Weekly Report - Week 6

Boy was this a lazy week! It was the week before our "pre-spring break", and we had very little to do anyway.

Math: We just did math games this week, since we finished MM1B last week. We'll start 2A after our break. We played Addition Solitaire from the RightStart Games book, did a few math computer games recommended in MM1, and did Personal Trainer Math on his DS.

Reading: We continued reading Charlotte's Web, though didn't get to it every day. I don't think Wilbur has met Charlotte yet...

Grammar: We finished up Unit 1 and did the unit test. Actually, we did half the test, because I didn't realize test 2 was part of the test. I thought that was just an extra test in case you bombed the first test. Whoops! Oh well. He aced the first test and I didn't bother with the 2nd test. :)

Independent Reading: Various library books including some Nate the Great, Amelia Bedilia, some random science books, and a Star Wars book.

Writing: Our passages this week were from Mary Poppins. This went pretty well for the most part. The last day's narration leading questions had to be gone over again (ie, reading the passage completely again and then asking the questions again), but then we were fine. It was an attitude issue.

Handwriting: Boy is this getting better! He did Joshua 24:15 on Tuesday. He had a bad attitude that morning and wrote horribly, so he got that copywork assignment again on Thursday, and it was very nice. :) On Wednesday, he did Genesis 1:27.

I bought StartWrite software this week so I can make my own copywork (I've been using some that I'd made with the demo a while back). It is very nice! I'm practicing my own handwriting, learning italic. :)

Spelling: We finished level 1 on Tuesday! Hooray! Level 2 is ready to go. :)

Read-Aloud: We finished Stuart Little and Little House in the Big Woods via audio books in the van. Finally!

Bible: We learned about Samson's life in a nutshell.

History: First, we finally got to a project we'd skipped earlier on... Cuneiform writing on a clay tablet. Here's what the Sumerians would have written if they'd played hockey:

Next, we learned about Hammurabi's Code. I'm surprised that anyone was willing to be a doctor in those days, since if a patient died during surgery, your hand would get cut off.

We also talked about Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac, and Isaac finding a wife.

Science: We started Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding this week, doing lessons A-1/B-1 and B-2. We discussed organizing things into categories (A-1/B-1) and distinguishing living, natural non-living, and man-made objects (B-2).

I had a talk about science with Tornado Boy the other day, and we are going to change direction for science, kind of doing a mixture of interest-led and BFSU. Probably more BFSU in the near future, and then more of the interest-led as we get further into BFSU. We have a plan laid out. I'll hopefully make a separate post about it soon!

Art: We drew a cow this week. They're so cute!

 

Music: We learned about Beethoven and listened to some of his music via a website made by the author of Math Mammoth: Piano Lessons 4 Children. She has several composer studies on the site, for free. Great resource! We also looked up Beethoven's 9th Symphony, 2nd movement on YouTube because Tornado Boy really likes that one. This caused me to think "Hey, why not play classical music on the stereo I never use?!?!?", so we did that Friday, listening to a good variety... various Canadian Brass, Empire Brass, Pictures at an Exhibition, Firebird Suite. I just stuck the 5-disc CD changer on random and let it go. Tornado Boy loved it!

I did absolutely nothing with The Brute this week, though he did read the word "STOP" at Publix and noticed his name on a store. I can see him working with numbers more lately as well. Of course, Tornado Boy keeps asking him questions like "What's 50 + 50?"

Oh, I should mention that we finished our week Thursday morning before 9am! Woohoo! We spent Friday morning cleaning, and afternoon was for planning science. We're taking all of next week off from school. We'll get the house cleaned top to bottom, I hope.

Wordless Wednesday: The results of a 6 year old's independent work

Weekly Report - Week 5

We're still trucking along! Looking forward to a break to deep clean the house in a couple weeks! My current plan is to school 6 weeks on, 1 week off.. year round. We may sometimes adjust that based on vacation plans and such, of course.

Math: We finished first grade math this week! Took the end of year test and everything. :) He only got one point taken off (out of 117) because he didn't say a math fact within the 5 seconds allotted, but he did say the correct answer. Before the end of year test, he took the chapter 7 test (yes, he actually enjoys tests). The funniest part was when he got to "What is the difference between 90 and 99?", he wrote the answer in a complete sentence, with a period! "99 is 9 bigger than 90." I was shocked, given the fact that he's not huge on writing in general. Definitely seeing improvement in the writing, thanks to the copywork and narrations and such we've been doing!

Reading: He finished Boxcar Children #1 and started Charlotte's Web. I think we did one narration this week.

Grammar: This week we worked on putting words in proper order to form sentences. He has no problem with this.

Independent Reading: Just did "anything on the library book shelf" this week. He read Star Wars a lot. I checked out a Star Wars book from the library today that is reading level 5.3, so we'll see if he reads that or not. It's probably a bit above him (he's reading around an early 4th grade level), but he might read it just because it's Star Wars (well, Clone Wars). I couldn't find any that were a lower reading level. Many of them were level 6+! I also checked out some Amelia Bedelia, Nate the Great, and some other good books that are definitely at his reading level or below. So he will have plenty for free reading next week - a good mixture of easy and difficult.

Writing: This week's passage was from Grimms' Fairy Tales - The Frog Prince. Day 4 is now narration, followed by copywork of that narration. I'm happy to say that he didn't skimp on the narration just because he would have to copy it. I was afraid he might. :)

Handwriting: He finished up copying the Judges of Isreal and also copied Genesis 1:1. His handwriting is getting quite nice! I love copywork!

Spelling: We only have 2 steps left to go in level 1 of AAS!!! Spelling has gone GREAT. The dictation of phrases is awesome, and he's been more willing to write more because he knows how to spell the words! He's really starting to apply the rules to his spelling. I'm excited to continue on to level 2 after our break! We'll finish up the last 2 steps Monday and Tuesday of next week, then just dictate phrases from previous steps for the other 2 days that week.

Read-Aloud: Slacker again. We started Stuart Little in the van today, and I checked out Little House in the Big Woods on CD today, so we can listen to that after Stuart Little. I've given up on actually getting that book read by me. :P

Bible: We learned about more judges this week, and how the Ephraimites couldn't say Shiboleth, so that was the test to see if someone was an Ephraimite.

History: We studied Abram leaving Ur, and the various things that happened after that, up to the point where he had Isaac.

Science: Slacker again. I'm changing course in science. We'll check out lots of library books, and maybe do some basic unit studies on an interest led basis. The first unit study I want to do is the weather section of R.E.A.L. Science Odyssey Earth & Space. I'm just trying to figure out when I'll do it - now or after I order second grade curriculum materials (and thus science experiment materials). I'll just have to see what materials I need. If it's all stuff I already have, we'll go ahead and do it during the next 6 week period.

We did get the Snap Circuits out yesterday. Tornado Boy had a fun time with those. I think he's up to around project #38.

Art: This week we drew a sheep! I drew the whole background scene. Tornado Boy chose not to do that. I'm not surprised. Now you will notice that he copied two sentences this week. The reason for that? Well, he was counting letters in each of the sentences, trying to determine the shortest sentence. It came down to a tie between two sentences. I said that since he was trying to copy the shortest sentence, he would now have to copy both sentences. I don't think he'll be counting letters again. ;)

I must say that partway through drawing that background, MY hand was hurting. I guess I need to strengthen my hand too. I don't write very often. Typing is more my thing! So the color pencil drawings are good for both of us!

The Brute's progress this week... As usual, still not doing anything formal or even on a regular basis, but he did ask to read a Bob Book, so we did Set 1 Book 2. He's so funny. We get to the word "cat", which he immediately recognizes and reads as normal. BUT... before turning the page, he had to sound out the word "cat" also, and by sounding out, I mean sounding it out very slowly, then a little faster, then a little faster, and then finally saying the whole word in a high pitched happy voice. It's pretty amusing that every.single.word must be read that way (even if he doesn't have to sound it out, as was the case for "cat"), and it just makes me want to bang my head against the wall, but I just reminded myself that he's a 4 year old. This is perfectly normal for a 4 year old. I didn't push him. I just let him do his thing and be 4. :)

Another thing he did this week was to start some basic addition. He's figured out how to add on his fingers between 1-3. So he'll do 2+1=3. He's just starting to get that concept. I'm thinking he'll probably be ready for RightStart A by next fall, if not this summer. I'm just trying to put it off, as I'm trying to put off anything formal with him. So far, that's going ok. He's not nearly as mature as Tornado Boy was at this age, especially academically. I think when he does get ready for formal school, he's going to do great though. He's an interesting little critter...

His imagination is really coming out now. We spent a lot of time tonight at dinner trying to figure out what "yens" was. He talks about the yens being far away and they're in a building. He has pronunciation issues, so I've been trying to figure out what he's talking about. I had him describe one to me tonight, and he went through a very elaborate description (one that Tornado Boy wouldn't have given at this age), and apparently the yens is black with white up on the front of its neck and down its sides and a bit on its ankles. We asked if he was saying penguins, and he said no. He also demonstrated that he can say "penguins" just fine, so that's definitely not what he's talking about. It finally dawned on me that maybe this is an imaginary creature! He had mentioned it Wednesday night on the way home from church, and now he's mentioning it again. This is the age that Tornado Boy had an imaginary hockey team, so I'll bet that's what the yens is.

Oh, The Brute did science this week, I guess. He looked at lots of pictures of sharks. He's into sharks lately. In speech therapy, he tells his ST how to make a shark out of Playdoh, and he has to say whether the "mouth" is open or closed (he tries to say "nouth"). Of course, clever little guy, he sometimes will say "teeth are closed" to avoid saying "mouth"!

ETA: After a good night's sleep, I figured out what a "yens" is... NUNS! I forgot to add in here that we watched The Sound of Music this week. The nuns lived far away (in Austria) in a building (an abbey). Though it threw me off that a "yens" would sink if you put them in water (as opposed to a penguin who swims). Guess who has never been swimming? Today I'll correct his pronunciation of that word. It's just a new word to him, and he probably didn't hear me clearly when I said what they were. I am still impressed with his color description. This child notices every little teeny tiny detail sometimes!

Wordless Wednesday: Boys and Their Dogs

Chicken Mummy - Part 1

Since we are doing Story of  the World Ancients, we just HAD to do the chicken mummy project that goes along with ancient Egypt. I've been told that this is a rite of passage for a homeschooler. Many homeschoolers are afraid to try it. I'm not so squeamish about working with chicken, so I decided to give this project a try. Is Tornado Boy learning much from it? Probably not. But we can say "We did the chicken mummy!" Maybe we need a T-shirt...

First, we assembled the ingredients... Chicken, check... Salt, check... Baking soda, check... Baking powder, check... Random spices to make it smell better, check. Now the Activity Guide suggests getting 3 boxes each of baking soda and baking powder, but it just says "several boxes" of salt, which really isn't helpful. I got 6 boxes. I needed more. I got more at Sam's the next week. Thankfully, you don't use it all at once, so the initial purchase got us through the first week of mummifying.

Next, we put our food service gloves on...

Then we washed the chicken first with water, then with rubbing alcohol (not pictured in our list of ingredients above - oops). I've since heard that some people soak their chicken in a rubbing alcohol/water mixture for a few hours. We just dumped most of a bottle over the chicken and inside the chicken and rinsed it out really well. Seems to have worked ok. After washing and sterilizing the chicken, you then dry it with lots of paper towels.

Here's our nice, clean chicken, ready to get really dried out!

Now time to mix our ingredients...

Then stuff the chicken with salt mixture...

Now stick it in a bag, add salt mixture, and then put that bag inside a bag...

We change the salt now and then, more often in the beginning. I have since transferred the chicken to a BOWL with a plastic lid (air tight), and I think that will work better than the bag, which the chicken barely fit in.

So there's the start of our chicken mummy!

Weekly Report - Week 4

This has been a very productive week! I'm so happy with Tornado Boy's progress this week. Incredibly happy.

Math: We did 3 sections of MM1B chapter 7 this week. The third section still has a few problems remaining since we were slackers Friday, but given that we're ahead in math, I wasn't worried about it. Of course, Tornado Boy comes up to me yesterday afternoon and says "Mama! We didn't do homeschool yet!" So much for taking the day off. :) So I let him do the math as planned, but since it was late afternoon/early evening instead of first thing in the morning, his hand just couldn't handle it. It wasn't even that much, as he had less than a page and a half assigned. I'm glad we usually do math in the morning. So anyway, we have been working on addition, going over 10, and subtraction, going below 10. We are using mental math tricks to add 8 + 4 by taking 2 from the 4 and making it (8 + 2) + 2 = 10 + 2 = 12. Likewise, we're taking 12-4 and changing it to (12 - 2) - 2 = 10 - 2 = 8. Both of these concepts took a little explaining with the base 10 blocks at first, but once we'd done a few problems, he clearly understood and was able to drop the blocks and just do it in his head. We have 2 sections left in this chapter, and then we'll be done with 1B. I will give him the end of chapter and end of year tests, partly because he likes to take tests, and partly because I like to use them as review and make sure he's retained what he's supposed to have learned so far. The week after next, we'll be ready to start grade 2 math.

Reading: I dropped CLE Reading this week and went a totally different direction. I pulled out The Boxcar Children #1 (a good chapter book), and I had him read 1 chapter aloud to me each day. The first two days, I had questions prepared that led him into a narration, and I wrote down the narration for those chapters. After those two days, I didn't bother with questions or narrations. We'll do a couple narrations next week, but probably split them up. He did very well with this method! I did tell him the questions before we read, so he'd know what to listen for (as they are fairly long chapters), but his narrations were excellent for his age and this stage of narration development. What really made me happy though... On day 2, he read the chapter aloud, and it ended a bit on a cliff hanger, so I said "You can read the next chapter to yourself if you want.", and I left him alone. He read TWO more chapters!!!!! This is a boy who normally won't read more than one chapter of anything in a sitting, and he read 3 chapters that morning. I was so surprised! The next day, he read 2 chapters, and the fourth day he also read 2 chapters. So while I was expecting to get 4 chapters total read this week, he read 8 chapters! We will continue with our "reading program" in this manner - picking a good chapter book with a little challenge to it, and narrating a chapter a couple times a week. When he gets to the logic stage, we'll worry about literary devices and such.

Grammar: We did 4 lessons from grammar, as we didn't get to the review lesson during our slacker Friday (I should note that we had a doctor appointment in the morning and were gone most of the day). This week focused on answering questions, using words from the question to form a sentence to answer, and also noting the change in word order sometimes. This week, I could tell where the narrations are helping him and also where doing grammar orally is beneficial. We had a sentence that he needed to fill in the answer for: The moon ______. Instead of saying something like "is white" or "is round", as he would do if he had been writing this himself, he said "reflects light from the sun". I was not expecting that answer! He certainly wouldn't have answered that if he'd been writing. I am so glad I chose to do grammar orally. We are making more and more progress with coming up with good thoughts and making complete sentences out of them (as he does in his narrations), and later when his hand has caught up with his brain, he'll be able to put the two skills together and write down his thoughts. I love that I can see how the two skills are being worked separately and will later come together.

Independent Reading:  I did not assign anything specific this week. He just had to read for about 30 minutes from the library book shelf, though he did take some books from the regular shelf - Star Wars. Sigh. The good news is, those books are fairly advanced due to the weird names. So it's twaddle, but it's challenging twaddle.

Writing:  I forgot to update writing last week, and started to forget this week! Whoops! Last week, our passages were from Rumpelstiltzken, which was a bit above Tornado Boy's head. Some of the language used was not what he's used to hearing (old style), so his mind focused on trying to figure out what the words meant instead of figuring out the storyline. Understandable. This week was a bit better, but still a little above his head at times. The passages this week were from Alice in Wonderland. We did well until day 4, when he got hung up on the word "juror", as he'd never heard that word (ironically, the passage talks about Alice being proud of herself for figuring out who the jury was, because most little girls her age don't know the word "juror"... She's apparently correct!). Once we got past that issue, we got a decent narration, and he got to copy this narration as his copywork. This is the first time he's copied his narration. One more step toward coming up with his own thoughts and putting them down on paper!

Handwriting:  We did 4 pages in the HWT book and started copywork - the judges of Israel. The copywork is 6 lines, so I had broken it up into 2 lines per day over 3 days. Unfortunately, we forgot to do it one day, and another day was scheduled Friday, where we slacked off. So we'll either do this over the weekend or just do some of it next week. Not a big deal. His handwriting is definitely improving. His pencil grip is more often correct than not, so I'm having to remind him of that less and less. He is also forming most of his letters correctly, though he still sometimes goes back to his old ways and does the circle first on a 'p', then ends up making it backward. If he "dives down and swims back up and around" like he's supposed to, the 'p' will go the correct direction. I wish I'd used HWT to teach letter formation to begin with! I'm glad the next two children will learn it in this manner and can probably avoid some of the common letter reversals.

I've been thinking ahead to second grade and cursive. I was originally thinking I wanted to do a traditional cursive and go with Pentime, but after thinking some more and looking at my own horrible cursive, which looks juvenile even if I try to write it neatly, I'm thinking maybe Getty-Dubay Italic Cursive would be a better fit for Tornado Boy (and me!). His handwriting is a LOT like mine. Mine is neater, but our style is very similar. I could easily see his cursive ending up like mine too, and it'd be nice to have a useful connected style that can be written quickly, as GD Cursive is. So at the moment, that's the plan for next year. We'll get book C and dive on in!

Spelling: Lots of progress here! We got through step 17 this week (of 24 in level 1). I'm glad I got level 2 when ordering level 1!!! It's only taken about 3 weeks to go through level 1. We did the lesson about when to use 'c' vs. 'k' at the beginning of a word. This is stuff I never knew - I'd just memorized the words. Tornado Boy had not been exposed to this rule, but he quickly picked it up and started applying it to the spelling words I called out. We also dictated some phrases this week. I was so pleased Tuesday when we got done with our spelling and he'd filled out an entire HWT lined paper with words and phrases from that day! That was a lot of writing for him, and he didn't complain during any of it. I was thrilled! He is enjoying AAS a lot, although sometimes when using the spelling tiles, I have to urge him to move a little quicker. He has to play games with each word as I'm ready to call out the next word. Oh well. He's enjoying spelling, is learning rules and how to apply them, and I'm enjoying it too!

Read-Aloud: I've really slacked on Little House in the Big Woods! I need to break down and get the audio for the van. :P We did read a couple cases from Encyclopedia Brown #1, but didn't do much other reading aloud, besides our normal school readings (history and such).

Bible: We studied the judges Abimilech (who made himself a judge, killing his 70 brothers), Tola, and Jair. The Bible doesn't say much about Tola or Jair.

History: We learned about the first writing - hieroglyphics in Egypt and cuneiform in Sumer. The Egyptians carved their writing on stone, which took weeks. The Sumerians carved in wet clay, which is clearly much quicker. The Egyptians then developed Papyrus, so finally they were able to make a grocery list. Ok, that last part isn't true. ;) We also learned about Sargon and how he killed the king of the city-state he lived in, then he took over all the neighboring city-states in Mesopotamia and set up a military dictatorship.

We didn't get to this week's planned project, but last Saturday, we started the chicken mummy! King Cluck of Eggypt has passed away and is now drying in a bowl of salt, baking soda, and baking powder. There will be a blog post at some point (maybe soon) on this project. :)

Science: Slacker mom. We skipped science. :( We were supposed to freeze various objects. We'll maybe do that sometime today (Saturday).

Art: We drew the pig from Draw Write Now #1. I did all 4 lines of copywork. Tornado Boy did one line. I need to present him with some basic, small shapes and teach him to color with color pencil properly - ie, outlining it dark and then filling in with straight strokes that go all one direction. We might practice that this weekend if we get a chance.

 

I should also add that The Brute, who hasn't been talked about much yet, decided he wanted to do a "reading lesson" one day this week. I made some basic CVC words on the white board, using the AAS tiles. He did very well decoding the words and blending the sounds together to figure them out! I will want to practice with the CVC words some more before we move to something new, but I was happy with his reading progress, given that he's only 4 years 2 months old. :) I am not doing formal preschool stuff with him right now, since the focus is on the first grader. At some point, we'll throw in some regular reading lessons and maybe a bit of math and handwriting. I'm just trying to hold off a bit, as he isn't supposed to start K until fall of 2012, and that's a ways off! I would like him to read early, but I don't really want him doing "first grade work" too early. So far, we're doing ok, as he's been content to play during school time and not ask for his own lessons. That might change though!

Weekly Report - Week 3

Another good week here at Kinderbauernhof Academy! We accomplished a lot and did some new things. We had our occasional little issues, but got everything done and learned a lot.

Math:  We completed 4 sections of MM 1A Chapter 7. We have 5 sections left, and we'll be done with first grade math! I also pulled out the RightStart Card Games book and we played "Corners", though it seems to say you should stop when someone gets a corner? We got a corner early on (Tornado Boy did), and I decided to just keep going until we ran out of cards. I won, but it was pretty close through much of the game. In this game, you match numbers together for which the sum is 5, 10, 15, or 20 OR you can match same numbers together. The color has to be the same regardless. So you can put a green 7 with a green 7 or a green 3 or a green 8. Matching a corner means you have to match all sides of that corner, which gets harder. Here's the results of our game!

Reading: We did two stories from CLE Reading. I decided to skip one story that I just wasn't crazy about, based on differing religious views. I am looking to find something else for reading next year. We'll finish this book, but it's just not my favorite. I also have scrapped the phonics work in the Light Unit, and what's left is pretty much busywork, so I'm figuring out what we'll use when we're done with this level.

Grammar: We did another 5 lessons from R&S English 2. This week's lessons focused on making complete sentences - thinking of a word that will complete a sentence, turning a phrase into a complete sentence, etc.

Independent Reading: Tornado Boy finished The Chalkbox Kid and started Encyclopedia Brown #1, but we were hitting a bit of a wall with the reading. I think it's the 4th grade slump that is often talked about in phonics vs. whole word method debates. He is hitting those 4th grade words that he needs phonics to sound out, and he doesn't have the phonics background to do it. He'll get there though. We are remedying that. ;)

Handwriting: We did a mixture of workbook and plain old copywork this week. When I downloaded the StartWrite demo a couple months ago, I kept it open for about a week and made something like 50 copywork pages of various things. I do plan to purchase the software when I order second grade materials. Anyway, we did the letter 'q' in his workbook and copied Bible verses Ephesians 6:10 and James 5:16. Handwriting was a bit light this week.

Spelling: All About Spelling arrived Tuesday! Hooray!!! It is as awesome as I thought it would be for us. :) We did steps 1-4 that day, and Tornado Boy really enjoyed learning the phonograms! He knew most of them already, but he didn't know all the sounds of some of the vowels. That was to be expected, of course. I didn't know all the sounds of the vowels. :P On the second day, we did steps 5-6, and the third day we did steps 7-8. So he knows the first 26 phonograms (basically, each sound a letter can make), and he learned that every word must have a vowel. He did some basic short vowel sound CVC words involving 'a', 'i' and 'o'. They were easy and he already knew them, but that's ok! He is learning to listen for each phonogram of a word. He is enjoying the program so far, and so am I! It is completely scripted and easy to teach. I went ahead and got the box to hold all the cards and also the nice laminated dividers for the box. Both are very nice! I'm glad I got them. I purchased levels 1 and 2, and I figure we'll probably be in level 2 within a few weeks. Level 1 was worth getting though, as there are some foundational concepts taught. I must say, spelling is one subject I look forward to teaching each day right now!

Read-Aloud: Still working through Little House in the Big Woods. We've kind of slacked this week in our reading. I did read a couple cases from Encyclopedia Brown (and boy is Tornado Boy not ready for that kind of logic yet!), but that's about it. We started to listen to The Wind in the Willows in the van, but I'm sorry... I cannot take 6 hours of that story. Tornado Boy didn't care for it either. I'll have to find something a little more interesting for our van rides.

Bible: We did week 19 of our workbook. We learned about Gideon leading an army of 300 to defeat the Midianites by sneaking up at night with pitchers over their torches, then sounding trumpets as they break the pitchers. In all the confusion, the Midianites were afraid and started killing each other and tried to run away.

History: We did chapters 2 and 4 in SOTW this week. Chapter 2 discussed Egypt and how Lower Egypt is in the north (the Nile Delta) and Upper Egypt is in the south. They had their directions mixed up because the Nile flows north from the mountains to the Mediterranean Sea. We learned about how the Nile floods every year and how the ancient farmers would dig canals to save some of the flood water for the dry season. We learned about King Narmer defeating the other king and becoming king of all of Egypt. He wore a double crown after that - the white crown he'd already been wearing, and the red crown that the defeated king had worn. We learned about some of the Egyptian gods - Isis, Osiris, and Set, as well as Ra being mentioned. Chapter 4 discussed the mummification process. We have purchased our own King Cluck, King of Eggypt, along with supplies to turn him into a mummy. We will hopefully start that Saturday.

At the beginning of the week, we did our project from last week's readings. We did a cave painting.

A hunter shooting an arrow at a bear

We did some narrations for the SOTW chapters, and on the narration pages, there was a spot to draw the double crown of Egypt. To my surprise, Tornado Boy willingly drew it! Hooray! I think this narration process will be very good for him. We're working up to drawing pictures more often.


Science: First, we took a look at last week's crystal project. It's supposed to make rock candy, and basically, it did, but you couldn't get it out of the jar. I think we used way too much sugar.

Our topic this week was colors and how you can mix them to make new ones. This was old hat for Tornado Boy, but he had fun playing with food coloring and water anyway.

Art: Yes, we actually did art! I've seen on WTM forums that people sometimes have "We Did Science! Friday", but I need "We did art! Friday". :) Besides the above cave painting and also painting a rainbow with water colors for science (not pictured), we did the first animal in Draw Write Now book #1 - a hen. I printed out story paper from the Startwrite demo, and we both drew a hen and did some copywork. I did all of the copywork, but Tornado Boy only had to do one sentence. I think we did very well!

Overall, it's been a great week. We also got together with a homeschool group for the first time today, and Tornado Boy got to make some new friends there. There were several boys close to his age. I enjoyed talking with some moms that have BTDT for a while, including some that had homeschooled all the way through high school already.