Week In Review

This week has been a busy one. Along with school we also enjoyed time with friends and family, made two library visits, park time, a few nature walks, a science class and more. It made for a full fun week!

We spent a lot of time on math and numbers this week, working on mastering our counting, writing and reading recognition to one hundred. Holly has also been working on some graphing skills, math counting cubes, manipulative's and patterning. We had fun with some math card games and Chutes & Ladders (to 100) and a couple of strategy games like Othello and Blokus.Holly is working on refining her writing, spending time on letter size. Often she wants to hurry to get to the next project with me, I have to remind her to slow down, take her time and do quality work. She has written some small stories this week, which was a lot fun. As well, we have done a ton of reading this week - Holly reading to me and I am reading to her. A great book week!

A lot of time has been spent on the season of Fall with art work, nature walks, nature journaling, books, hand on projects and collecting. She is having a lot of fun so far with Fall and has decided that 'Fall' will be her new nature station in the house... so stay tuned for some fun photos of that as it develops.

Fall Nature Walk

Yesterday morning I took the kids on a fall nature walk, the goal was to find items that are signs of fall - leaves, berries, bushes, etc. We found so many wonderful treats along the path - it was a beautiful morning! During our walk Holly added some items to her nature journal.

Then we scooted her off to a new science class she will be taking every two weeks - it appears to be a very fun class and right up her alley. Yesterday they were learning how to be a scientist - what tools are used, research, observation, experiements, etc. Each child was sent home with a science experiement... we'll see how it goes!

Pond Water

After our fun field trip out at Snake Lake we came home to pull some pond water for a closer look. Holly scooped out pond water from her garden - from the surface, mid way down and then a scoop or two that included the bottom gunk. This way she would have bits from all areas in her pond.

Once the water settled a bit she studied it closely with a magnifying glass and made some drawings. We also looked up some information online about the critters we found, what might be in her pond and some great slides from a microscope. I had hoped to break out her microscope and take a closer look ourselves, but time got away from us... maybe next time!

Wetland Habitats

The end of this week we studied up on wetland habitats which included a video clip, several good books, a couple of art projects and a field trip to a local wetland area. Holly had a favorite art project - creating a turtle. She really took her time on making it just perfect... and perfect I think it is!We talked about many animals and plants that live in various wetlands, warm and cold wetlands and how our local wetland habitats are. Snake Lake was a natural fit for this unit so we headed out for an afternoon of exploration, fun and discovery! Holly found several different kinds of vegetation, foot prints in the mud that appear to have belonged to a raccoon, ducks, turtles, birds of all kinds and many bugs. She had a great time!

Autumn Collage

To celebrate the beginning of Autumn Holly created an Autumn Collage using papers, paint, scissors. glue and items to create texture. I found this great project from a favorite art teacher's site, she has the best projects I think!.

This project had some simple rules to follow, was a process that she had to create in stages and focused on textures. She first chose some fall colored papers, we mixed up some deeper shades of oranges and green, then she painted the entire paper in that color. After the paper was painted she used various tools to create texture on her paper.

After the papers dried that morning she came back to the project and began to cut out various pumpkins, squash and leaves. She then arranged them on her black back drop, glued them down and added a new layer of gold paint to add a bit more texture - stems, swirls, leaves, etc.

Here is the final project - so beautiful!