Week 17

We finished up school on Wednesday and started our Christmas break.  Yay!  

We wrapped up Christmas around the world:

We made gum drop towers in science.  Hunter did not want to be in pics:

 We also made Christmas trees stand up with static electricity: 

Wrapping up math:

Also, our ipad had a display issue this week so we had to get out the Barton tiles!

After school ended, we pretty much enjoyed being lazy until the weekend.  Now it's time to clean and get ready for Christmas!!

Week 16

Our last full week of school before break!  Yay!  We had a full week and a visit from our supervising teacher.

In our Christmas Around the World study, we made Yule Logs for France:

We had fun crackers for England:

We were also in Sweden this week.  Next week will be our last 3 countries! 

Science was a continuation of Christmas experiments.  This was Santa's Magic Milk:

In this one, each child had a different liquid to see which would dissolve the candy cane first.  Hunter's hot water was the winner, Samuel's cold water was 2nd, Nathan's vinegar was 3rd and Lily's oil didn't seem to do a thing!

3 more days to wrap up units, review and end things at a good spot.  January will be here before we know it!

Week 15

Starting our Christmas Around the World unit!  We visited New York, Canada and Mexico this week.  It's been a fun break.

We are doing a Christmas-themed science experiment unit.  We did cookie cutter explosions:

 We also made cranberries dance:

On Thursday, we headed to Dubuque for a field trip.  It turns out the field trip was Friday but we made the most of our day and had a great time!

We ate out at a very popular A&W in a gas station:

We visited the garden and botanical center but it was very cold!!

We stopped at a mall and hid from Santa the whole time:

We walked a few minutes on the riverfront but, again, it was so cold!!

Finally, we ended up at the water park!  It was hard to get too many pictures because I was going on slides, too!!

It was a fun week and we are down to 8 days of school and counting.......................

Week 14

I don't have a lot of great pics of school this week.  Our tree is up so we do all of our school in the living room and it's just not as easy to snap pictures.  We had a fun week of review in history so we'll be starting a Christmas-based unit next.  

Family game night because church canceled due to a blizzard that never came:

Christmas baking:

We are counting down the days until Christmas break.  We are continuing to work on the most important things (math, reading/literature, grammar and writing) but enjoying some holiday fun in the other subjects.  

Week 13

We had a 2 day school week and I planned Thanksgiving-based activities for almost everything:

Playing Bingo in Spanish to review numbers, colors and basic phrases.

Art project...hiding a turkey.  Hunter disguised his as a bush.

Lily made a zombie turkey

Nathan disguised his as Santa (couldn't find a red marker)

Samuel made his camouflage.

 The twins did Grammar together, as well.  It was a spin and color the noun/verb/adjective.

Watching mythbusters talk about turkey and tryptophan.

Roll, add and color a turkey:

The end of the regular week, before Thanksgiving, we got pizza and picnicked in front of the tree:

Decorating:

Week 12

Another week of school has flown by.  Hunter started his 3rd "I Survived..." audiobook.  He has done the San Francisco earthquake, 9/11 and is on Hurricane Katrina.  We finished our read aloud so we're done with that until after Thanksgiving break.  We were able to watch a short video about the Great London Fire of 1666, which really showed what the book dealt with.  It was very interesting!

Art time--making scratch art.

Tuesday was a day off for the twins' 15th (!!!!) birthday:

Back to school Wednesday.  We had some fun in history learning about the Revolutionary War and Thomas Jefferson.  I like this history because it has so many methods of learning.  We listened to an audio dramatization, did room-to-room activities and filled out information on our worksheets.

We officially finished our Fall portion of the nature journal!  We took a chilly walk and checked off the fall items we were able to find.

Next week is only 2 days of school so I've planned some fun things to keep us busy!!