Weekly Recap-- Year #4 Week 16

  We had such a fun week filled with lots of holiday crafts, books, and movies.  It was also really warm and we managed to get the beach one day too.  I can't believe we were at the beach in December without all our winter gear on.  It's been a bit bizarre but I'm loving the fact that I can still wear my flip flops in what should be the coldest time of the year up here!

Math-- They all spent a couple of mornings working on some Christmas themed word problems.  Another day Alec and Ian played a fun Christmas dividing game working on their fact fluency while Evan and I played a game where we had to line up three numbers in a row that added to 12 while taking turns placing numbers on our chart.  They all had the same double digit addition sheet one morning with regrouping and I was surprised when Evan had no problems with it.  We got a box of Wedgits in and the boys have been having so much fun building with them and experimenting with what they can do.

Language arts-- The kids worked on spelling and grammar when filling out Elf Applications. The older two boys had some fun with spelling trying to spell as many words as they could out of the letter in the word snowflake.  Evan completed a Christmas word search one day and a fill in the correct punctuation another day.  The older boys learned what idioms were and had a cute Christmas poem page where they had to pick out the idioms and tell me what the real meaning behind the phrase was.

History-- Ian has been watching the TV show Finding Hitler and he was telling me all about it one day this week.  I can't believe how much he's absorbing and learning.


Reading--  I can't help but mention (rather proudly!) that Evan has been reading up a storm.  He read all of the subtitles in the episode with Jabba the Hut while watching Star Wars and read two smallish pages in our holiday chapter book The Naughty list.  He was reading my blog page over my shoulder one day as I was typing it too.  Sure he needed some help here and there but he was able to sound out some rather impressive words. It's so gratifying to look back through my old posts and see just how far he's come!!  On to our "real" reading of the week: Ian read I Drive a Snowplow and another few chapters in Divergent.  We read a few more chapters in Storming the Castle together.  Alec read Surprises According to Humphrey and spent an afternoon reading aloud to us from The Naughty List while we ran errands.  Evan finished up his Star Wars Phonics books and read I Will Fly!

Holiday-- We've finished The Naughty List.  We read Christmas Is.., Santa Claus The World's Number One Toy Expert, OH What a Christmas, How to Catch Santa, Mr Willowby's Christmas Tree, and A Wish to be a Christmas Tree.  We made candy sleighs and trains (you can read about how to make them here).  We made painted sugar cookies using sugar cookie dough, evaporated milk, and food coloring and some delicious cinnamon bun sandwich cookies (you can get the recipe here).  We filled out Elf Applications and made paper Santas (you can find the Elf Applications here and the link for building Santa here).  We worked on a few gift crafts too.  We made bird seed ornaments (you can find the instructions here).   We made snowflake luminaries (you can find instructions here).  We enjoyed a family movie marathon on Sunday and watched Elf, The Santa Clause, and the edited for TV version of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

Foreign Language-- This is a new category for us and I can't say it's a subject we've added into our school week but I have noticed that Alec is learning a bit of French unintentionally.  He has been watching the show Wakfu on Netflix using the subtitles to follow along the story.  He's started to get Evan hooked on the show too and I'm hearing a few French words here and there.  They don't always know what they mean but luckily I took a few years of French myself and spent a week or two abroad so I know enough to get by and help them out here and there.

Science/ Nature-- We all went on a little hike around our woods over the weekend and we found so many animal tracks and signs.  We noticed that all the leaves were pushed around and the ground was dug up near the base of most of the trees.  We found woodpecker holes in tons of trees.  Saw piles of pine cone pieces and discovered that squirrels will peel a pine cone to get to the pine nuts inside.  We saw one tree that had large quantities of bark chewed off of it but it was very high up in the tree-- a good 8 feet or so and we're pretty sure we have american porcupines living in our woods too!  We had a family of deer dart by us mostly camouflaged by the trees but the tails were a give away.  It was such a fun afternoon and great to get outside and soak up some fresh air too. We also spent a lovely day at the beach with my sister and nephews.  The boys tried flying kites and had a little success in keeping one of the four kites up in the air.  We spent a morning gathering pine cones for our pine cone birdseed ornaments too and watching the birds all around us.

Physical Education-- The weather has been too nice not to take advantage of and we've been going for walks, bikes rides, and hikes a couple of times in the past week.  We're trying to spend at least 30 minutes outside each day and that inevitably leads to ball playing, running, and other exercise.  The boys also enjoyed their karate class again this week honing up on their forms and having a nice long time to spar.