School Continued...

Here is another school "report"...

English-

Benjamin has been working on his reading skills and read a book to me today that was a wee bit beyond him, but he did really well! He surprised himself and I think it raised his confidence where reading is concerned. Afterward he answered a few questions verbally about the plot-what the problem was in the story and how it was solved.

Last week, I had both kids tell me a story that I then wrote down for them. Benjamin's story was, of course, about Star Wars. Rachel's was about Tinkerbell. Then the kids drew a picture to go with the story and Benjamin wrote a sentence describing his picture...

Benjamin was asked by his teacher to write 6 sentences on a subject. Benjamin wrote about his day...

 

Both kids have been working in their "Explode the Code" workbooks and reading aloud daily. Benjamin has been working on sentence structure and spelling by sounding words out. His reading is progressing and can is reading new words all the time! This is very exciting! Rachel can read and spell/write most 3 letter and some 4 letter words. I took the kids to the library yesterday for some new books to read, and they were very happy about that as well.

 

We started a fun new thing we call "Fun Friday" where we do all sorts of fun activities and games for our learning. Here is one of the Language Arts games we have been using...

 

 

Math-

 

Benjamin has been doing a number of things in math. He has been doing multiplication and division as well as adding and subtracting larger numbers. He has also been learning about the "tens" and "ones", estimation, order of numbers, and comparing numbers. Rachel has been working on her numbers, as well as addition and subtraction.

 

Here is something fun the kids got to do for math on "Fun Friday"; Shaving cream math!!

 

Social Studies-

Benjamin has been continuing to work on the Physical map of Canada. He has gone through the Appalachians, The Lowlands, The Canadian Shield, and The Arctic. He has The Prairies and The Western Mountains left to do. He colors each region that he is working on as I read to him from "Canada, Our Country". Then, I show him pictures of the region and we discuss the land in that region. I am very impressed at how much he remembers about each region, as I quiz him about all of the regions he has learned about each week. We then read books or stories about that region. Today Benjamin also learned some interesting facts about the Canada flag and colored a picture of it.

The kids also did a puzzle of North America...

Another area of study in Social Studies for both kids has been occupations. The kids studied this a couple of ways last week. I read out job descriptions to the kids and they told me who I was describing. We also played a little vocabulary game we have; whoever they landed on, they then described what that person does...

I asked the kids what they wanted to be when they grow up; Rachel said a doctor and Benjamin said a pilot! We discussed the importance of having people working in the community.

Science-

The kids have been wrapping up the study on air and water. The kids worked on some worksheets about water last week, including a worksheet on the importance of water as a basic human need. The kids told me that we could not survive without it. We also talked about what other human needs are, and they told me we need air, food, clothes, a place to live, sun/warmth and to be cared for. They colored the earth showing that there is more water than land, and I read from our book on the environment all about fresh and salt water, the plants and animals that rely on the water, water filtration and purification and the land we live on. We also discussed where water comes from to get to our home.

I quizzed Benjamin on the water cycle as well, testing him on the following words: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, run-off and groundwater. I told him the definition and he had to name the correct word. He got them all right!

Benjamin also helped me build a little contraption that works like a mixer...he had fun mixing water and bubbles, water and food coloring, and he also got to mix his sister and himself a glass of iced-tea!

I also read Usborne's "See Inside How Things Work" to the kids, looking at technology uses and took another look at a book called "How Things Work", as well as took out some books fro the library on Technology.

 

 

Fine Arts-

 

The kids made these really great flower pictures using the bottom of a pop bottle dipped in paint!

 

 

It was really great because this opened up a great discussion on reusing items we are finished with and recycling too!

 

The kids made some really cute tissue paper earths...

 

And, popsicle stick puzzles...

And tonight I took the kids to a craft night at the school in our community where they got to paint Christmas ornaments! So fun!

PE-

Rachel has continued with her ballet, and will be performing on stage in December! Benjamin's gymnastics came to an end, and we are thinking of doing some swimming for the winter. Benjamin got a sort of report card for gymnastics, and they mark each "move" either "mastered", "learning" or "attempted". Out of 40 "moves", Benjamin got 27 "mastered" and the rest "learning". He was in a class with all older and bigger kids because he did not get into the younger group on time. Initially I was nervous for him, but he kept up with the other kids and even made friends with people he had never done activities with before.

Now that the winter weather has hit, the kids have not been slowed down one bit! They have been getting outside daily, mostly to go sledding. They have been busy playing with friends and we even started doing some stretching and exercise in the house on colder days, or just to get them moving throughout the day. Tonight, at the craft night at the school, the kids also got to have a gym night with dancing and fun games. The kids had a blast!