Daniel's Duck

This week we are rowing Daniel's Duck. It is the story of a little boy who carves a duck out of a piece of wood, and then tries to sell it at the County Fair. Once he gets there he meets a very special person.
Geography: Tennesse
Language arts: quotation marks
Science: winter nights, shortest day and longest night of the year.

On Thursday we'll be doing a Halloween lapbook, about the history and how it was celebrated then and now. Then Thursday night we are going tick or treating!!

I've been feeling under the weather for the past day or so, but A6 has been able to do a lot of her schooling with very little help from me. If I can get enough rest I usually start feeling better within a day or so.
Happy Halloween!!

The Glorious Flight

This week we are rowing The Glorious Flight. It is the true story of Louis Bleriot, the first man to cross the English Channel. It shows all of the planes he built before he got it right.
I didn't think the kids were going to like this one as much, but they really enjoyed it. There is so much material with this book.
Geography: France, English Channel, England
History: Louis Bleriot
Social Studies: family relationships
Language Arts: airplane vocabulary words, airplane memory game
Math: Roman numerals, Ordinal numbers
Science: airplanes, where do babies come from? (yes, reading this book led to "the talk").

Who knew that reading a book about airplanes would lead to talking about where babies come from. X4 was under the impression that there is this huge baby store where you get babies. He wanted us to go to the store and get a baby boy and call him Isaac. A6 just wanted a little baby to play with. It was a good thing I had an illustrated book about the subject for little ones, The Wonderful Way Babies are Made.


They were a little disappointed with how it really happens. X4 lost interest half way through the book (thank God). A6 was fascinated by the umbilical cord. So, if you ever find yourself having to explain babies to your kids I cannot recommend this book enough!

We have our Piano!

We just got our piano today! Our Church was very kind to give us this piano for free!
Thank you to all the strong men who helped us get it home!!
There are a couple of keys that don't work but hopefully are fixable. We still need a bench for it. I've seen a lot of them online for about $100 and free shipping. The kids are really excited about the piano, so am I!! A6 has already been playing it. She knows two songs, the thing is she hasn't even begun her piano lessons yet.
She learned the songs just by listening to the CD.
Here is a clip of her playing the Cuckoo song.

Pumpkin Week

This week we are doing a pumpkin lapbook that I found online for free.
We are going to be reading different pumpkin books and everyday we'll be doing different activities from the lapbook and then putting them all together. To finish the week, we'll be going to the Pumpkin patch with the kids from COOP and on Saturday Renfrew park is having a Pumpkin festival and hopefully we'll get to go to that as well!
Today we read a book about Christopher Columbus. Since today we are celebrating Columbus Day I wanted the kids to have some idea of who he was and why this is such an important day in history. They also got to color the ships and A6 drew Columbus arriving at the beach, just like the picture from the book.
We only did about an hr of school this morning since all the kids are around and wanting to play with my kids. Tomorrow we will start our pumpkin week! We'll also be doing all of the other stuff as well, math, phonics & handwriting.

Wild Horses Of Sweetbriar

This week we are rowing The Wild Horses of Sweetbriar. Based on a true story, this is a girl's touching recollection of the unusually severe winter of 1903, which she spent on a small island near Nantucket.

Geography: Nantucket, what is an island?, isolation: pros & cons.
Language arts: copy work
Science: weathering, erosion

A6 had a fever Sunday and Monday morning, we did all our schooling on the couch:) I tried not to make her think too much, but she really enjoyed the story and was able to talk about the book. By midday she was feeling much better. She even did copy work on her own! The fever never returned, but she is coughing a little.
We didn't get to go to the pumpkin patch last Saturday, but we are going with the COOP kids next Friday as a field trip.