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!

 

Week 28 of Homeschool: We read Mark Twain’s Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, studied the Missouri state quarter, made rubbings & designed our own, learned about the National Park Regions, built a marble run, checked on our baby doves & saw they’d grown, used geo boards to learn congruent shapes, studied Romans 5:19, built and programmed a mechanical leg, made Mother’s Day cards, played t-ball, wrote a story about the magical land of Marnia, planted our Spring vegetable garden, acted out Frog & Toad stories, built domino falls, and went to Fusion Homeschool Academy’s open house for BBQ, sno cones, crafts and acting class!

 

Week 27 of Homeschool: We drew mirror images, wrote out the music to Old Hundredth, drew maps of the Assyrian Empire and Fertile Crescent, learned Latin words for basic foods, built a periscope, worked on numbers and letters, had our last piano lesson for the school year, read Stuart Little, made a top from our spinning science kiwi crate, played t-ball like a pro, learned the parts of a gyroscope and watched it spin from different angles, made our own Secret Agent briefcase, and saw The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe at B Street Theatre!

Week 26 of Homeschool: We made encaustic melted wax art with crayons, performed an experiment to learn how bees make honey, listened to “The Charge of the Light Brigade” read by Alfred Lord Tennyson, learned about Whale Sharks, discovered that our resident Dove Mama’s babies had hatched (!), read up for our trip to St. Louis and created a pop-up card of all the sites we plan to see, built a sea monster with a tilt sensor, began constructing our own “1812 Overture” to be played on a special music box for original compositions, wrote our own comic strips, recorded ourselves (Field) narrating Arnold Lobel’s wonderful Frog and Toad stories, took a Hamburger Farm field trip to Bishops Pumpkin Farm and learned about where every part of a hamburger comes from, and along the way got to see bees making honey up close, milk a “cow,” pan for “gold,” and eat hamburgers!

 

Week 25 of Homeschool: We read The Horse and His Boy, studied gerbils & hamsters, built a hand-crank flashlight, read article 1 of the Constitution of the United States, created our own Garfield comic strips, made an air-powered rocket launcher, drew a collaborative collage portrait of President Trump, studied fallacies, discovered a mama dove and her nest full of eggs by our front door, wrote a descriptive analysis of the 1812 overture, and performed in our end of the year Classical Conversations graduation!

Week 24 of Homeschool: We practiced skip counting the 3’s and squares, discussed the San Andreas Fault and looked at photos, worked with concepts of symmetry, practiced the Presidents and Preamble songs, learned more prominent features of the U.S., studied the Bill of Rights and played a matching game, learned the identity law for addition and multiplication, went to Opening Day for Francis’ t-ball, learned how to build a robotic crank and connecting rod, studied seven sentence patterns, worked on ABC’s, created a Jim Davis costume for Field’s end of the year CC party, learned the latin for John 1:7, and went to see a theatrical production of Mary Poppins!

Week 23 of Homeschool: We built a replica of London’s Crystal Palace, learned the Distributive Law of mathematics, memorized the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, learned about Natural Selection by eating (and not eating) candy, studied the prominent features of the United States, had our friend Aliyah over to check out Sunbeam Academy and do school with us, learned about our national anthem and used the song as inspiration for painting, discovered an acrobatic squirrel in our backyard who maneuvered into the bird feeder and had his own little party out of the rain, used pattern blocks to measure odd shapes, made easter eggs to remind us of Jesus’ resurrection, learned the latin words for the parts of the face, built a paper microscope, learned what a venn diagram is, and practiced for our end-of-the year Classical Conversations performances!

Week 22 of Homeschool: We learned the Commutative Law for addition and multiplication mixing and matching fruits, studied catastrophism through the story of the volcano Mount Vesuvius and the lost city of Pompeii, learned about September 11, 2001 and its heroes, worked on our handwriting, learned what a subordinate clause is, created geometric people, studied the artist Mondrian and created art in his style, learned the U.S. deserts, gave presentations on our favorite foods (tiramisu and chocolate chip cookies), studied our letters and numbers, and gave a presentation on the classical composer Igor Stravinsky!