We enjoyed our study of Canada! Above are soap carvings that the kids did. The Ivory soap was really easy to carve with a toothpick, but the legs and ears were easy to break off... Have a few extra bars of soap if you do this! Rebekah's whale had to be wet and stuck back together, and I had to help her with the tail. They thought it was great fun though and want to do it again.
We had a lot of fun trying new recipes from Canada to go with our study. I have a few friends that are from Canada, so I asked them for recipes. Below are pictures of our pate chinois and poutine, (click on the links for the recipes). Everyone loved both of them,
We also made blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup, and below they are enjoying puffed wheat squares, very good! Then, we solved a family mystery too! My husbands grandma was famous for making a desert for Christmas. Kevin loved these bars, but we never knew what they were. His grandma passed away a few years ago, and while I'm sure some of his Aunts have the recipe, we did not. I was surprised when I clicked on this recipe that was recommended for Canada: Nanimo Bars. This is what his grandma always made! I wonder where she got the recipe? We do live in the upper midwest, but still a few hours away from Canada. I did not make these though because Rebekah is allergic to dairy, and that wouldn't be fair to make a "school" desert she can't have. I am going to make them at Christmas though for my husband, then there will be plenty of other deserts for Rebekah.
Here are some of the geography pages we worked on. The ones shown are Caleb's, Rebekah also did the same ones.
For science, we continued to study trees and plants. We did a fun experiment with celery. First, we learned what xylem and phloem were, then we peeled the xylem off of two sticks of celery. In each cup, there is one stick with the xylem on, and one without. They guessed what would happen, and then we waited a few days to see if they were correct. They were!
And we read a little about life cycles, then made a notebook page:
We got outside to enjoy the beautiful fall weather several times. Canada has an abundance of maple trees, and so does our neighbor! We tried to make maple leaf stamps, but it didn't work well, so instead we painted the outline. I love how Caleb's paper turned out.
We've been reading through the book of Matthew for our bible time. I read a blog article by a fellow My Father's World user about copywork and dictation, that I found very helpful at Christephi.com. I have been doing copywork and dictation with Caleb, but I think I was focusing on the wrong things, and making it more stressful for him. This week went much better. I decided to use Mama Jenn's copywork pages because they have the verse written at the top of the page. Caleb was getting stressed out by having to copy it out of the bible. He'd loose his place, or be overwhelmed by how long it was. Even though it's the same length on this paper, it didn't bother him at all.
Caleb is not a fan of writing, but I discovered a trick that has worked really well lately. I set a timer for 10 minutes, and then tell him he doesn't have to finish what he's writing, he only has to work diligently for that time. It works! Below was an English assignment to write an autobiography. There were a lot of questions that overwhelmed him at first. Once I told him he didn't have to do them all, just do his best for 10 minutes, he happily started writing and completed all but one of the questions!
It also worked a few days later when he had to write a play! No more asking if how many sentences he had to write and then trying to come up with the shortest ones possible!
And then we got to an easy assignment that turned into a battle... Below is a poem that was in our book. He was supposed to memorize it, but since he memorizes bible verses through church, I only asked him to read it aloud to me. He didn't want to do it, and it turned into a big fit. When daddy came home, daddy decided he would have to memorize it after all. Once he quit having a fit (a very long one), he was able to memorize it fairly quickly. The next two days were spent copying it, and he did a great job.
For read alouds, we finished our missionary story from Mexico, Cameron Townsend. Then we read a funny book that the kids just loved called Owls in the Family. I wanted to read Anne of Green Gables with them because it is set on Prince Edward Island, but we ended up just watching the movie instead due to time.
Rebekah made this adorable book in her 1st grade lessons. She copied each sentence from her workbook. I had to share each page:
She really loves math. We started addition by having a store and a restaurant.
Above, there is a picture of a modified game of candy land. Before she could pick a card, she had to read a word card. And below is a picture of Matthew's new favorite past time. Dumping!
That was our trip to Canada. Next stop, Brazil!
No comments:
Post a Comment