Snapshot Summary: November 28- December 4, 2011 week 12

Snapshot Summary-November 28-December 2

Once our chart from last week was completed, it was time to change materials.

We used tiles next. I took a random number of tiles and had him form them into a rectangle with an amount of rows of my choosing. In this case, we began with three rows. Sometimes it will come out even, but many other times it will not. The ones that do not fit in the rectangle are separated off and called the remainder.

Now we talked about how to record our problems. Using a piece of paper {or if you're lucky enough to have a table that you can erase easily, you can just write on the table : )}, I told him to record the number of rows we wanted to make on the left hand side. In this case 5 for the five rows. (I know there are 6 in the picture; I took the picture after we were done with the problem and we were looking at the patterns created by adding additional rows....how does the problem change?) We then put the total of the number of tiles in the center. Now he recorded the number of columns in the rectangle at the top. Any remainders were written as fractions as before.

After doing problems in this way for some time, he can now write division problems on a piece of paper with a smaller typical division matrix and understand what all the parts represent.

Quentin worked on a place value game with a 10's die and a 1's die. He would roll them and then find the number on a hundreds chart and color it in.

In our study of the Revolutionary War this week, we learned about Washington's crossing the Delaware river for a surprise attack against the Hessian forces at Trenton New Jersey.

We finished Little House on the Prairie this week and so we did some appropriate pioneer activities.

We made a model of a covered wagon for the boys to play with and imagine pioneer adventures.

We made paper quilt squares.

We started reading Farmer Boy.

We added West Virginia to our Postcard-Geography album, and we ate pepperoni rolls.

Katie planned and help the boys with a message-in-a-bottle project in which they decorated bottles, wrote notes, seal the bottles and set the afloat.

We investigated the question of what temperature measures by seeing the effect of changing temperature.

We enjoyed a nature exchange with another blogger in Southern California.

For our picture study, we compared two of Vermeer's paintings, The Geographer and The Astronomer with a venn diagram.



For our Advent activities...

1
They opened the advent envelope and found a little activity book.

2
They wrote and mailed letters to Santa.

3
Watched The Nutcracker and made paper Nutcrackers.

4
Went to get the Christmas tree.