Week 7

MATH
Caleb completed Lesson 4 and took his test.  He started Lesson 5, addition with the number 1.  He also liked circling the addition problems on his Addition Fact Sheet.  He circles the problems after he has learned them and this reinforces the commutative property of addition, or the fact that 2 + 0 is also 0 + 2.  "Look how many math problems I know!"

LANGUAGE ARTS
Caleb worked on the letters P, Q, and R in his MLB.  P was the most fun because together we came up with lots of silly rhymes and phrases that had to do with Pink Pigs and Pumpkin Patches.  Caleb wanted to draw a pumpkin patch, as we had just finished reading a book called Halloween Jack-O-Lanterns.

Caleb loves to have books read to him and we read from a collection of stories, more A-Z Mysteries, and more Halloween stories.  "The Eyewitness Books are my favorite this week."  A friend let us borrow a huge stack of Eyewitness Books.  They are from a series of informative non-fiction books, each one being filled with beautiful, fun pictures and focusing on a single science or social studies topic.  We read books on whales, oceans, and pirates, to name a few.  I have Caleb read words and sentences aloud when we come across words he is learning.

SCIENCE/S.S.
These 2 subjects overlapped a lot for us this week.  We are continuing to read books about space and the moon, and chart the moon phase on Caleb's calendar.  We discussed the moon's orbit around the earth, and Caleb made a flipbook that helped him see why the moon looks different depending on where it is in space.  After reading some poems about the moon, Caleb wanted to write one and I suggested he draw a picture to go along with it.  He drew the earth and sun, and the moon in between the two, explaining to me that, "It is a full moon because the sun is shining right on it."  The words under the picture say, "Moon please be mine.  You are the best."

Caleb also made a weather vane that we took outside to see the direction of the wind.  Caleb learned how to find North, East, South and West, depending on where the sun comes up and goes down each day.  He charted the weather over the course of 3 days, recording the temperature, wind direction, and weather.  There wasn't wind on two of the days, and each day was clear and sunny, but it was a good exercise in charting that we will continue to work on.  The picture he drew is of himself next to his weather vane on the one windy day.

ART
The project Caleb had the most fun with this week was making birch bark baskets.  He used a round piece of birch bark and used a glue gun to attach a leather bottom.  He added a feather and bead decoration he made.  He uses the basket to collect things we find outside for our nature window.  (We have a windowsill where we put things we collect outside that reflect the current season.)

P.E.
Caleb played and exercised at the park and practiced riding bikes (he can now ride training-wheel free!)  He didn't attend swimming class this week since his brother was sick and they've both been a little under the weather battling colds.  It was a good time to discuss health, caring for bodies, and proper use of medicine.