Dave was home for winter break, reminding me as always how much easier things are when someone else is chasing after Gus. Tonight I was locked away at the computer while Dave was in charge of the kids. He was reading a story to Ari and Milo and forgot to watch Gus every second as is necessary. Five minutes later, he found Gus in the schoolroom, his hands completely covered with green paint. "Me painting Italy!" he exclaimed, indicating the now much greener salt dough map of Italy that Ari and Milo made last year.
Anyway...we're chugging along with Story of the World 2 and just getting started on space science, which, predictably, is a big hit, especially with Milo. I have a subscription to Evan Moor's Teacher Filebox--they have a lot of their books or at least big sections of their books online to be printed out. I found a space pocket book project there, and we're working on that as we go.
The front of the book is shaped like a rocket, and eventually there will be three pockets with all sorts of little projects tucked in. So far there's a flip book about the planets ("ahh," said DH the teacher, "you're making a graphic organizer." Why yes, that's what we're doing). The other thing is a sun with adding machine tape attached that shows how far each planet is from the sun. Along with that, we're reading the Usborne First Encyclopedia of Space--this week we read about satellites and the possibility of life in outer space. I put Dave in charge of this experiment about satellites from a Janice VanCleave book--umm, something about why things stay in orbit instead of flying off into space? For some reason, Dave dragged us all out onto the cold porch to do it.
And here is Ari watching Dave spinning the "satellite" around. He's dressed like that because he and Milo were in the middle of making up a play about the story we read that day, "Baboushka and the Three Kings." I think he was going to be a king, only they never actually finished planning the play. That's how these things usually work--they spend a great deal of time coming up with costumes, making tickets, sometimes writing scripts and rehearsing...but it's pretty rare that the play actually happens. Getting there is half the fun, though, right?
I just bought Story of the World on CD for the kids; Ari is not so into the books without pictures thing. Well, that's not really true; he listens to chapter books all the time (and reads them). He's not into non-fiction without pictures? I don't know--the boy is difficult to predict and rarely admits to liking anything. At any rate, I thought we'd try it that way so we can listen in the car or wherever and have more time at home for projects and library books. So this coming week will be our first week trying it that way. This week we read about the first Russians and made gingerbread. Word is they were into that in Russia way back when. We made giant, oddly shaped gingerbread people, decorated very generously with sprinkles.
And here's an assortment of Russian folktales from the library:
We still need to read a couple of them, but it's a light week this week, so we should have plenty of time.
Okay, I made a slideshow on photobucket! It's something new! Will this work on Livejournal, I wonder? We shall see. Let's give it a try. Math: Ari was mostly working on money stuff this week, which he adores. On this page, he was supposed to draw lines matching up pictures of money with the pictures of stuff to buy with price tags. Instead, he drew word bubbles, and added commentary like, "59 cents comes in handy when you like apples," and "I will have these (those egg plants don't look yummy."
We've started First Language Lessons, volume 3 now, and Ari's working on sentence diagramming in that. It very much appeals to his concrete little brain with its lust for order. I checked out "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" from the library for him ; it's a children's book spinoff of the grown-up book of the same name--all about commas and how misplacing them or leaving them out can have funny consequences. He LOVES it. I have a little grammar geek on my hands. He's been talking about it and reading it and rereading it for days now. So I think that perhaps settles it about whether we should start Latin next year or not. What else is in my nifty slide show? Ah--I bought Startwrite for the computer to use for printing out copywork and next year for handwriting practice for Milo. It lets you import pictures to make your copywork prettier, so I did. I'm not sure about it for Ari, though, because he really doesn't need the guidelines for writing these days (and he writes really, really small, so he doesn't like them). It's possible I can print lines without the dotted line stuff; I need to fool around more and see. I discovered a few weeks ago that he's teaching himself cursive, so we may start doing copywork in cursive soon, in which case I imagine he'll need the lines again for awhile. And then the last thing is the experiment write up from the previously mentioned satellite experiment. Note Ari's addition of "Gravity whooohoo!" at the end. That boy loves him some gravity.
Looks like I forgot to do Milo's stuff in the slideshow. Next week! He's doing Headsprout on the computer for reading; he's enjoying it and seems to be learning a lot. And he can do it on his own, which is lovely, especially since Gus will often sit and watch him. He's also doing Singapore Earlybird, which was all about fractions this week.
I keep meaning to keep up some sort of log of books we read, but...then I don't. Ari finished up The Wonderful Wizard of Oz on his own a little bit ago, and is now back on Magic Treehouse books. And The Littles. We're reading the second Harry Potter book together at bedtime. Milo's favorite library selection of the week was "Players in Pigtails," which is essentially A League of their Own as a children's book. Gus likes Goodnight Gorilla, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and bringing me books that are much too advanced for him, insisting I read them to him, and wandering off after half a page.
I am thick in the midst of planning for next year and ordering stuff, but that will have to be another post, since I've certainly gone on long enough already.
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