Friday, May 18, 2012

Week 3 of First Grade

This week in "Real Life" was pretty kooky, so it was nice that our school life was pretty un-eventful.  


We continued our study of the Old Kingdom of Egypt and on Monday the kids made Egyptian throwing sticks.  I posted about them earlier this week, but as a reminder, here is a picture of the finished product:
Really, how could you forget such amazing works of art?


We continued to read a lot about mummies and pyramids this week, and I had a pretty average project planned for Wednesday, making pyramids.  But the kids beat me to it.  They spent their play time in their rooms wrapping up some toys in tape, calling them mummies, and then making various sarcophaguses out of boxes they found and decorated.  I decided that we could skip the pyramid project, as they're clearly retaining something from this study.

ChacoKitten and I both especially liked Mickey Mummy in his Nerf Gun Ammo Box Sarcophagus 


Although it was a little sad to learn that all of the Cars characters had passed on:
The horridness of Cars 2 was probably just too much for them all.


We started to dig into (punny) the different animal kingdom phyla this week with a look at Annelids.  This involved digging in our yard for earth worms or wood lice (aka rollie pollies.)  You can guess which science day they liked the most, the one I had a hard time ending.

Of course we were in costume for this because *something something underground animals in level something something* about some Mario game on the Wii.  Whatever.

We started the classification chart, but I still haven't decided exactly how this is going to look as a finished project.  So, for now, we taped some things to the dining room wall.  Because we're classy.  I think I'll try to get some string and clips so that we can have a hanging, more mobile-like chart, where they can take down individual cards to study or have to re-arrange for practice.  I figure I'll let the kids help me decorate the labels and make them fancy.  We're probably not out of rainy weekend days yet.

I'm sure I saw something like this on an HGTV contest show and I'm SURE the designer who did this won a million dollars.  It's pretty trendy right now.


And we, of course, spent as much time enjoying the gorgeous weather.  We took a couple of spelling tests outside with sidewalk chalk.
Right after this picture was taken, a neighbor's dog tried to pee on Josiah's work.  Because it's never a dull moment around here.

Other things we worked on:
We are plugging away at math, and we are enjoying Singapore 1.  The kids could probably stand a little more challenge from their math, but I'm really focusing on building reading and writing fluency right now.  Plus it makes them feel like geniuses.
We finished Peter Pan, and all the literature narrations that came with it.  We'll decide this weekend what to read next, but I'm leaning toward a Little House book.  If Josiah can stand it.
Both kids are progressing nicely in their reading, and gaining more confidence.  They've adapted quickly to the new 30 minutes of independent reading time we strive for- and the difference has been huge.


Next week- our history will take us back to Mesopotamia, and the first dictator, Sargon.  And in science we'll start studying insects.  Yippee...

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