After spending the day at a nearby beach, the kids decided to bring home some of the sand with the shells they had found. My dd arranged the sand, shells, a grassy area and a couple sticks into a beautiful tupperware habitat.
After a few moments, she sadly stepped back, looked around and realized she had a beautiful, tropical sanctuary with nothing to live inside. I heard a bit of whispering as my little ones united their forces together, combined their allowances and begged to buy... the dreaded hermit crabs.
After all, they had rightfully earned their money from completing their weekly chores. So, we counted out their money, loaded up and headed to the pet store in search of our new friends.
What possible harm could a little hermit or 2 do... even though they are creepy, clawy, and resemble spiders stuffed in shells.
Can you tell I'm struggling here?!?! Eeeeek!!
With their rock crawling, nocturnal adventures at night keeping me awake, I decided to do what every good homeschooling Momma would do! I did a little midnight Pinterest research to dig a bit deeper into learning all about our new Hermit Crabs! We started by finding cute hermit coloring pages. Then, I printed off a hermit crab Lapbook. You can find it here. We are getting to know more about our new pets, Herman-Sherman & Rosetta the hermit crabs.
They really enjoyed this extra learning project and what better opportunity for learning then when they are already anxious and excited to learn more about something they are interested in!
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Our memory verse this week was Psalm 119:9-11. Although, we did the full verse for copywork, I did shorten it a little for them to memorize only verse 11. I dont like to make a habit of shortening the verses but, this particular one went with the song a bit better and the kids were able to memorize it quickly.
We talked about how to write a sentence as a command; beginning with a capital letter of course and ending with a period. We played the fun children's game 'Mother may I?' to familiarize them with what a command actually is and then they found a stuffed toy to follow the commands as I directed them. Flip over to the left. Raise your right hand. Turn around.
In History, we learned that the Pilgrims dressed and worshipped differently than the Dutch but, they were still kind to each other. We talked about how most of the Pilgrims found jobs in the Woolen Mills. We made index cards writing the steps to make cloth and both kids were able to place them in the correct order from shearing the sheep to unloading the boxes from the ship to delivering them to the shops.
We spoke a little of the Dutch language and watched a great Dutch Vocabulary video on Youtube. You can watch it too: Click Here
We learned that the Pilgrims believed their children were adapting to the Holland culture and becoming to much like the Hollanders. They trusted God and decided to sail to America to find land that they could have farmland just as they did in England. We learned that it was very important to the Pilgrims to raise their children to serve and trust God.
~POETRY~
We enjoyed the poem, "Mother's Jewels" this week. I had the kids listen while I read the poem and then they were able to guess what Momma's jewels were. We talked about the differences and I had them draw pictures of each to go along with the poem.
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We love to do journal writing and I usually find it helpful to give the kids something to write about as I gather my thoughts for the next thing we have planned. It works great and keeps them on task. The kids love starting off the mornings with these random and fun printable pages. I have many fun activities and printables on my Pinterest Homeschool page. You can follow me and check them out here: http://www.pinterest.com/lovemynavypilot/homeschool/
This one may have been encouraged by our new crabby visitors! Their answers were funny as we talked about them. They both really enjoyed this!
~MATH~
For the ds, we decided to make this little handy, flexible, gadget to help with multiplication tables thru fives. I hope to add the 6-10 tables on the back after he gets these down first! It is just simply colored popsicle sticks taped together with a little masking tape for flexibility.
The dd, was working with ordinal numbers this week. She was pretty excited to work with her kitchen food and getting them all in order. "Make the 3rd one spin." "Turn the seventh one upside down." We played this little game together for awhile as she directed me too.
~ MUSEUM FIELD TRIP~
We finished school a bit early one day this week to go to one of the nearby museums. The weather was absolutely perfect and we needed a field trip out of the house! Have I mentioned how much I love the flexibility in homeschooling?!?! The kids enjoyed our day at The Virginia Living Museum. There was so much disguised hands-on learning there. It was so fun and neat that they didn't even notice! ;) We are looking forward to returning very soon.
NATURE JOURNAL
It's a perfect time of the year to start a nature journal! The weather was perfect this week and they brought their journals outside and hunted for neat things to include in their journal. They traced leaves, identified them, found acorns, observed flowers and watched butterflies. I hope to continue this throughout all the seasons of the year.
I love that we have time to visit the great outdoors.... sitting quietly or taking a walk and observing all the beautiful things God made for us to enjoy. This is one of my favorite parts of homeschooling.
It was a fantastic week all and all. The kids seem to be enjoying our studies and overall are both doing well. God is strengthening my patience, understanding and guiding me in the words to use while teaching and how to answer each of their many questions. .... I've learned that it's much easier to do that after a cup of coffee in the morning. :)
See you next week!
Be blessed!
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