Weekly Updates

Week 4 of Homeschool: We memorized the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, learned the parts of a plant cell, saw the newest 2 baby doves in our entryway, worked on handwriting, read about the riot at Ephesus in Acts 19, watched our bean plants grow, learned our First Declension Latin noun endings, created abstract art, made up a story about our own Eighth Wonder of the Ancient World, learned more Prepositions, looked at Art made from pollution, studied globe lines, worked on our skip-counting, performed an experiment to see the effects of pollution in streams, wrote comics, and went to Fairytale Town!

Week 3 of Homeschool: We learned Latin first Declensions, read Dog Man “Lord of the Fleas, studied the Hebrew Empire, learned about the ancient Egyptians’ invention of Papyrus paper and created our own scrolls with hieroglyphics, started reading My Side of the Mountain, practiced skip-counting 5’s and 6’s, read in Tucker’s Countryside, learned about Greek and Roman gods, read Dog Man and Cat Kid, did a Bible Study on how our words can cause harm, studied the parts of an animal cell, performed an experiment to see how animals camouflage themselves, drew pictures of the Genesis account of creation, made a paper apple, listened to the opera Aida, learned new Spanish words, read our longest sentence yet! (Francis), read Captain Underpants and the Invasion of the Incredibly Naughty Cafeteria Ladies From Outer Space, performed an experiment to see how desert animals go underground for cooler temperatures, created artwork by drawing upside-down, practiced drawing Dog Man (yes, we like Dog Man a LOT), and went to the zoo!

Week 2 of Homeschool: We practiced addition with stack and build flip books, learned about the Five Kingdoms of Living Things, finished our Ten Commandments train with commands 6-10, made artwork using mirror image and lines of symmetry, learned about Personification, watched our bean plants grow higher and higher, performed a gravity-defying magnetic experiment, studied Prepositions, learned about the Egyptian and Assyrian Empires, skip-counted 3’s and 4’s, learned why a fish floats belly-up, went fishing for sight words, read in Tucker’s Countryside, found the North and South poles using a spinning magnet, read Emily Dickinson poems, learned how spiders use vibration to detect predators or dinner, and mixed colored light to build rainbow optics!

Week 1 of Homeschool: We made kites and learned about lift, went to our first Classical Conversations class of the year, practiced letters, numbers and handwriting, sprouted beans and learns the parts of a baby bean, opened our Schule-Tutes, wrote sentences and made stories, made our own cave paintings, learned all about the Classifications of Living Things, made a bullet launcher, learned Latin Noun Cases, read Tucker’s Countryside, programmed code with Python, learned how to brainstorm and use Four-Squares as writing techniques, memorized the first 5 of the 10 Commandments, made a feather out of Duct Tape, read Emily Dickinson poems, learned about online safety for coding, drew Dog Man comics, learned the components of a healthy breakfast, studied the geography of the Fertile Crescent and the history of early farming, learned the definition of a Preposition, worked on numbers with Mac’s Abacus,  learned about accidentals in music theory, and went to a coding class, a writing class, and morning Kindergarten!

Week 34 (our last week!) of Homeschool: We made wallets with duct tape, finished the last 4 lessons in our Song School Latin book, went to Fairy Tale Town to celebrate Field turning 8, started reading the 2nd Hardy Boys book, made chocolate whoopee pies, worked on our Spanish vocabulary, took pictures with our new polaroid camera, typed out an Oompa Loompa song from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, built lego creations on our lego mug, read our first sentence (Francis!), and used our 3D pen to make a 3D Garfield, house and glasses!

Week 33 of Homeschool: We read the Hardy Boys The Tower Treasure, created encoded messages, wrote more for our Thin Man graphic novel series, made sea slime, worked with our pattern blocks, painted abstract ocean-scapes, learned how to carry 10’s in addition, made clay sea creatures, started reading The Last Battle, practiced our drawing skills, did 2 chapters of Song School Latin, read a Lewis & Clark graphic novel, made Father’s Day cards, looked up cross-references to Jeremiah 17:7-8, swam every day, and went to an end of the year party with our wonderful Inspire teacher, Cheri Black!

Week 32 of Homeschool: We read “mat,” “set,” and “am” all by ourselves (Francis!), wrote a Haiku, read about Lewis & Clark starting their expedition in Missouri, created magnetic putty monsters & fed them magnets, finished reading The Silver Chair, built a stethoscope and listened to our heartbeats, made ice cream in a bag, did doctors check-ups & took x-rays, made stop motion animation videos, created our own dinosaur fossils, made plush, adorable organs for our body systems chart, and went to Sunsplash where we rode the waves, went down slides and splashed in the sun all day!

Week 31 of Homeschool: We made guitars with cardboard and rubber bands, learned about volcanoes & how glass is made, made a circuit with a ringing bell, went to Big Trees in Arnold to learn all about the Giant Sequoias, made paper dinosaurs, did a scavenger hunt and discovered nature everywhere, made a star-shaped potato stamp, replicated the map and legend for a Big Trees trail, created animals with thumbprint stamps, fed squirrels in Big Trees and watched one of them store an apple slice in tree bark, ate ice cream, watched old sci-fi creature classics in our own movie theatre, and swam to our hearts content!

 

 

 

Week 30 of Homeschool: We studied fractions and learned about numerators and denominators, made a logo for our school (Sunbeam Academy), wrote a poem called “Umbrella, Drumbrella,” made freezer paper stencils to create original t-shirts, took our end of the year test and scored 99% in both reading and math for 2nd grade (!), started writing a new album of original songs (Field), painted bugs and Vincent Van Gogh, performed an experiment to see how plants drink water, practiced drawing people, wrote a story about a woman in an office who has an adventure, and went to the Crocker Art Museum for bugs, bugs, bugs!

Week 29 of Homeschool: We learned how to round numbers up and down, went to the capital and lobbied our senators to vote no on AB 2943 (and got on the news!), built a spinning plate and made circular artwork, got 2 goldfish and named them Pesces (Latin for fish) and Pez (Spanish for fish), watered our garden and labeled our vegetables, looked up cross-references for Proverbs 3:5, read LOTS of Calvin and Hobbes, created surreal artwork, learned the Latin words for types of weather, finished reading Stuart Little, and made Mary Berry’s Cherry Cake for Granny’s birthday!