Snapshot Summary, October 24-31, 2011 week 8

Snapshot Summary, October 24-31

Quentin's math journal.
This is entirely for his own exploration and recording. I do not correct it.

This week in math Quentin and Alex worked on commutative properties/fact families.
James is still working on multiplication. Like most people with dyscalculia, James knows math theory very well and can do multiplication in his head, but when it comes to multi-digit multiplication on paper, he gets lost in following the steps. This just takes time and patience for him to master. I won't hold up his learning more complicated mathematical theory, but we will keep working on his reliably being able to produce the correct answers with multiplication while we go on to other topics.
 Sam has had a terrible cold all week so has not felt up to do very much school work at all.

In English, the boys worked on similes and metaphors, as well as prefixes and suffixes. This is a topic that I can cover with all of the boys, but at their own individual levels.

For our Postcard-Geography this week, we studied Arizona...

and learned about the Navajo...

and made Navajo fry bread.

We began looking at the prelude to the American Revolution and read about the acts and taxations which began the separation of the Colonies from their mother country. We tied this into the French and Indian wars we had studied a few weeks ago. We ended this week's study with the Boston "Massacre."

Quentin's Cover for his Ben Franklin studies.

We learned about Ben Franklin's youth...

 (see the books we have been reading below)

and about his publishing and printing. To go along with this, we decided to made homemade paper.

We even made some out of dryer lint (not pictured) to be more like the Colonists that made paper out of cloth.

Quentin wanted to make a human body model, so I got out the materials from a book I had in storage and he colored and put it together all in one sitting. The enthusiasm when the child picks the topic is amazing. After we finished he thanked me for telling him the names of all the bones!

For our nature study, we looked at part of a wasp's nest.

With it being a holiday week for us and everyone not feeling too well,
we had a lot of tasty food fun.
Our breakfasts and teatimes this week have included...
Pumpkin Coffee Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

Acorn donuts...

and little "sandwiches" made of Nilla wafers, banana slices and chocolate peanut butter.

chocolate spider muffins for breakfast...

Spider webs for teatime...

Pumpkin Cheese Danishes for breakfast.

Rice Krispie Treats Pumpkin Patch for teatime.

We also had Jack o' Lantern Quesadillas for lunch one day.

Other Fun Things We Did

We dug holes,
had lots of fun with pretend play,
drew pictures,
played on the computer,
read books...

What We Are Reading
We have read a variety of books about Ben Franklin.

And Our Favorite Resource this week is...

which fits in perfectly with the history and our physical science activities we have already planned. I plan to help the little boys to set up a weather station and track the weather, and there are instructions for homemade weather instruments in the book.

Weekend Snapshots