Weekly Wrap-Up

ONLY ONE WEEK LEFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We started out our week with a really fun field trip to see replicas of the Nina and the Pinta with our homeschool group. We learned a lot about that first voyage across the Atlantic. I certainly had no idea how small those caravels were. I had always pictured Columbus crossing the Atlantic on some large galleon or something. The summer before high school my mom signed me up for a summer sailing class on the continental sloop, USS Providence. The caravels are not much bigger. I can't imagine crossing an ocean on one.

After the field trip we took a nature walk with a bunch of our friends from our homeschool group. The kids got to climb an amazing Live Oak tree. We also walked over to the water and we scraped some barnacles off of a dock for the kids to investigate, journal about and, "take home as pets." Our's did not survive. For some reason they are still sitting on my bathroom counter though. GROSS!

Live Oak tree

The rest of the week was school as usual. We read a biography on Robert Louis Stevenson. subtitled Young Storyteller by Frances Sabin. My children were captivated by the story. The illustrations by Pamela Johnson are very cool too. It was a brilliant way to wrap up our poetry study of "Lou" this year and also a nice way to introduce what a biography is. I am sad to be done with A Child's Garden of Verses. I enjoyed the poems as much as the kids.

We started our unit on measurement. It was really nice to see the kids using their rulers for their intended purpose. It has been a lot of fun actually and we have been measuring everything in the house! We even took them to the playground to measure lizards. It didn't work out to well. Lizards just won't stay still... Also Twizzler dropped his plastic ruler on the ground and it shattered like glass. I've never seen such a thing. It's a good thing the year is almost over. I guess in August they will be getting a brand new set of rulers.

Dollar Tree rulers can shatter

In science we are still reading the Burgess Bird Book. It is such a cute story and Skittles is absorbing all of the information. We are looking up information on the companion site. I think we will continue to read this book through the summer just for fun. I wish we had started it earlier in the spring but we had so many other things going on.

Jenny Wren

This week for writing I have just been pulling handwriting sheets off of The Head of the Class. I pulled 2 numbers and 2 letters. The letters I chose were "S" and 'Z' because he frequently makes his 'S' backwards. I like that the number sheets don't just have the number "2" but the word "two". So he can practice the spelling and formation.