amandaspace1330

Last week we enjoyed Harriet Zeifert's A New Coat for Anna. Based on the true story of Ingeborg Schraft Hoffman. Anna lives in post WW11 Europe and needs a new coat. The story takes you step by step through the construction of said coat and shows how determination and ingenuity pay off. For Math this week, we continued to talk about measuring time. I am going through Franklyn M. Branley's Telling Time; doing an activity a day. We also reviewed measuring round objects with my measuring tape used for sewing. For Language: we made instant pudding and then while the pudding set-up each of the children dictated step by step instructions for making pudding. This proved to be challenging for them but still a fun activity.  Our vocabulary words all had to do with weaving, warp, woof, loom. We found repetition in the story and talked about the theme of the book. For Social Studies/Geography: I laid tracing paper over Eastern Europe on our map and drew the co...

This week's book: Wee Gillis by Munro Leaf. It is a story about a boy in Scotland who found a way to live peacefully in the midst of strife and uncertainty. We had heaps of fun with this one. For one thing, I knew nothing about Scotland to start (I guess that goes for the kiddos as well); we learned a lot, and our interest is peaked for more. We enjoyed the black and white sketched illustrations by Robert Lawson, and learned how to problem solve with wisdom, be slow to speak and quick to hear/obey, from the example of Wee Gillis. This book is out of print, so we had to borrow it through the interlibrary loan system. This is my chance to rave about the library. The copy we borrowed came from State College, PA in perfect condition, on loan for 3 weeks! Also, it was renewable. Without interlibrary loan system, we would have lost the opportunity to enjoy Wee Gillis this week, and learn about Scotland. Hooray for the Library! Hug a librarian today! (I should make a...

This week we read the story Owl Moon,  by Jane Yolen. This special story is about coming of age, and having big kid adventures. Tristan really enjoyed the text of this story. He remembered all the things you have to do when you go owling, and we were able to identify the similes and metaphors used in the book. The text and illustrations create a compelling story and you feel that you are there in the cold woods, seeing the great owl. We also enjoyed a field trip to John James Audubon's first home in America: Mill Grove . For Math this week we learned about how to measure time in units of seconds, minutes, hours, days and weeks. We learned how many seconds are in one minute, three minutes, a hundred minutes! For language this week we learned about first person, personal pronouns and the children wrote their own paragraph stories of a personal experience with nature. We also learned about Simile and Metaphor. For Geography we discussed the setting of the story Owl Moon, ...

Last week we read a snowy story for a snowy week: Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. This is the true story of Wilson A. Bentley, a farmer/scientist from Vermont. He discovered much of the knowledge we take for granted about snowflakes today. Like... every snowflake is unique. He also published his own book containing his photographs of snow crystals entitled, Snow crystals. We are excited to look through his book and have requested it from our library. This week for math, I read Jane Brockett's book Circles, Stars and Squares. We focused on the hexagon with it's six sides and also introduced the idea of circumference, measuring the line around a circle. For art, we cut paper snowflakes! I have included a photograph of how to fold a square piece of paper. After folded, the triangle pieces sticking off the top need to be cut square and then when you cut little snippets out and open the paper up, you have a hexagonal paper snowflake. We also painted white on...