Norway - MFW ECC & 1st, Weeks 12 & 13

We traveled to Europe this week with our first stop being Norway (and other countries nearby). Above is an art project from Global Art, felt patterned clothes.  We read several books as well, Snow Treasure and Heidi were the favorites.  We have included some of the other European countries in our reading as well, which is why we listened to the audio book, Heidi.

A currency kit came with our curriculum, which includes play money from each country.  At first, I was having them buy their snacks with the money, but snack time is always a bit crazy with 4 of them begging for food, adding in the money exchange was too much for me to handle.  Instead, I'm having them glue the money on the bottom of their flag pages, and everyone is happier.

This flag sticker book came with our curriculum, and I also bought an extra one for Rebekah.  The kids love using them, I'm glad I got an extra one!

Then, I had a bright idea to use some of our stamps from Stamps Teach.  Since we had so many stamps from European countries, I had them find the stamps, and then put them on a European map.  The map was too small, so they had to draw lines, or make a key.  Unfortunately, this was more fun for me than them.  Caleb was bored and just wanted me to tell him what to do so he could be done.  I was a bit bummed they didn't like it.

I found a few things that didn't have dairy in them to try from Europe.

This is fruit soup.  The recipe was in our teachers manual.  All of us liked the juice, but I was the only one that liked the fruit too!  I used raisins, dried apricots, and dried pineapple.

This was a very hard few weeks with math, spelling and English for Caleb.  The week long break for Thanksgiving was not good for his attitude!  He ended up doing a lot of double lessons in math because he needed to "do it again with a good attitude".  He was working on difficult subtraction in his head, which was tricky, but he was really doing a good job when he decided to have a good attitude.  I noticed that if his lessons (in any subject) aren't perfectly easy, then he tends to have a fit...

As far as spelling, I decided that Spelling Power just does not work for him.  The daily tests stress him out.  He cries and gets upset EVERY time he gets a word wrong, even though that's the point, to see which words he needs to study.  He needs the traditional spelling.  He can study the list of words all week and then take a final test at the end.  I went ahead and ordered Spelling by Sound and Structure, which is the same one we used last year and liked.  He's excited about it and keeps asking me when it's going to get here.

Rebekah has been doing wonderfully with her reading and math.  I'm amazed at how quickly she's learning to read.  For her math, she's been learning addition and subtraction.  She's determined to catch up to Caleb!

Lastly, I had to share a picture of Matthew seeing the Christmas tree for the first time!  Precious!