest stretch of schooling with out breaks that we'll have this school year.  So pat on the back to us! 

Please forgive the bizarre formatting errors in this post.  Blogger and I are not getting along, and I'm too tired to fight with it any more!