Snapshot Summary, January 23-27, 2012 Railroads and Geoboards

Snapshot Summary, January 23-27

This was one of those crazy weeks. We started out the week with a little bug going through the family, and ended up the week cleaning house to show it...the first showing we have had this year so far. Between the two, we didn't accomplish much in terms of school work.

On Monday, we celebrated the Year of the Dragon simply this year with take-out Chinese, red envelopes with new dollar coins in them and painting dollar store lanterns.

While Sam and Alex had pretty much an average week, the little boys have had a different sort of week, filled with...

Working on the Geoboard

We played worked many games activities with our new Geoboard...

Geoboard-Unifix Patterns

Geoboard Sequences

Geoboard Shape Sorting

Geoboard Numerals

 Geoboard Paths

We will be getting to more geoboard fun next week.

Railroad Trains

We also began a study of Railroad Trains.

We made a timeline of railroad history. We will be adding other historical events as we go along to help with context. We are also reading By The Shores of Silver Lake now, which is the Little House book in which Pa works for the railroad and Ma and the girls take a ride on a train for the first time.

 We compared the power steam has when it boils in an open pan...

to that of a teakettle in which the steam is more pressurized.

We sketched pictures of how a steam engine works.

We also took a look at railroad train wheels and friction.

The younger boys have been very interested in writing their own books. I have been giving them the time and space to write as much as they want.

We steamed some mussels this week and the kids tried them for the first time. It caused a lot of excitement as they couldn't help but examine them and it turned out to be more of a science experience than a culinary one. The younger boys insisted on our keeping the shells.

On Friday night, Steven and I went to a homeschool parents dinner hosted by one of our friends. It was the first time we had been out somewhere for dinner just the two of us in some time.
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