Storm in the Night

This week we read the book Storm in the Night by Mary Stolz. The first two days reading this book through were a little rough. The recommended age for this one is 5-8, so both Tristan and Ana were too young. By midweek, I allowed (requested) Ana to occupy herself quietly while I read the book to Tristan only. This worked pretty well. We learned about the color wheel and color contrast, reading the book Color Chaos by Lynn Rowe Reed. The kids loved Color Chaos and I even learned some things about how colors are described. We also studied storms, clouds, and weather. We made a cloud in a bottle and some cloud pictures. We also colored lightning storms using white and yellow chalk on black paper. I introduced the 5 senses and we talked about how in the dark you cannot use your sense of sight. This makes the other senses seem heightened.
The book Storms by Seymour Simon  describes thunder storms and how they form. It also talks about hail and tornadoes. Thursday afternoon, after reading this book we had an epic string of thunder storms. It began to hail, small at first, then the second round were bigger and then we had some small hail a little while later. It was super cool to experience the storm as described in the book. It's like God wanted to give us a hands-on experience to really concrete our book knowledge. Of course, Friday we had a lot of yard work to clean-up:) We found a pile of hailstones that were covered in mulch which washed off of our flower bed. We saved a few handfuls of the hailstones in the freezer and we want to cut one in half to see the rings as a picture in the book showed. If it works, I'll post a photo.
Our math lessons continue to engage. This Friday we talked about measuring cups and spoons. Then we used our measuring cups/spoons to make sugar cookies. The cookies were a bit crumbly, but we had fun. Both children are doing well counting in English and Spanish. This week upcoming I hope to introduce French. (Thanks for the CD's Mom!) French intimidates me a little (a lot!!!).
Tristan and I are going through Alpha Phonics by Samuel L. Blumenfeld. He seems to be enjoying it, so we continue. We are also using the BOB BOOKS by Bobby Lynn Maslen. They are the perfect compliment to Alpha Phonics. I highly recommend these together.

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