Weekly Wrap-up: Vikings and Butterflies

Wow another busy week this week!  It seems like time is just flying by.  We had a pretty ordinary week except for our marathon visit to the dentist on Thursday.  Here's what else we've been up to this week.

Ms. Q

Ms. Q is continuing her study  of the Middle Ages this week.  We learned about the viking invasions of France and England and had a quick introduction to Feudalism.   Ms. Q wanted to know why we celebrate Christopher Columbus Day and not Leif Ericsson Day.

She made this cool viking helmet.

In science we completed a unit on electricity and Ben Franklin.  We were both slightly disappointed that there was not more to this unit.  The book was enjoyable but there were no experiments included in our Noeo curriculum.  Not sure what kinds of safe and simple experiments we could have done about electricity but  I might google some to add a little more interest.

Ms. Q practiced her writing skills this week pretending to interview her favorite story book character.  It took a little more explaining than I thought it would for her to get the idea but once she understood, she did a wonderful  job.  She has been asking for a few weeks now to start her own blog but her father and I felt that she is too young.  However, this week she came up with a great idea that changed our minds.  She's been working on her first post for the last few days and is really excited to get started.  Look for more about this in the coming weeks.

We had two topics for our nature study this week.  We joined up at The Homeschool Village for their gardening challenge.  We cleared our garden of the debris and leaves that accumulated over the winter and decided what kinds of fruits and vegetables we want to plant this year.  We will be studying plants and gardening practices over the next few months as we work in our garden and posting updates.  We also started a study of chickens.  Friends of ours recently hatched some new chicks and we have decided to follow them as they grow up and begin laying eggs.  This was our first visit and we look forward to learning more about chickens during our study.

Little M did not like them that much

Ms. Q wants her own now

Little M

Little M learned about the letter B and butterflies this week.

We used The Very  Hungry Caterpillar as our spine book and completed this lapbook.  Table activities included learning what begins with the letter B, matching capitals and lower case letters, a booklet of ABC foods, matching colors and foods, counting butterflies, and reviewing shapes.

We also read lots of other story books about butterflies and learned a little about the life cycle of a butterfly. 

Little M made these cute crafts of a caterpillar and a butterfly.

Next week Ms. Q is going to Virginia to visit her Aunt J, Uncle R, and Cousin R.  Aunt J has a lot of fun activities planned and I know Ms. Q will have a great time.  Since we won't be having any "school" next week I plan on getting a start to my spring cleaning.  I also have some fun activities planned for the boys.