Homeschool Week 30: Fish, Frogs, Turtles, and a Beard

I will admit that I had a little more pep in my step this week when I realized that we had hit week 30.  We are almost to the finish line now and I am just giddy.  We still have a lot left to cover over the next six weeks but I am breathing a little easier knowing we are so close.  Here is what we covered this week.

In Bible we began the Easter story.  Our lessons were on The Triumphal Entry and The Last Supper.  We began learning two new songs: "I Think When I Read That Sweet Story" and "For God So Loved the World".  Cruz is continuing to memorize the ten commandments.

Cruz's Bible worksheet

In Language Cruz reviewed the sounds "ar", "aw", "au", "oi", "oy", "ing", "ang", "ong", and "ung".  He had vocabulary words and stories to go with each of those sounds.  His grammar lessons reviewed telling and asking sentences.   This week he tried his first chapter book.  It was one from the Mercy Watson series.  We have three of them that I read to the boys last school year.   He has almost finished it and is so proud of himself.

Our family loves Mercy Watson! 

playing Memory with his phonics sounds cards

We play Memory and Go Fish with these cards several times a week as review.

reviewing asking sentences

Ben's language lessons were on the letter T.  His memory verse for the week was Genesis 16:13- "Thou God seest me."  His nursery rhyme was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

I made turtle pancakes for breakfast one morning.

"T" is for turtle

sight word review

nursery rhyme

In Math Cruz is still working his way through the subtraction facts.  Ben counted 0-80 and practiced writing and recognizing numbers 1-19.  We introduced number 20 on Friday. 

putting the correct amount of dots beside each number

Cruz had drawn himself riding on a turtle and didn't want me to erase it so I just had Ben work around it.

Cruz on a turtle 

In History we learned about young Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln loved to read.  That was Cruz's favorite fact about him.

Our activity for the week was making an Abraham Lincoln hat.

We used black paint, paper plates, black construction paper, and black felt to make our hats.

When I went to the supply store to pick up the felt and paint for the hats, I found these fun beards in the party section.  They were only about $1.00 each so I bought them just for the fun of it.

Cruz seeing his beard and eyebrows

He loved it!

We got a lot of laughs out of those things!

Cruz as Abraham Lincoln

We learned about three States this week- Montana, Idaho, and Washington.

Our last unit in Science will be on animals.  This week we began that unit with a study of fish.  We read a couple of books and watched several videos about fish. 

Our main focus of the week was learning how fish breath underwater.

His activity was painting a sparkle fish.  We used water color paints and glitter.

Ben had a fish activity from his Abeka art book that I had been saving for this week.

When he finished he wanted me to draw him some more little fish to paint.

We will plan to visit an aquarium on our next trip to Guatemala City to see some of the fish we learned about.

In Health we learned about having good manners at home.  We learned about treating our family members with kindness and respect.  We talked about sharing and each one doing a part to help out around the house.  We spent one day covering table manners.  I feel like I will be teaching that from now until they leave home, ha. 

They had to each do a creative drawing on something they had learned.  Here are their pictures-

Ben drew about table manners

Cruz drew about sharing

We had supper at the Lubecks the same day as our table manners lesson so I asked Mrs. Diana in advance if she would recover some of the things we had talked about.  She was delighted to share with the boys and I loved them getting to hear it from someone other than their mother/ teacher.  She used this place mat to show them how to set the table and let us borrow it for more practice.  

In Art we drew a baby frog.

I use a step by step art book each week for our lessons.  I draw on our white board and the boys copy what I do.  These have been a lot of fun.

Cruz's journal entries for the week-

"If I went on a picnic... I would play on the playground! I would eat sandwiches. I have fun there! I would go to their pond.  It is fun at the park!"

I found a new idea I tried this week called Story Starters.  We tried the Scrambler one first.  It was fun and I think we will do it again.  This next journal entry idea was taken from there.

Write two things about a red tiger who slips on a banana peel.  "One day a red tiger slipped on 300 banana peels.  He was black and red.  Everybody laughed in the jungle.  The End."

Lastly, Cruz is still enjoying his piano lessons and is learning so much.  He goes every Tuesday afternoon to class and then spends some time every day practicing.  I treat it like another school subject so he doesn't think much of having to practice each day.  I just tell him it's time for music and we sit down to play.  He has 3-4 songs each week to practice for homework.  In addition to that he has one song to practice for his next exam where he has to play it in front of the other students and parents.  That is coming up in April.  His song for that will be The Wise Man and the Foolish Man.  I didn't get a video of him playing it this week but will try to do that for a future post.

piano practice

His favorite song to sing in Spanish is Alabare'.  He decided he wanted to learn to play it on the piano.  He asked his teacher to help him learn it so as a side song he began that one this week.  He will take a small part of it each week until he learns it all.  He is very excited about playing it.

Alabare' means "I will praise" in English.  

We are taking a few days off this week and instead of sleeping in what time do our boys wake us up this morning?  5:15!!!  Oh mercy!  I'm going to need a lot of coffee today and probably a nap.  A long nap!  ha  Happy Monday everyone.  Enjoy!