A Little Paper, A Little Tape, A Lot of Creativity...

Ethan has been building with garbage recently.  This aircraft carrier was his early morning creation while waiting for Katie to wake up.  It morphed and became even more intricate later on in the day, but I didn't get pictures.

Sand Art Patch

While we were in Washington visiting my parents, Ethan missed out on several Adventurer meetings.  As much as he hated missing out on them, getting to complete the patch activities together was great fun for the two kids.

Learning to Borrow

I was a bit surprised to realize that though Abeka Math introduces multiplication even in first grade, they don't even touch on borrowing!  So, I decided we'd learn it on our own.  Ethan was doing pretty well, but I wanted him to realize exactly why you borrow from the next group over.  Enter the pennies and dimes to help it all make cents...

Digging for Dinosaurs

Ethan has been begging to learn about dinosaurs all year.  We've done bits and pieces as I've found appropriate material, but when we saw a dino egg that you excavate for bones, we knew it was the perfect activity for him.  He hasn't gotten very far yet (it's slow, meticulous work, just like a paleontologist!) but it's coming.

Copy Cat

Katie so desperately wants to do school just like Ethan.  She'll even take his assignments and copy them, pretending she's spelling, etc.

A True Boy's Solution...

I just couldn't mark it wrong...

Writer's Workshop

We haven't done a whole lot of writing this year.  My focus has mainly been on establishing a routine and expectations for school, and then we'll add more content as time goes by.

Each year, though, we have the opportunity to write and publish a book with a school up in Michigan.  I'm trying to pick a different genre each time.  This year I decided we'd learn about ABC books.

We read a whole stack of ABC books, so the kids could see what a wide variety there is.  The next step was to brainstorm some themes they would be interested in writing a book on, and then fleshing it out by coming up with items for each letter of the alphabet.  They really got into it and had fun!

Katie's list