Summer Break -- Week Two

Good evening followers!

I do believe I was a bit out of my mind when I thought that I would have the time or the energy to blog daily about our summer activities.

I have since regained my senses and will be doing weekly blogs.

So, today ends week two and what a busy week it was.  This week we worked on the War of 1812, lines/line segments/ray/point/perpendicular lines/parallel v. non-parallel, cursive and the seasons.

Getting the kids interested in the War of 1812 presented a bit of a challenged but we worked through it.  As always, I pulled many of my resources from lessonpathways.com.   One thing I found particularly helpful was a War of 1812 glossary that I found here.  I simply copied all of the words and definitions into Microsoft Word and presented it to the kids.  For two days after we initially went over the information we played a trivia game, "Who/What Am I".  Not only was the a great way to help they learn/retain the information but it helped them with researching skills.  On the first day, the kids were a bit apprehensive but today they had a great time racing against one another trying to see who could find the answer first.

Our "Who Am I?" Trivia.  "What Am I?" ended up being much longer so I ended up just typing it up into Word.

The kids flew threw their geometry lesson so I decided to show them "math as art" and vice versa.  They learned about Piet Mondrain and they had the opportunity to create their own Mondrain-like masterpiece.  I found a blank matrix and information on Mondrain here.  They also took some time today to play the "Dots" game.

Much of our Science lesson was spent watching videos (ya for Youtube!), various reading comprehension activities and discussing new vocabulary.  When I initially began discussing the seasons with the kids they looked at me as though I had five heads.  After all, they learned everything they needed to know about the seasons before they entered Kindergarten....or so they thought. lol  We learned about the tilt and rotation of the Earth, the northern and southern hemispheres, solstices and equinoxes and how the seasons cause certain animals to migrate, hibernate or estivate (a term I am sure none of them had ever heard of before).  We also took some time to make sun catchers since the summer solstice is in five days.  :0)

This one belongs to Bryce.

Next week we are going to begin learning about the movement of American settlers westward, climate and lines of symmetry.  We are also going to start reading James and the Giant Peach.

I also want to take a moment to share a website with you (if I haven't before and I don't believe I have).  www.abctech.com  I love this site.  They are a pay site but they do offer some free worksheets.  I broke down and joined as a paid member and I am very glad I did, they offer so much.  Take a minute and check them out or if you are already familiar with the site, let me know what you think about them.

Happy Homeschooling!