Break Time

We are planning to take a week off from school next week for a "spring break" because we have guests coming.  It's been a busy week around here and I've tried hard to get all of our school work in before we break.  I wanted us to be at a good stopping point before taking some time off.  I'm looking forward to the break and maybe a little sleeping in.  A girl can dream, right? ha

In language we began short vowel "i".  We spent most of the week working on vocabulary words.  He had 35 in all to learn.  He loves games so I try to incorporate that into our lessons when I can. 

here he is doing a matching game with some of his words

Here are a few of his word lists from his workbook.  I photocopy the pages.  I then cut out the words and pictures and laminate them.  We use them for several games.  It's extra work for me but I think it really helps him learn.

We play Memory everyday with all of these cards.

He enjoys reading Bob Books. I try to incorporate a new one each week.  There are four in each color set. After he can successfully read all four he gets to pick a prize from our treasure chest.  He likes that incentive and it helps motivate him.

In our story time we re-read our Frog and Toad are Friends book.  There are five stories in the book so we read one each day. Their favorite is one called The Swim.

In math he learned to tell time with hours.  Last week he learned minutes.  His next lesson will have us putting the two together.  It has made him a little crazy about telling time.  He is constantly either asking us what time it is or telling us what time it is.

making a clock using our Math U See blocks

our clock

reviewing tally marks

When I taught this a few weeks ago I had no idea how much it would help him when learning to tell time. 

I also found a new program called XtraMath. It is great for reviewing math facts.  It takes maybe ten minutes to go through a lesson.  I have had him do this at the end of our lessons each day.  It is free on your home computer but costs as a phone app.  The website is www.xtramath.org. 

We continued our unit in Science on sound.  This week's lesson was called "Hearing Sound".   We watched a few videos on sound and also made Trumpet Ears.  We went around listening to things with and without our big ears.  We learned that the bigger the ears the better you hear.  We read Eric Carle's book Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You Hear.  I love all Eric Carle books! 

 Cruz with his trumpet ears

In our nightly read-aloud time we read another book from the Magic Tree House series.  It was book #4 Pirates Past Noon.  The pirate's name was Cap'n Kidd and his helpers were Pinky and Stinky.  My boys thought that was hilarious and laughed out loud every time I said their names.  The also laughed hysterically when I read about "pirate booty".  Little boys can be so silly!

We dressed up like pirates.

and we had a pirate themed breakfast

oh what fun we are having in school!

Our Bible lessons covered the stories of  "Jesus Walks on Water" and "Jesus Stills the Storm".  Our new song was Deep and Wide.  Our memory verse was Genesis 16:13. Here is Cruz saying it in the video below.

We have not made many crafts this month.  I am waiting until Easter week to go through the Easter story.  We will begin on Palm Sunday and go through Easter morning.  We will do part of the story each day and crafts to go along with it.  Because we are taking off next week I didn't want a lot of starting and stopping in the story so I am going to cover it all in one week.

We did make some "stained glass" crosses to put on our schoolroom window. 

This is all we have on our door so far.  I left our tree up from February.  This month we are adding prayer request eggs to it.  Each day we pick something or someone to pray for and add it to our tree.  I love how it is teaching our boys to pray for others.  It's the little things like this that I hope will stick with them the most.

It's now Spring Break and I'm ready to kick my feet up and rest.  Wait, never mind, I have young kids and guests coming.  It'll be a busy week but busy doing fun stuff with some fun friends.