We had another great week last week and also have some exciting news! Josh and I will be traveling to London and Paris soon. An opportunity emerged that we couldn’t pass up. Though they are a little sad they aren’t coming along, the kids are excited for us and Elliot is especially thrilled that we can take lots of pictures for him to see. France and England have both been places he and I have studied together in the past so he’s pretty familiar with them. Caroline is aware of the existence of the Eiffel Tower in Paris and she also knows her aunt, uncle, and cousins lived in France for a while to learn French before heading to Africa (French-speaking country) to serve as missionaries. We’re hoping someday we can take the kids to Europe so they can see it all for themselves.
Here’s what’s going on this coming week:
Memory Verse: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.- Philippians 4:6-7
Hymn: Be Thou My Vision
Artist: Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn
Composer: Ludwig Van Beethoven
Five in a Row: Truman’s Aunt Farm by Jama Kim Rattigan (learning about homophones)
Pre-K Literature: Aunt Mary’s Rose by Douglas Wood (learning about plants, roses, and focusing on aunts in our family study)
Read Aloud: The Family Under the Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson (Set in Paris!)
A Few Photos From Last Week:
When we placed our story disk for Truman’s Aunt Farm, we were supposed to choose a location where one of his aunts live since no setting is given in the story. Elliot has four wonderful aunts to choose from and decided to stick the disk on Boston, where his Aunt Buzzy lives.
Caroline’s book also has an aunt theme. She practiced writing her aunts’ names.
Practicing Number Order
I just thought I would showcase Elliot’s beautiful cursive writing. I’ve been amazed by how quickly he’s picked it up after just nine weeks of instruction. He pretty much does all his work in cursive now and he loves practicing in his free time as well. This assignment was sentences I dictated and he wrote down that contained words with silent t’s, which he had practiced in his Explode the Code lesson./strong>
After our last eight-week long read aloud, we decided to go with something short and simple last week. We read The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes and finished it by Wednesday. We really enjoyed this sweet story and we had a great discussion about the moral lesson it teaches.
We learned lots of new words while reading The Hundred Dresses, disconsolate being one of them.
We enjoyed another great nature walk last week. Our objective was to find and observe some ant hills since we are studying ants (in addition to aunts!) but we came across so many other interesting things as well. It seemed like new things were popping out in front of us at every turn. It just goes to show how much we probably miss when we aren’t actively looking for things to learn about in the world around us.
We found a mushroom.
Elliot drew a snail shell he found in his nature journal. Caroline drew the swings at the park. We’re still working on grasping the whole natural versus man-made concept. She said, “But they’re just so beautiful!”
Grasshoppers were all over the place!
We found this little lizard on the sidewalk. We weren’t exactly sure what kind it was (gecko?), but it sure appeared to be blending in with its surroundings (the sidewalk) so much so that we almost didn’t see it. Sadly, it was not alive.
