Week 7-Back in the Groove

This week felt especially short because we arrived home from vacation on Monday.  On Tuesday, we barely managed to pull ourselves together to make it to co-op, so it felt like our week didn't even really begin until Wednesday.  Most of our school week was pretty much status quo.

Co-op this week was a little crazy to say the least.  My little engineering students were going to learn to use a stopwatch, so I found a project in which they would make a timer using empty water bottles and sugar (somewhat like an hourglass).  Their task was to make their timer last as close to one minute as possible.  Great, right?  It turns out that if you allow twelve 5-7 year olds to work with cups of sugar, masking tape, and funnels you will have a mess within 8.5 minutes.  They ended up learning the concepts (how to use a stopwatch, the number of seconds in a minute, engineers have to do many trials to get their project to work), and we now have a new class rule - No one is allowed to eat their experiment unless given permission.


History/Geography
This week our readings were about rivers, lakes, waterfalls, and seas.  We found a Planet Earth clip on YouTube about the tallest waterfall in the world, Angel Falls in Venezuela.  The boys watched the clip at least 5 times.  They drew pictures of the falls and decided a trip to South America would have to be our next field trip.  

Ben loved the rainbows created by the water.

Spelling
This was only our second week of spelling.  I had delayed it because his phonics includes so much spelling, plus I thought it would be a source of contention.  It has actually turned out to be one of Luke's favorite subjects and he loved taking his spelling test on Friday.  Go figure!

Writing his spelling words as large as possible on the driveway.
 

Reading
Luke's reading is really progressing.  Now that his confidence is building, he has started to read a little on his own and to his siblings.  We're making really good use of the readers from our local library and so far have a season high of 16 books checked out at one time.  I've been reading "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" to Luke and I think we'll watch the movie soon so that we can compare and contrast the movie and book.

Reading to Ben during his breathing treatment

Bible
Our curriculum includes a verse per week to memorize.  We usually try to create a song or watch a YouTube music video with the verse to help.  Every Friday, Luke recites all the verses.  Each one progresses through the alphabet, so this week the verse started with G - Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.  This week, he created a puzzle of his verse.

The Arts
The boys had quite the cultural weekend.  Some family friends were in a play on Friday night, so the boys were able to go to their very first play.  Luke loved it and is now expressing an interest in trying a play with a children's theatre.  We also attended our local high school's marching band competition.  We watched bands for almost 1.5 hours and the boys were entranced.  The bands put on really entertaining shows, and the boys thought the stories they told were really fun.

Life Skills
Luke learned how to make macaroni and cheese this week.  He was so proud of himself.  Ben was then in charge of plating our lunch.  It wasn't a healthy meal, but I didn't have to make it!

Olivia had a banner week.  She began potty training!  It was much earlier than I expected, but she initiated it, so we're giving it a shot. 

Baby girl was so proud to go shopping for training pants!