Week 8 - Katy No-Pocket

Can you believe we are wrapping up our second month of schooling?  It seems hard to believe!  I'm not sure if we are still in the "honeymoon period", but the boys are still chugging along and seem to love what we are doing.  Our Before Five In A Row book this week was Katy No-Pocket by Emmy Payne.  Although, not a very realistic story as poor Katy would not have been able to rear young Freddy without a pocket.  That, along with Leonard Lion not looking like a lion, was probably my only qualms with the book.  The story starts off with Katy asking other animals how they carry their babies.  In the end, she goes to the city and finds a kind man with an apron.  He gives it to her and she is able to carry Freddy and lots of other baby animals.

After reading our story for the first time, we got our Atlas book out and found Australia.  We read/looked through the pictures of Australia by Ann Heinrichs.  They thought the didgeridoo was a very funny word.

We did our Australia Animals book (from Confessions of a Homeschooler!)

Then, for a treat, we made Pavlova...one of Australia's national desserts:

Are they done yet?  I've never used a hand mixer for that long in my entire life!!

Finished product

Cutting in.  It was pretty good, but really sweet.  I think I would decrease the amount of sugar next time.

They both wanted seconds.  Must not have been too sweet for them!

Next, we did various activities in our lapbook:

Our Bible story this week was on Kindness.  So, it was great that the story talks about a kind man.  We discussed other "K" words.  Then we discussed how different mommies hold/carry their babies:

C. carrying like "Jocko" the monkey's mom carried him.

B. carrying like Mrs. Alligator carries her baby.

How Mommy holds baby J. sometimes!

I surprised them both with aprons...it was very anticlimactic.  I don't think they were as excited as I was...but at least they were sports and went and got all of their babies to try in it:

We looked at the different habitats in the books and counted/found all of the animals.  Then, we went through our animal classification set for Katy No Pocket.

Check out the link above...this is a really great set of cards.

Finally, I printed a tool match game.  They had to color their tools and then match them to the correct shadows and glue them on.  I think it's funny that B. colored his tools like what real tools would look like and C. colored them in lots of bright crazy colors.  They are both so different:

 Some other great go-along books that we read were:  Feed the Animals by H. A. Rey, Snap! by Marcia Vaughan and Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French.

Bible

  Like I said earlier, this week we learned about kindness.  We read about King David showing kindness to Mephibosheth when others did not.  This opened the door to talk about people with disabilities, differences in race/ethnicity, etc.  Our Bible verse this week was 1 Corinthians 13:4...

Love is patient.  Love is kind.  It does not want what belongs to others.  It does not brag.  It is not proud.  1 Corinthians 13:4  ...again, with the hand gestures?

We started the week off by making a kindness chart.  Every time they showed kindness without having to be told they earned a crown sticker. 

After talking about Mephibosheth's handicap, we read some other books about children with disabilities.  We read:  Some Kids Use Wheelchairs by Lola M. Schaeffer and Don't Call Me Special by Pat Thomas.  They were both great books and opened a good discussion on treating everyone with respect and kindness despite what they look like.  As many of you might guess, this was a great week to introduce the song, "Jesus Loves the Little Children."  A classic that most children these days, don't seem to know.  I printed out some colored circles for them to make faces out of:

We wrapped up the week by doing some other songs and talking about how God cared for Mephibosheth and He cares for us:

Math

  We zoomed through lesson 8 in one day (a review of triangles and counting) and Tuesday we started lesson 9.  Learning the 10's value place.  It was a little slow going at first, but they caught on by Wednesday.  Next week, we start the 100's place (Insert Jaws music here....).  And yes, before you ask, they are still in their pajamas.  We were doing our work quietly and raising our hands when we had the answer.

Handwriting:

  They have officially mastered their L, U & V.

Phonics

  This week the boys learned -in & -ip words and added another book to their repertoire!

Next week we will be rowing Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and our Bible story will be about Jesus calming the sea.