Weekly Wrap-up: Spring Fever

Last week we really enjoyed the springtime weather we experienced here on the east coast.  I guess we should have expected the break in winter to be fleeting.  It was just a tease but it gave us a serious case of spring fever.  We will just have to wait patiently I guess.


So here is how our week worked out:

History

We continued our study of the rise of the Roman Empire.  I indulged the kids interest in gladiators and allowed them to watch a documentary on Roman gladiators.

Since subscribing to Notebooking Pages Ms. Q has been really working hard on her notebooking.  She has been using colored pencils and really making them look good.  I am always encouraging her to "make work you can be proud of."  Sometimes it's difficult to get her to have any accountability for her work considering she doesn't receive any grades but she likes showing off her notebook pages, at least for now.

We switched gears a bit to follow Ms. Q's interest in Ancient Egypt and have been spending our evenings enjoying National Geographic Channel's Treasures of Egypt week.  Each night there has been a different documentary on the time period.  Ms. Q was holding her breath in anticipation of Friday night's show about Cleopatra.  She and Fred went to the Cleopatra exhibit that was showing at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia after Christmas.  (This was actually Fred's Christmas gift to her.)  Since then she has been interested in learning more about Cleopatra and this period in history.  Look for a webquest about Cleopatra next month per Ms. Q's request!

Science

We started a new unit on inventions.  I really thought that this would spark some interest in inventing things but Ms. Q doesn't really appear to be interested, even after we learned about child inventors.  She and her father are always thinking of  things that would make life easier.  I was surprised that this did not motivate her to actually pursue her ideas further.  Sometimes you just can't tell what will interest your kids I guess.

 Language Arts

Little M had a lot of fun this week working on his alphabet.  He's not required to do any work but he likes to feel like a big kid so he has school boxes with things like ABC cards, objects for counting, puzzles, and scissor practice.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with him next year with regard to preschool but so far he really enjoys learning and asks for things to do.  I hope it stays that way.

Ms. Q finished the internet scavenger hunt and the sports reporter assignment for her Iditarod webquest this week.  She was disappointed that she could not work on the third section of the webquest, which is to create a poster for a musher.  She is really looking forward to choosing a musher for us to cheer for when the race starts.  She also practiced her writing skills by sending out some emails to our friends and family asking them for pledges for the Girl Scout Pull the Plug event.  She is trying to get others to notice how vampire electricity usage contributes to depleting resources.  (Vampire electrical usage is the power used by appliances and other electrical devices when you are not using them, like a remote ready tv or the clock on your coffee pot.)

We finished reading Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski this week and it is now one of our favorite books.  The story is set in the 1800's in rural Florida but don't let that put you off.  It chronicles the feud between two neighbors and how the feud affects their children.  Ms. Q actually drew a parallel between the Slater and Boyer families in Strawberry Girl and the Montague and Capulet families in Romeo and Juliet.  She wondered if the two young characters in Strawberry Girl would find themselves as star-crossed lovers.  The story also sparked some interesting conversations about neighborly responsibility and alcohol abuse.

Math

Ms. Q has been working on multiple digit addition for what seems like a really long time.  In reality it has only been a few weeks and she really needs the practice but she has begun to complain.  So today we made banana muffins for math.  It was the most delicious class of the week!

Well hopefully for next week's wrap-up I will be able to write that we called off school in order to enjoy the spring weather because we sure do need it to cure our spring fever.