Math Facts Motivation

Malachi is very unmotivated when it comes to his math fact cards.

Daddy came up with this idea:  Five fact cards, then one corn nut.  Worked pretty well!

 

Then, Malachi came up with this idea on his own: 

The floor puzzle held up the cards, and then when he said the answer, he jumped to the other side to see if it was correct (the answers are on the back of the cards).

One day last week, we took a field trip to an art gallery at ECU.  Uncle Jared had a photograph showing there.  We went and found it.

 

Here is a close-up: 

  

Of course, the nastiest photograph there was Malachi's favorite: 

And here are some pictures from various school days:

To the rescue!

 and, our "Reading Bench":

This made me laugh:

Until next time!

Miles and Miles of Reptiles

We have spent some time these past two days learning about reptiles and the differences between a crocodile and an alligator.

after reading several books on the subject (including a very fun one called Miles and Miles of Reptiles by Tish Rabe), we studied different pictures of the reptiles in question to determine which one was which.

                                         

Malachi divided his plastic animals into three categories.

"Reptiles":

"Mammals":

and "The Ones We Don't Know Yet" (which include birds, bugs, and fish):

  We wrapped up our croc and gator discussion today by drawing a crocodile 

(notice the narrow mouth):

and Malachi just had to have an alligator (notice the wide mouth) mask so he could go attack Daddy in his office:

See you later alligators!

"I'm Not Three Anymore, I'm Four."

That is Karis' matter-of-fact phrase of the day.

She wanted to celebrate her birthday with a Yogi Bear cake (after seeing the film over christmas with Uncle Yancey and Aunt Mel).

 

The long awaited "purple unicorn pillow pet" was finally received by a very happy little girl: 

 She wanted tacos and chips and salsa for her birthday meal.

Asher enjoyed the cake:

Even big brother, who usually despises anything girlie, enjoyed playing with the Little People camping set (even though it was pink, purple, and had two girl figures) that Karis got as a gift.

Then, to top the day off, we had a surprise visit from a little friend who came bearing a gift and got to stay and play for the afternoon!

A great day of celebrating one of God's many blessings!

Our Knights

During "recess" (while Mommy was helping Karis with reading), Malachi built this castle:

Later, I found this knight riding around the castle grounds:

Back to Blogging

Although we did have an extended Christmas vacation, it was not a month and a half long!  A combination of computer issues, camera issues, and way too much to do, kept me from blogging about our school days.

Here is a little bit about the past week:

We studied snakes in Science and painted snakes (a.k.a sticks) thanks to an idea found at Speece School.

    

Some students decided that painting hands was a whole lot more fun:

The Roman Empire was our subject in History so we made mosaics using buttons.  Asher is admiring his  letter A- he was quite proud of it.

Karis made a letter K... You have to look closely and use your imagination.

 Malachi chose to make a skateboard, but it is still a work in progress.  If we ever get it done, I will try to post a picture.

Also this week: New haircut!

and fort-building with Daddy.

Great use for an undecorated Christmas tree!

We are expecting lots of snow tomorrow, so we are looking forward to see what happens to the fort- we're hoping for something reminiscent of an igloo.

Teamwork!

Getting from one room to another like this:

Daddy and Mommy were pretty impressed.

World Travelers

Here's a new, fun, geography activity we have discovered:

We travel the continents and oceans by plane, train, or automobile (depending on which continents we are hopping to).  Here's how it works:  "So, Malachi/Karis, how would you get to from North America to Asia?  Be sure to tell me what oceans and continents you are crossing as you go."

All I had to do was lay the map down o the floor with some vehicles, and before I could instruct them in what to do, they started doing it themselves!

While Brother and Sister Slept...

 Malachi enjoyed airplane-flying today...

...and observing a very busy spider.

We decided to try to throw a bug into the web and see if the spider would eat it.  As I walked down the porch steps to get the bug, the spider's web actually caught me and I ended up tearing the whole web down in the process.  That spider was working so hard too! 



Wild Dogs

Continuing our study of mammals, we focused on wild dogs today.

The favorite animal of the day was wolves.  Here is one in his den with a wolf pup:

Here is our howling wolf pack:

Malachi was a little upset to learn that there aren't very many wolves in North America, and maybe none at all.  However, he was delighted to make these wolf puppets as a substitute for the real thing: 

We ended the day by calling Pap-Paw in Mississippi and asking him to tell us the story about when a coyote almost got one of his calves (we can never hear that story too many times!). 



First Farmers: 2000 BC

In History today we learned about people who lived around 2000 BC.  We compared how they lived with how Stonge Age hunters lived (we learned about them last week).  Life progressed in several different ways between the two time periods.  One way was that the people we studied today had learned how to make clay pots.  So, we made our own "clay" pots:

Asher preferred to make balls and Karis preferred to make pancakes.

Our pots, pancakes, and balls ready to be put in the kiln:

Then we painted our creations:

Mommy ended up making the pots for Karis and Asher, but everyone did their own paint job.

Karis' pot: 

Asher's pot:

and Malachi's original piece:

Just for your information: farming, herding animals, and  bronze tool making were other marks of progression during this time period which lead to permanent housing and a less nomadic lifestyle.



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.