A large family, homeschooling, adoption, special needs, whatever strikes my fancy, sort of blog.

A large family, homeschooling, adoption, special needs, whatever strikes my fancy, sort of blog.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Weekly Wrap Up, homeschool week 5

Hola!  Viva Mexico!


This week is week 5 of our curriculum.  The children were issued their "passports" on Monday.


This week and next week, we are studying Mexico.  


Our craft this week was these lovely Ojos de Dios, or God's Eyes.  


We learned some Spanish words, including colors.
This is timely, because Josiah is taking Spanish in school this year.  


Because I tend to take a theme and r-u-n with it, we watched some Netflix movies about Mexico.  From educational movies, like National Geographic, to, um, less educational movies.  ;)


A friend mentioned Little Passports on facebook recently, and I was intrigued when I checked them out.  They send a package each month with a different country that their characters are visiting, and you can learn more about that country.  Well, that corresponded really well with what we're doing for school this year, so I thought I'd give it a shot!  I emailed them because we would be needing our countries more than once a month, and they were great to work with.  (Our curriculum highlights each country for two weeks.)  

Brianna is unscrambling letters to find the name of a country.  


And one of the fun things about Little Passports is the toy/craft/game they send in each packet.



We also got to put the Mexico flag sticker on the map, and add Mexican flags to their flag holders.


In science, we're studying deserts.  So we drew turtles and used thermometers to discover whether our turtles were warmer in the sun or shade, and near rocks or not near rocks (and accidentally "in plants" or "not in plants" when one of the turtles that wasn't weighted with a rock blew off the porch rail).


We checked our turtles several times over a 24 hour period.



And recorded our findings.


Meticulously.


Isn't her haircut cute?  :)  I look silly in short hair, but she really pulls it off.  


And she was impersonating a school kid when we walked Hannah to kindergarten.  Hannah had left her backpack in the van (she tends to fall asleep in the van after school by the time we get the big kids and get back home) and Brianna retrieved it and wore it.  

Hannah was not amused. 


On the way back from taking Hannah to school, we stopped at the park to do nature drawings.
Which rapidly turned into "PE."


Or maybe even "survival skills."


I'm really enjoying these guys this year.  


This crazy project is going to take multiple days.


Bits of newsprint


Slimy starch


Letting it dry well between layers. 


I love "catching" my kids doing something that could be labelled educational.  :)  This was just free block play.  

Looking forward to next week's tissue paper flowers, and Brianna and I are going to try to get into the sewing room and make a poncho or two.  


And because it's fun to read about what OTHER homeschool families are doing, I'm linking up with some other MFW blogs here:  http://discovertheirgifts.blogspot.com/2012/09/mfw-creation-to-greeks-week-1.html  Check it out!  

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6 comments:

  1. It look like you had a great week! Thanks for linking up and sharing your great ideas :)

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  2. My kiddos and I will be starting the US unit in ECC tomorrow. I love to see what others have done ahead of us and grab ideas. Looks like you are really enjoying ECC and learning lots!

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  3. You are the best mom/teacher ever!! Will you teach my kids and I, too!:)?

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    Replies
    1. I'm not the best mother by a long shot, but I do think this is going to be one of our best school years. :) We're all excited to be using a more interesting curriculum than we have used for the last 14 years. Not dreading school really helps.

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    2. I hear ya! We're only on year 2 and not dreading all of it but some parts I haven't figured out how to make interesting just yet

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  4. whew, wow- what a full week you had! Love all the activities!

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