It's Still Dry!

We did a water trick today for our Science lesson:

 Yep, it's still dry!:

When we let the air escape out of the glass, the water was able to fill it and soak the paper towel.

All this water-play inspired the desire to paint with watercolors. 

Malachi was so proud of his painting:

 Thinking about a past activity we did on the color wheel, he mixed colors together trying to create the secondary and tertiary colors around the rainbow.

We Got a Package From Mam-Maw!

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

Stone Age Hunters

Today we studied the stone age hunters of 10,000 b.c.   Here are a couple of our hunters in their "animal skin" tent:

We tried to make tools like they did, so Malachi is working on cutting the piece of animal skin (a.k.a string) for his bow using a sharp rock that we found.

Here, our hunter is in action with his bow and arrow... Later he threw a harpoon too.

Karis is gathering berries using the tool she made.

Our history book, A Street Through Time, provided a lot of food for our imaginations today as we tried to make and use tools like stone age hunters.  Malachi went outside on his own while the other two kids were napping and worked on his tools and Karis asked me tonight when I was tucking her in, "Mommy tomorrow after we do school and do our reading and math and coloring, can we go outside and do stuff like those...uh... what were they called again?"  I never know what will get their wheels turning.



I Never Forget a Face

For Geography today, we pulled out this fun eeBoo game: 

And we kept our globe nearby:

As we made matches, we found the continents that each face was from:

About halfway through, I wondered if playing this right before bedtime was a good idea:

The game ended happily, however.  Especially since they both won!



Friday Funny Faces



Wild Cats

In Science we continued our study of mammals.  Our focus this week was the cat family.  We learned a few interesting facts about some wild cats. Did you know that:

1) Cougar, Puma, and Panther are all names of the same animal... a Mountain Lion

2) Mountain Lions/Pumas/Cougars/Panthers can jump as far as 40 feet... and

3) What we often call a Black Panther is actually a Black Leopard, just called by the name panther??? 

Here we are measuring out 40 feet so we can see how far a Mountain Lion can jump.

We tried to jump that far, but it was impossible!  So, we counted how many of our jumps it took to make one Mountain Lion jump.

Then we pretended that our stuffed wild cats were Mountain Lions and made them jump (by throwing them) the 40 feet:

Here is the Black Leopard that Malachi drew for his Science Notebook:

Malachi Did It!

We are just about finished reading this book:

Inspired by the chapter in which Laura and Mary go to town and dress in their bonnets, Karis models her bonnet:

Yesterday Malachi read his first words and even spelled "cat" by sounding it out.  I wanted to take a picture of the word and he wanted to add the words "Malachi did it" (so he sounded those out too).  He is not angry in this picture, he is cheering himself in the manner of a "rock star"...

 AND today, he read his first book!
He just had to read it to Karis and Asher too:


It has been an exciting couple days for us... weeks of letter-sound drills have finally paid off!

Field Trip: Diesel Locomotive

The week before last we studied steam locomotives in history.  This past week we were able to take a field trip to see a modern, diesel-run locomotive:

When we arrived, Mr. Tim took us across the tracks:

He even let us climb aboard! 

To our delight, we also got to ride a little bit, ring the bell, and blow the whistle.  Here, Asher is "driving" the train: 

In this picture, we are watching the bell ring:

  After our driving and riding, Mr. Tim showed us how the engine of a modern-day train is different from a steam locomotive.  No fire, or boiler in this train.. It has an engine, generator, and compressor:

He even showed us how the train stops.... 

...  and the signal switch to change tracks. 

We are so thankful that Mr. Tim gave us such a great tour!

Of course all this touring inspired us to get our big Christmas train out to play with.

Malachi soon figured out that our Christmas train is actually a steam locomotive, not a diesel-run train  like the one on our tour, since diesel-run trains don't need this: 

Thanks again Mr.Tim... We had a great time!



Pacific and "Atsicic" Oceans

Today we read this book that we found at the Library:

We also looked at our Atlas and talked about how water covers most of the earth.  Specifically, we looked at the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans that surround North America.  Then, to help us remember the location and names of the oceans around our continent, we used our watercolors to paint the water:

 The names of these oceans have twisted up our tongues, though.  Atlantic Ocean tends to come out as "Atsicic Ocean"- I guess it is a cross between Pacific and Atlantic.  We will keep practicing!

Here are Karis and Malachi's  finished paintings: 

Howler Monkeys

Yesterday we made this counting stick (an idea from my friend Melinda at Speece School).  Every fifth bead is blue to help with a visual representation of counting by 5's and 10's... also helps with one-to-one correspondence... we were able to use this great tool today during our counting time.

Today Asher was very intent on coloring... this has typically been of no interest to him.

Here Malachi is doing his afternoon reading review of letter sounds:

In Science today we read about Monkeys and Apes.  Then we turned ourselves into Howler monkeys.  Here are two now:

Asher wanted in on the screaming-at-the-top-of-our-lungs, so Karis shared her mask with him:

I am beginning to wonder why I gave them more of a reason to scream through the house!