Friday, April 1, 2011

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.

12 comments:

Unknown said...

What a wonderful week. Thank you so much for sharing it at NOBH. I really like the fun project with the caterpillar and butterfly. Have a great weekend.

MissMOE said...

Looks like a great week. I exspecially loved the Viking Hat!

Amanda- The Nutritionist Reviews said...

Very cute pictures!

I just found your blog through one of the Saturday blog hops! Have a great weekend.

Amanda @ www.nutritionistreviews.com

Unknown said...

Love the Viking hat!

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Jamie {See Jamie blog} said...

I LOVE the viking helmet ! :)

Meryl said...

You are doing some really neat stuff. I love the viking hat! There are some really interesting books called "Horrible Histories" by Terry Deary that talk about some very cool facts history books don't always publish but that are really interesting to the kids. You may want to look for them. And I love THe Very Hungry Caterpillar.

I am glad I found you on the blog hop. You're doing great things. I will visit again.

Meryl
http://departingthetext.blogspot.com

Lisa @ Our Country Road said...

Your DD's helmet is awesome-she did a great job. I like the little caterpilar too. I really need to let my kids make one, I am sure they would enjoy it! Fun week!

Jess said...

Thanks everyone - we really had a fun week this week.

Meryl - I've never heard of these - I'll have to check them out. Anything that gets kids "hooked" into history is a great find!

In Everything said...

Love the viking hat:) We just finished doing the vikings a couple of weeks ago but we had cheap Halloween viking costumes:) Very creative viking hat:)

DO you still SOnlight?? Love to chat about it more especially using it while you have younger ones.

Jess said...

Kelly,

This is the first year we have used Sonlight but we love it and plan on continuing with it next year and beyond. We used the combined Core 1 and 2 (now B+C) this year. I love to talk about Sonlight and can't say enough about it! Feel free to email me if you have questions! :)

The Adventurer said...

Look into snap circuits for electricity experiments, they are safe for young children. We love them:)

Jess said...

Thanks, I'll have to check them out :)