Math and Granola and 300 Spartans

 It was a pretty good week. 

But I'm ready for the weekend.

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Starting school at 6:30am means math with granola...

A perfect combination.

 

 Fractions have been mastered (I hope),

and we've moved onto perimeter and circumference.

Since we use several different resources for math, we spiral a lot.

 

For extra practice, we've been using Cool Math -

a really great, free math site. Lu loves it.

We're almost done with our  

spelling and grammar workbooks. 

I still have very mixed feelings about these.

The spelling I think we'll keep using next year,

but the grammar is just kind of... blah.
Yet, to its credit, Lu does know his grammar.
Maybe I'll just use half of it or something.
So much repetition is definitely unnecessary.
Ugh... I think I'd already come to this conclusion.
Why don't I listen to myself?

 

We watched Last Stand of the 300

This is a History Channel documentary - not the movie. We watched it as part of our studies on the Persian Empire because, unlike the movie, it focuses more on the Persians than on the Greeks.

We did also watch the movie, 

but had to cover Lu's eyes and mute a few scenes.

We're working on doing one huge time-line for

Ancient Middle Eastern Civilizations,

before we start on Ancient Greece

(I can hardly wait!)

 

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 One of my favorite fruits - Pitaya 

(no idea what it's called in English) is in season.

 A lovely snack!

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There is no end to amazing insects around here. 

Today we found this crazy cactus-looking crawler.

 

Isn't he gorgeous!

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And Lu is reading the last chapters of 

Little House on the Prairie

History of People and some other random stuff

Lu finished his introduction to World Studies with his final booklet - "History of People". He now knows things like: important landmarks around the world, general information on the world's main religions, how people settled and built cities, when the first printing press was invented, some history on the development of arts and sports, and how long WWI and WWII lasted. I'm so excited to now really sink our teeth into our in-depth unit on Evolution, and work our way through to WWII over the next four or five years.

We found this amazing creature by the tool shed.

We're really making progress in Spelling.
Something has clicked.

Finally finished this knitting project -

It was meant to be a
Mama's Day present, and then a
Mama's Bday present, and then a
Mama's Xmas present...
but today's as good a day as any for such a lovely gift

Lu's doing lots of dance between his afternoon children's art workshops and his morning youth group activities. Next year, Youth Group will be two full mornings weekly, plus the two afternoons with the younger kids. He really loves being in both groups, and he's showing a real passion for dance (and no, even though I was a dancer, I'm not a pushy dance mom at all). I was actually very surprised because he didn't show much interest when he was younger, but in the last two years, he's caught the craze. So, I'm thinking that we might have to let go of some other subjects next year to give dance enough space on our schedule, which is totally okay with me, as long as it's what he really wants. He does have the advantage of having a dance studio in his house!

Alphabetical Order

Today we worked with 16 words that start with P.
I dictated the words and made sure that
at least half of them were "new words".
(we first folded the paper so as to mark 16 squares)







After writing the words, he cut out the squares and starting organizing.
He had to go as far as the fourth letter with some words.
He put them in groups
by second letter,
arranged each group individually
and then put all the groups together.

Besides learning how to order words alphabetically, he learned new words and practiced handwriting, cutting, problem-solving, organizing, and task completion.

Free Interactive Learning Games

After recently posting that I would start limiting my online resource search to one hour a week, I started a new blog for resources in Spanish - edulibrelinks - forcing me to break my vow and spend most of my weekend completely immersed in the www of educational resources. The more I look, the better I get at finding the good stuff. My requirements for bookmarking sites are: no flashing advertisements (I will tolerate discrete ads for other ed. sites); no violence; no commercial hosts or characters (disney, barney, barbie etc.); that I test and enjoy them myself; and, of course, that my son like them.

Here is one of my favorite finds from this week:

Check out Math Angle for really cool interactive games in math, language arts and geography.

20, 20, 20 - a perfect way to start the day

We begin our mornings with:

20 minutes of ReadAloud - usually from Dr. Seuss
20 minutes of Spelling/Dictation with BlendPhonics
20 minutes of Grammar - one SuperTeacher worksheet

It works really well and makes a great start to our day!
What's your first morning activity?

Leaving the Room

Today we finished Scott Foresman Free Grammar & Writing Unit 1.

It was a struggle, as English is my son's second language, but we did it!

I'm not afraid to admit that I like workbooks, especially for grammar. That my son learn to write decently is essential to me.