Billy and Blaze week 1


The last two weeks we read Billy and Blaze books by C.W. Anderson. We read Blaze and the Gray Spotted Pony, and Blaze and the Lost Quarry. 
The children really enjoy the Billy and Blaze stories. Veritas Press recommends these as first and second grade literature, so I chose these two titles for this semester.  
Week 1: Blaze and the Gray Spotted Pony. Vocabulary: Saddle, Pony, Stable, Gentle. We also continued to learn about nouns in Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind, Level 1 by Jesse Wise. 
Math lessons are always a fun part of our day. Tristan really enjoys the Tanagram shapes. He asks to play with them after daily lessons are finished. 
Science class involved learning about horses. 
We learned the word for horse in French and Spanish.
In art we studied Carravagio's painting: The Conversion on the way to Damascus. The children also made hobby horses out of paper, yarn on the end of a hockey stick. These they galloped around the house with Nana. Tristan and Ana also decided to make paper horse head story books. They each wrote beautiful stories about horses on this real-looking horse shaped craft. This activity was their own idea, and that excites me! 
For Geography class we are memorizing our states and capitals. We began with PA and are adding one each week. I use flash cards during circle time, and then we mark a wipe away blank map of America during the afternoon table time. So far we have memorized all the states that share a land border with PA. We also enjoyed The Pennsylvania Reader, by Trinka Hakes Noble.
We read the Christmas story in morning Bible time and I decided to read all the Christmas story books we have around the house. One of my favorites: The Crippled Lamb by Max Lucado.
We took two field trips this week. One beautiful morning we lived out history at Valley Forge National Historic Park. Their "Home-school Day" was fabulous! Amidst all the history activities, they even had a table about the excavation done on park property and all of the prehistoric animal fossils found on site. Tristan really enjoyed that station.  The Monarch butterflies must have been in the height of their migration, because we spotted five different Monarchs throughout the day. We also saw two people on horseback and they were very nice to wave and say hello to all the home-school children, who stopped to stare. 
We also spent a fabulous afternoon at Merry Mead Dairy Farm with a good friend. We visited the animals, picked pumpkins and enjoyed a hay-ride. The children both brought their cameras along, and they enjoyed photographing the animals. It was just a fabulous day outside. I am trying to snatch as many of those days as possible before the winter cold sets in. 
Other books we enjoyed this week: Winter's Gift, Jane Monroe Donovan, Autumn Story, Jill Barklem, Horse, Caroline Stamps, Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
 Tristan's first creation using the pattern blocks. I was amazed!
 The children adore and photograph the cutest calf in the world! We all wanted to take this one home!
 Three cuties. Good luck getting them all to look and smile at the same time!! I have given up!



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