Friday, April 3, 2015

March

In science we are learning about the surface of the earth.

This unit starts off showing how much water covers the surface of the earth by playing a game.
First they hypothesized how many times their finger would land on water and how many times it would land on land. They took turns spinning and throwing an inflatable globe. Then we recorded where their right index finger landed (land or water).

After twenty throws we recorded our findings. Their results were 7 times land, 13 times water, which translates to about 35% land, 65% water.

 
Then we read that land makes up 1/4 of the Earth's surface, meaning land really takes up about 25% of the Earth's surface and water takes up about 75%. 



For book club this month we read Follow My Leader, by James Garfield. It's about a boy who becomes blind after a friend accidentally throws a firecracker towards him. Jimmy has to learn how to do everything all over again, from getting dressed to learning to read braille (which we briefly learned about). He also gets a guide dog named Leader, who ends up giving him the confidence he needs realize he can still see, just not with his eyes.


During one of our teatime Tuesday reading sessions, Caitlin decided to see if she could walk across the living room with her eyes closed and her hands out, the way Jimmy did when he first learned how to walk around after losing his eyesight. She fell and hit her head!

We recently found out that one of our favorite gym classes is still in session. J & C participated in a few classes a couple of years ago but we stopped going. And now it is part of our rotation again. They played a few games including dodgeball and capture the bowling pin. Jayden got to be team captain because it was his birth week. 








Jayden is also part of a writing class. In the month of March he worked on comma placement and essays. 
For the second class he worked on apostrophes in relation to possessives and contractions. They also touched on the differences between homonyms, homophones, homographs, and heteronyms. Finally, the studied the format of a business/formal letter by reading an example and writing a reply to it using the same format.





Both kids also took a nature writing class (Juan took them so I have no pictures!). According to them they read a book called "The Curious Garden" by Peter Brown.  They made nature journals, talked about life from the perspective of animals and trees, and went outside to observe the birds and look for signs of spring. The kids also learned about the famous botanist Linnaeus. They sketched their own plant, named it, and described it.

I don't take many pictures of math or LA because it's pretty dry stuff, but both kids have completed the first half of their textbooks.

Jayden's math
Since Caitlin is technically a kindergartner I didn't think she would want to work as hard as her brother does at school, so I never ordered the second textbook required for her curriculum. But she is really doing amazingly well, trekking right along with no signs of wanting to slow down. So for the month of March we worked on reviewing concepts while we waited for our new book to arrive.

For history we finished our Ancient Greece History Pockets. For some reason, this is the only picture I have.

And finally we joined our friends in a fun filled afternoon at a skate park with other homeschooled kids. They were filthy and exhausted by the end, a sure sign of fun times!













Miscellaneous pictures for March include:

Sensei Dean gives the kids a board to break on their birthday at karate class. Here is Jayden breaking a board.




 We went to a friend's birthday party. We played dodgeball, capture the flag, and lasertag!

 Here they are playing with little creations they made from legos, along with minecraft figures.


And now I'm all caught up!

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Jayden is 9!

My amazing, awesome, wonderful, fantastic son is now 9 years old, 1 year away from double digits, as he likes to remind me.
 
Playing charades
 
 We went out to his favorite local diner for breakfast, per his request.
  Then we surprised him by heading to a local pinball arcade.




The best part was some of our awesome friends joined us to celebrate his birthday, which he totally loved!








He wanted a Batman cake that "looked really cool" but couldn't have "too much frosting, because that's gross and gives me a stomachache, mom!" We go to the farmers market every Sunday and always stop for baked goods at Frost This Cakes. We asked her to make a birthday cake with Jayden's requests and this is the awesome cake she came up with! It was DELICIOUS!







 



 I am so grateful for all of the people who helped make Jayden's birthday special! Thank you! <3