L.A. ~week 2

Now that all the letters have been 

introduced we worked on sentences.

We would write out a sentence on one page

with an accompanying illustration on the other.

Then, we practiced writing out our alliterative 

verses.  I worked on sight recognition of some words

( The, of, and...)

One day was devoted to seeing Santa

we went with my dad to the mall of America

we saw Santa, went to Lego land, and underwater world.

We had lunch at the Rain forest cafe and Tillie was terrified of

all the mechanical animals!

We celebrated two Saints this week as well.

December 6th is St Nicholas day.

I read lots of stories of Nicholas and the children 

woke to find coins in their boots!

We also celebrated Santa lucia.

Along with my Mother we brought the children

to a concert put on by the Swedish institute.

It was really nice and a gentle introduction to 

Swedish tradition.  

Matthew worked on his recorder more 

this week and he learned his first song!

Next week is a nature week.

We need this to organize before 

Christmas!  

until next week

~blessings

L.A. Week 1

We went back to our language arts 

lessons now.  We continued with our story

of the prince and his quest to be king.

We had a lot of recapping.  I had Matthew

remember and retell the story.  Then I introduced the last of our 

letters. 

X  Y  Z

Were the three shepards

C (Cat)
and
N (Needle)

The story came to an end and we worked on these new letters.


We did more recorder practice.
He learned new notes and we worked on songs
and reading music.

He was able to attend Chinese again after a little
Thanksgiving break.  Now they have been learning
different body parts, like eyes, nose and mouth.
What really gets a laugh around here is the Chinese
word for hair is pronounced like toefat. 

He still is going crazy with hockey.
We just joined another league and he still plays
every week with his uncle Chad.



We went out and found our Christmas tree this week too.

Here are the highlights...

Hot cider

Santa

Authentic Teepee

I have also tried to get us back in the spirit of the
season and we started reading our advent book again.
But the tree should really help:)

Next week we do another week of
language arts.


He's not going to be able to do this much longer!

good night!

until next week

~blessings

Math ~ week 4

This was the last week of our math block.

This whole week was devoted to review 

and Thanksgiving.  :)

We did a lot of counting.  

He figured out how to count to one hundred!

We did this through skipping across the house 

 hundreds times :)

He was really proud of himself.

He completely understood the logic.

We played more games.

We played so many games the boys made 

up there own board game.

Early this week we also got hit with our first snow fall that really 

accumulated.  We got a couple inches that still allotted for sledding and 

snowman making.

The snow was fun, but I'm glad it warmed up again and all

melted away by the end of the week.

We also attempted the recorder again.
We will be focusing more on music for the
next couple of weeks.

Then we had Thanksgiving.

We had a really good time.

We crafted some turkeys for the occasion

Pine cone turkey

Watched football

played football

Which resulted in a lost (loose) tooth

More football!

Wish Bone

I found this article in the New York times that 

pertains to our chosen style of education

I thought it was very interesting.

I try hard to limit our screen time, but 

I will be honest that it is the hardest part of 

our school.  I wish T.V. was never invented :)


Happy thanksgiving everyone

next week we go back to a language arts block



until then
~blessings

Math ~ week 3

This week was devoted to numbers 

nine - twelve

For NINE we talked about 

NINE months of pregnancy

Self portrait

for TEN we used our fingers and incorporated 

them into our painting.

So, for day ten we finger painted instead of watercolor.

"Door to China"

"All color"

ELEVEN was dedicated to the game of soccer

with the ELEVEN players on each team.

TWELVE we talked about the months of the 

year.  We read the fairy tale the Twelve Months.

We also lightly discussed a clock and time.

(Time is not introduced until grade 3)

Here is some of Matthew's work

I also, introduced what a DOZEN is

with cookies!

I had him write out the numbers

in all the ways he knows.

up to eleven

up to eleven in Chinese

We had some beautiful weather this week.

We enjoyed a couple of days by going to the park.

He learned how to pump now :)

We did more painting too

We had a good week!

 

until next week

~blessings

Math ~ week 2

We continued our math block with the introduction of 

the quality of numbers.  

This week was 5-8.  

Trying to represent the whole to parts concept.

We used wholes of that number.

5 - fingers on hand

6 - star of david

7 - colors of the rainbow

(also introduced days of the week

through a song)

8 - an octopus

Here is an example of his work

We carried our form drawing through the rest of this 

week as well.  We did more running forms.  I 

find them very meditative and a great precursor to 

handwriting skills.  Yes, next year we will hone our skills

with a lost art called cursive.

The focus for the rest of the week was 

Martinmas.

We read from our tiptoes book,

The story of Saint Martin's Light

(if you scroll down a bit you can read the story too :)

We talked about his kindness and warmth.

We crafted our lanterns and little Saint Martin figures 

for the nature table

Then, we attended a lantern walk at a neighbors farm.

 

 

 

Wesley made his lantern at the farm.

We explored the farm and animals

the horses were huge!

We found more chickens

After our adventures we had snacks 

Near dusk we walked with our lanterns into a field 

then, we were entertained by a Saint Martin reenactment 

on horse back!

This celebration was really fun

Happy Martinmas!

So far he is still very enthusiastic regarding his studies.

Although knitting has become a little troublesome and 

he no longer wants to do it.  I have to brain storm some 

ideas.  knitting is very important to our philosophy.  

If anyone has suggestions let me know!

He is still enrolled in a weekly Chinese language class

and lucky for us it has been coinciding with his numbers.

Now we are all learning the Chinese numbers.

Next week we are continuing with quality of numbers.

our focus is whole to parts, roman numerals, Chinese numerals, 

and Spanish language numerals.  Adding painting in as well.

And more KNITTING.

until then

~blessings

Math ~ week 1

If you are walking towards a distant wood you first see the wood as a whole, and only when you come near it do you perceive that it is made up of single trees.  This is just how you must proceed in arithmetic.  You never have in your purse, let us say, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 coins.  You have a whole heap of coins.  You have all five together, which is a whole.

~Rudolf Steiner, Kingdom of Childhood

This a different approach to numbers than I am used to.  

I have to consciously remind myself of whole to parts

when I am trying to teach him.  Also, I have to focus on making numbers beautiful!

Here is how our new block began.

We talked only about numbers 1-4.  

I introduced a new number everyday.  

We drew about it.

Matthew's number pictures

Wesley's number pictures

We have been playing a lot of counting games.

Wildcraft and a lot of Mancala.

They enjoy playing games and it's nice and fun counting.

I introduced him to Roman numerals along side our numbers.

We revisited forms this week too.

We did some review and then tackled running forms.

I told stories to accompany the forms.

We went on a field trip Wednesday to Pied Piper Crafts.

It was so fun!!  

We learned about wheat and all the steps to bread.  

We took the grains and thrashed them.

Then, we went outside to winnow the grains.

We ground the grains into flour.

Brought the flour home and made bread!

Bread

whole to parts :)

We took beautiful big hike this week and found signs of Jack frost!

of course we read tiptoes and how she tries to find Jack Frost.

We also started a new book called 

The Seven Year Wonder Book

the children are going crazy for it.

We love it.

Over the weekend Matthew will continue on with his 

Chinese language classes and Hockey is in full swing again!

next week more math

until then

~blessings