Weekly Recap-- Year 4 Week #14

With December starting we've cut back on our traditional schoolwork to make time for extra holiday fun.  Every year we put away our math books and other curriculum materials and turn to holiday themed work.  We find lots of Christmas themed printables on Teachers Pay Teachers and try to just have fun with our lessons while adding in lots of Christmas crafts, holiday baking, Christmas stories and movies.  You can read about some of our favorite Christmas lessons from past year's here.  This year we decided that rather than theme out each day around a movie we're just going to pick and choose books, activities, movies and crafts based on what we feel like doing.  It will be a bit more laid back for us all and hopefully will allow us to find greater joy in the holiday season.

Reading-- We read a few more chapters in The Hero's Guide to Storming Your Castle.  Alec read a few chapters in The World According to Humphrey and The Landry News as well as reading the books Beastly Babies and Sun and Moon.  Ian read a few more chapters in Divergent and I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.  Evan read a few more Star Wars Phonics books.  Alec, Evan and I read Bear Can Dance! and Cock-a- Doodle- Doo Bop!  Evan and I played a sight word game called Snowman Slap

Spelling and Language Arts-- Alec played Scribblenaughts over the weekend and did lots of spelling.  He spelled everything from scissors and bridge to radioactive.  They had a fun Christmas coloring page where they had to color the verbs green, the adjectives yellow and the nouns red. Evan decided to write a "part 2" for his letter to Santa and spent an afternoon writing up his second list; sounding out all the words he could and copying others from Amazon.

Science-- We had a fun family trip to the Boston Science Center.  We learned all about the science behind Pixar films, watched a lightening show and a live animal show.  You can read about our trip here. One afternoon all three boys played with Play- Doh and Shaving cream, building roads with their toys and making up scenarios with their Mario Characters.  Another afternoon Ian mixed up some snow dough using conditioner and baking soda and made a few roads for his trucks.  We spent a day at the Providence Children's museum playing with blocks of all kinds, learning about the importance of play (you can read about it here), and making dams while playing with the movement of water.

checking out a dinosaur footprint 

playing with movement of computer graphics

building with Wedgits 

building a better dam 

playing with shaving cream 

playing with play dough

Ian made dough using conditioner and baking soda to look like snow

Math-- Taking a break from our traditional math books we've been having fun with some holiday themed work.  The boys worked on some Christmas dot to dot pages on Monday.  The older boys had an extreme dot to dot page with Christmas stocking and Evan had a simpler 45 dot Christmas tree.  On Wednesday the older two boys worked together playing a Christmas tree game working with multiples; Ian ended up winning.  Evan worked on adding while filling in Christmas trees to make a top, middle and bottom that matched up to make math facts.  We did a math scavenger hunt one morning.  I found printable Christmas flash cards for each of the boys review various math concepts and I hid them around the house.  They went around looking for their own math cards and filling in the answers on their sheet.

math card scavenger hunt-- it was a big hit!

Socialization-- We watched Inside Out and talked about emotions versus feelings of hunger, fatigue, etc, clues as to how other people are feeling, what emotions were left out of the movie and quite a bit more.  The boys met and played with other children at all the museums we went to.  They had fun interacting with kids older and younger than them.  At one point my husband and I were joking that Alec found another new family again. He often strikes up long conversations with people at museums; this time he was learning, listening and explaining instead of teaching.

History-- We read Rocks in his Head and Boys of Steel; The Creators of Superman, continuing our coverage of the Great Depression.  We also read a few Christmas stories that were written during the time of the great depression called The Carpenter's Gift and An Orange for Frankie.

Holiday extras: We put up all our Christmas decorations and decorated the tree.  We watched the light parade and had a great time seeing all the creative floats everyone made.  We brainstormed a list of holiday crafts we'd like to try (you can read about it here) and made punched tin luminaries one day.  We started watching some Christmas movies and snuggled on the couch together.  We read the books Santa Claus and the Woodcutter, A Christmas like Helen's.

we just love all the lit floats 

each float picks a different theme

sometimes they aren't even floats but big trucks!

punching his tin can snowflake

hard at work on his angel 

the completed cans (Ian made a Christmas tree complete with garland)