As well, this was a week for attitudes and fights between my two older children. In the midst of sickness, dealing with bad attitudes, and sibling arguments, we actually accomplished quite a bit this week.
The main highlight this week was art class on Friday. I did not do the art project myself so that I could use the time to cut out all of our monsters and finish our "Wild Things" mural project. The children and I are so completely thrilled with the way the mural turned out. It looks fabulous! I couldn't resist putting it up in our hallway.
Our monsters are all so different and I adore the way the trees turned out. The children painted the trees and drew the leaves on separate cardstock. Then we cut out all of the leaves and taped them on. Then, today, I finished by cutting out our monsters and taping them on the mural.
Mason's monster seems to be made of different animals all pieced together with a visible backbone.
Amber's monster is so imaginative. It is very skinny and has many different appendages. My favorite aspect of her monster is the big eye hanging off to the side.
Lastly, I drew my monster while looking at one of the monsters in "Where the Wild Things Are." While I thought it turned out pretty well, my children all gave me a hard time for my lack of creativity.
While I was busy cutting and pasting, the children's art project this week was to draw a happy memory and then use watercolors for painting. Not surprisingly, my daughter chose to paint about a recent swimming victory in which she set a new district record for our area.
Mason painted a picture of his brother and himself playing the "Ultimate Crazy Bones Challenge." I thought that was really sweet.
Duncan painted a picture of his last birthday party. In this picture, we are all in our living room along with some extended family members, and he is getting ready to open his presents.
This week found us delving into the Circulatory System! We watched some educational videos that we all really enjoyed:
Not only are the Bill Nye videos quite informative, they are the only educational videos I can think of that make us all laugh out loud.
The children all continued with their independent science reading. My third grader read the following books:
- Keeping Clean by Sharon Gordon
- Touching by Rebecca Olien
- How Does Your Heart Work? by Don L. Curry
- Take Care of Your Teeth by Don L. Curry
My fifth grader read A Drop of Blood by Paul Showers and continued reading You're Tall in the Morning but Shorter at Night. My seventh grader read relevant sections from the Usborne Internet-Linked Library of Science: Human Body.
I am thoroughly enjoying the Great Science Adventures curriculum and the Body Book. One of the projects we completed this week was putting together a model of the heart from the Body Book that clearly shows the flow of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood in and out of the heart. We worked through the model step-by-step and I think the children all have a better idea of how the heart and lungs work together...at least I do!
My seventh grader completed a Blood Typing test that I ordered for her. My boys were not interested in finding out what Blood Type they are when they found it involved a bit of bleeding! Amber did some background research before the test to learn more about blood types and the distribution of different blood types in the population.
Amber was really excited about doing the test but then she got nervous when we started.
I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked since she made me use the lancet on her finger to bring forth the blood. For whatever reason, we never could get her finger to bleed very much so I'm not sure we put enough blood on each circle on the Eldon card. I wanted to go grab another needle and poke her again but I didn't suggest it as she was feeling a bit squeamish. She drank apple juice (to help her regain her strength after her blood loss :) ) and followed the directions to read her blood type. We both enjoyed watching the results appear before our eyes but we thought they would have been darker and clearer if more blood was used. Nevertheless, it was a very interesting experience.
All three children are moving along well in their independent work as well. This week, I have been working on placing my boys into the appropriate level for Writing With Ease. I am just not happy with the writing workbooks that I purchased for my boys this school year. I heard Susan Wise Bauer speak about teaching writing last April at a homeschool convention and I purchased her book and I read it. Her talk and her book made a LOT of sense to me. Then, at the last minute, I decided to go with another writing program for the boys.
Anyway, since I no longer suffer from curriculum guilt, I decided to go with my original plan and use Writing With Ease. I have also decided to simplify life for myself and just use the Writing With Ease workbooks. While I would love for the weekly copywork, narration pieces, and dictation to tie-in directly with our unit studies, I just am not willing to add that work to my already overflowing school prep. My youngest is clearly in Level 1 and I am still working to determine which level in which to place my older son.
Well, that's our week-in-review. To find out what other homeschoolers were up to this past week, check out Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers for the Week in Review.
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