Mali Week 11

L. Arts: I played Ziggy’s Treasure Hunt. We talked about how every word needs at least one vowel and identified different patterns in words, like consonant-vowel-consonant and vowel-consonant-consonant. I practiced spelling words from pictures in my Spell A Word flip book.

Math: I did some workbook pages. We are learning about counting on as a way to help add numbers. We practiced this with our math dot cards and also with our foam dice.

Science: In co-op we learned about spiders and some of the different ways they catch prey. Some spin webs, some make web mets, some hide behind trapdoors, some just hunt and pounce. We made webs out of popsicle sticks and yarn. At home we did our MEL SCIENCE kit about crystals and made three different kinds of crystals. One of the experiments was supposed to make iridescent crystals when viewed through polarizing film, but it didn’t really work even though the crystals did form the second time we tried. Our other crystals are still sitting in the cupboard while the liquid evaporates.

History: We learned about Ancient Africa. Where the Sahara desert is now used to be a place with water and plants and lots of people lived there. Fossils have been found so they know that it wasn’t always a desert. We also learned about Amanda and listened to two stories about him. One had a moral about how if we treat others badly, they will probably treat us badly in return.

Music: This week was a parents week, they come every other time. We accompanied the group singing Boom Boom Ain’t it Great to be Crazy on the autoharp. It’s tricky to play while people sing along. We also have a new song called Baby Step Leap. We take small little steps and then jump when the song says leap.

Tech (Engineering): We built a giant pile of leaves and jumped in it and buried ourselves. It was really fun. We also made monsters in co-op class. At the playground, we talked about different simple machines that show up in the playground equipment. Swings are a type of lever. There’s a drill kind of thing that is a modified inclined plane. We also watched my dad remove the flat tire and put the spare tire on the car. The lug nuts were super tight so he put the wrench on it and then had to jump on it to get more leverage. He also explained to us how the jack is a modified lever that works with a screw.

Music class

Leaf monster

Word building

My two monsters 

Snuggling in our giant leaf pile

Unicorn drawing

Another pony/unicorn drawing

Making crystals for science

Crystal solution. We had to wait for the liquid to evaporate

Sitting on Max, driving his legs

Mali - Week 9

L. Arts: I did my flash cards review. I read a new book called Jam (I think). It was about a girl who had a yak come to dinner who really liked eating jam.

Math: We played our game Clumsy Thief Junior to practice adding to make 10. I practice counting to 100 a few times.

Science: In Hands-On Science we learned about why leaves change color in the fall. It’s a result of changing temperature and amount of sunlight. Making leaves is a big job for a tree, and with the reduced sunlight in the winter, the payoff is less because there’s not as much light for photosynthesis. With oranges and yellows, those pigments are already there but hidden behind the green of the chlorophyll. Reds are different and are produced when the sugar in the leaves changes to pigment. We extracted pigment from different colors of leaves, colored fall pictures, and made leaf rubbings. We also read a relevant book and watched a Brain Pop video. We also watched some wild Kratts episodes about penguins and dholes, a type of wild dog.

History: We learned about Leif Erickson for Leif Erikson day. We had a special Swedish cake in celebration, even though he wasn’t Swedish. We figured it was close enough. It’s called kladdkaka.
Music: Our homework was identifying which note was higher on the staff out of a pair. We practiced our songs on the bells. We are learning to play the Scotland’s burning song.

Tech (Engineering): We did origami. We got our own sets in a co-op class. We also got some stacking robot heads that are really tricky to balance. The set came with 8 heads but balancing more than 5 seems impossible so far.

Other: we had two fun field trips this week. One was to Wilkerson Farm on Thursday and the other was to HeeHaws on Friday. We made Halloween sugar cookies with our mom.

HeeHaws

Making leaf rubbings

Extracted leaf pigments

Stacking robot heads

Reading flashcards, with candy checkpoints

Reading Jam

The activity in my book for Jam

At Wilkerson Farms

Honey stick - YUM!

I was kind of nervous about the swings at
first but they were really fun

Wilkerson Farm

I love playing with this Halloween decoration

Big slide at HeeHaws

Decorating sugar cookies with mom

Origami

Max - Week 8

L. Arts: I read two mini books. I practiced counting syllables in words. I learned about consonant blends at the beginning of words. I learned about capitalizing words.

Math: We practiced number bonds to make 8, 10, 11, and 12. We used our number mats outside because it was a nice day.

Science: We learned about Magnetism. It was fun to explore all the different magnets. We learned that like poles repel (push against) each other.

History: We learned about ancient China. People there settled around the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. They grew rice. Rice needs a lot of water to grow and the soil has to stay wet.

Music: We learned the Going on a Lion Hunt song. For our homework we listened to the Aladdin song and had to glue the right characters in the right spots based on the order their themes played.

Tech (Engineering): I made a snake out of craft paper and toilet paper rolls. We went to the skate park and observed (and rode on) ramps and other structures. We went to see Big Boy, the largest steam engine ever built. I built with our pegs set.

Other: We passed off all the requirements to move up to trampoline and tumbling level two. This week was our first week going to that class. It was fun. We went on a family hike up to Timpanogos Falls.

On the hike to Timpanogos Falls

At the Butterfly Biosphere

Some of my spelling words

Some more of my spelling words

Two of the mini books I read this week. 

Playing UNO Flip

Testing magnetism in co-op science class

Fun with magnets at co-op

Our cool snakes

Praying mantis at the butterfly biosphere

Poster with butterfly info

Butterfly at the Biosphere

Caterpillar

Having fun at the Curiosity Museum

Playing "Boom Boom Ain't It Great to be Crazy" on the autoharp at music class

Praciticing number bonds on the driveway

Hopscotch

Music class homework

Learned about Silent E job #1

Handwriting page

With Big Boy

More Big Boy

Big Boy

Practicing flash cards with Ziggy Zebra and dinosaurs

Practicing words with dinosaurs

Building with pegs

My dino skyscraper