Adventures in U.S. History: Week 2

Last week, we really focused on the importance of names. That set up our Bible study for the year: the names of Jesus. This week we started our Bible poster by putting up the first name, Jesus. We discussed why Mary and Joseph chose His name and the meaning of the name Jesus. Later in the week we read about Jesus in the Old Testament.

On Monday, we introduced the story of Christopher Columbus and added him to our timeline. Throughout the week we read lots of books about Columbus and watched the Nest Animated Hero movie and Drive Thru History episode on Christopher Columbus.

Big Brother did some of the crafts from my Christopher Columbus activity pack and all three children made ships from the Adventures in U.S. History activity bundle. They thought it was pretty cool to have three ships just like Columbus did! The best part thing about these ships is that they float in water! We added them to our kiddie pool and had a splash party!

For Math, we played a quick place value game. I pulled out our old Math-U-See blocks (we used MUS for Primer-Beta but have since switched to Singapore), three matching sheets of construction paper, and three 10 sided dice. I specifically bought dice to match the colors of the three place values that our blocks represent. Big Brother would roll all three dice, place the correct number of blocks on each paper, and read the number out loud.

Middle Man and Little Sister played with the other blocks while we played this game.

We also played a game called "Roll a Number" this week to work on place value and greater than/less than symbols. Using one of the same 10 sided dice, we took turns rolling. We then decided whether we wanted the die to be in the hundreds, tens, or ones place for our number. Once all three spots were filled for both players, Big Brother wrote the inequality sign and read the number sentence out loud.

Middle Man and Little Sister joined us in this game by being the official rollers. Middle Man practiced his number recognition skills by reading the number shown on the die to us.

We started Song School Latin this week. The boys have been looking forward to starting our Latin program and it has not disappointed. We watched a sweet movie that introduced four latin words, listened to some songs using those words, and played a memory style game to review.

We also finished All About Spelling 1 on Monday! The rest of the week we focused on reviewing spelling rules and phonics sounds. We will start All About Spelling 2 next week.

For Language Arts, we read more books, worked on memorizing and copying "Who Has Seen the Wind," composed a story in our creative writing journal on an exciting summer vacation, and finished up lesson 1 in our Wordly Wise book.

The assigned science for My Father's World seems to be hit or miss in week two. I have heard many people complain about how light it is. However, I feel like this is a good way to teach children about using the scientific method and using a science notebook to record their observations. I loved how much the theme tied in to so many other subjects! Not only was our poem on wind, but Christopher Columbus is a great topic to use to study air. We built ships out of aluminum foil, straws, and paper. Using flaps of cardboard, the kids helped the ships sail from "Spain" to "North America" (the two sides of our kiddie pool).

We also held a water bottle opening side down in the pool. The water outside the bottle was higher than the water level inside the bottle, which demonstrates that an empty water bottle is full of air. I tilted the bottle to the side to demonstrate air leaving the bottle by way of bubbles! Afterwards, I let the kids play with the boat and bottle. They were giving each other cute "Science lessons" and telling each other how air and water work. We also had an "air race" by blowing strips of paper using our cardboard flaps.

Dad got in on the action by blowing his shop vac at buckets of water! The kids thought it was hilarious to watch the water jump out of the bucket.

Nature Study accidentally happened indoors this week when Middle Man found a tiny moth in the living room.

The kids tried to find it in our nature guides, but we could not seem to find it in there.

That night I found the moth online. It was a Bent-Line Carpet Moth (costaconvexa centrostrigaria) and I made an information sheet for us to read. It died overnight, which made observing its coloration and measuring its wingspan easier.

Just because we did nature study indoors did not mean we gave up our nature walk. We waited for Saturday to go to the state park with Dad. We hiked the shoreline trail and saw spiders, ducks, minnows, dragonflies, and lots of turtles. The boys identified a maple leaf and Middle Man picked out a new rock (piece of gravel) for his collection.

In the name of transparency, week 2 saw some negative attitudes and hard days. On Monday, after most of our lessons were over, we ran to the store to pick up our grocery order. I came home to realize the chicken we were thawing out for dinner had leaked all over the fridge. While I was trying to clean up that mess, the refrigerator door bar holding our pickle and cherry jars broke, sending glass everywhere. Mom may have gotten a little out of line and had to send everyone out so that Mom could have a timeout and clean up the mess. We put spelling off until that evening because I was not in the mood to finish up the school day.

The next morning, Middle Man asked if it was a school day because he did not want to do school on "every kind of day." I realized that this year was his first time experiencing school with us full time. In Kindergarten, we did most of Big Brother's schooling while Middle Man was napping. In Big Brother's first grade year, Middle Man was in Parent's Day Out two days each week (and will be this Fall if it is open).

It just goes to show that not every day is perfect but we don't have to let a rocky beginning get in the way of a good week.