Weeks 32-34- Ancient Greece- Photos only

1st grade nature exploration...

Hulk reads to the class

 Painted Greek pots.....



 Insert a Roman Feast.... Ying did an ancients class in  co-op and wanted to share her Roman feast... So a sneak preview of next year...lol

Hamanscatchen Cookies

 Fun with Lapbooks

We celebrated the end with a Greek Feast at one of our local Greek Restaurants... The Girls Shared the Heracles Platter...

Week 29-----

 So while its still March  here Spring has sprung! upper 70's for temps and flowers are blooming. Here are our find from our nature walk. Some rabbit fur and  wild pansies and violets.

 I am in charge of sets for Yang's musical. I got the start on things this week by painting our staging blocks in bright primaries.

Week 23 A week for the Dramatic Arts

 So this week has been all about the drama... in the best way possible....lol. We started off with the touring production of "Elephant and Piggie : We are in a play". This was a field trip performace, so it was us and 2700  other k-2nd graders from local area schools. The production was very well done and the kids had a blast, especially Hulk. they girls were a bit old for the material but they found it interesting from a technical aspect, especially Yang who is my drama queen ( again in a good way!). Afterwards they talked about the production's use of costuming, and stetting  brought the books to life, but kept true to the original material making it easy for kids identify and connect with.

 Later that evening  Yang and I attended a production of " Bedside Manor" presented by the middle school age troupe of her theater group. It was a musical comedy set in a hospital with tons of zany staff, patients, and visitors. Yang loved it. I loved see how well this group does productions. Its our first year with this group and  so far we love it. Its and interesting balance of talented kids, Christ centered focus, and professionalism.  Anyone can join and every one get's a part, but the kids who seek this group out are committed and have a certain amount  natural flair..lol...It's definitly a step up from our church musicals of the past in terms of commitment but its been so worth it for Yang.

 Despite all the fun field trips we did get some other work done. Hulk is still working of taking his time to write, and this week using a pen seemed to motivate him.  He can do it when he wants, but most of the time he's still a 6 year old boy with more energy the patience.

 Grandma saved our Friday meltdown this week with  wall climbing sticky ninjas...lol. We were in  a bad place Friday morning until theses guys made and appearance. I can not thank her enough.

 On and Adult note: I checked this out to listen to myself last week and have really enjoyed it. They kids have listened to some of the lectures and also enjoyed it. I would not reccomend it for most kids, though. it is meant for college level classes and  adult topics are discussed freely. However  it has helped me greatly with pronucations for the Children's Homer.

Trojans Horses and Trampolines- wk 20

 And we are back at it after about a week off for Christmas picking up with the Trojan war and trying out some of the blessing we received this Christmas. On our last day of break we took the kids to Top Golf here in Atlanta. Its an interactive driving range. The only person in our family with any golf expirence in my husband so it made for a fun afternoon as Mommy could be just as bad at something as the kids. Even Daddy was pretty rusty.

The girls spent part of break working on stop motion Minecraft movies from a kit Ying received as a gift. They loved taking stop animation Lego movies last year at coop and this allows them to continue the fun. The one down side is the app does not allow sharing of the movies they made. We hadn't realized this prior to purchasing it and were kinda of disappointed. We had thought they could make hisotry movies to share but oh well.

 Hulk got a Zoob Movers set. Its basically a robotic body that you can design legs, arms, and other features for. He loved controling it around that house..... Now on to school....

 Our Fava bean just keep growing. We transplanted it to a pot and staked it up. We are going to see how far we can go with it.It was so warm that we gave our bean plant some outdoor time also. It loved the unrestricted sunshine.

 As we read The Trojan War the girls decided to use the Nativity scene to reenact the scenes as we went...lol. It was quite hilarious and made the story stick for the kids. Forgive us Baby Jesus for your untimely demise as the hands of the Greeks.

We got some cool science lessons in this week. We discussed how sundials work based on the suns position in the sky. God also blessed us with a side lesson on cloud iridescence ( or cloud rainbows). It pretty rare here in the south to get the condition just right, especially on a 60 degree day. 

My Favorite Christmas gifts this Christmas were 2 rolling crates. One is storing our Spine books and workbooks down at Grandma and Grandpa's. Instead of having to chase books all over the house on different shelves we've sort of confiscated everything is in one concise place. It has shaved tons of time off our day and I am not harping on everyone constantly to clean up behind themselves. We roll it out to the table when we start and before everyone get to leave the table they put there stuff back in. We also got a smaller crate to function as our book basket/library transport. its fabulous when you taking out 50+ books a time now with 3 kids.

We continued on with writing strands this week and I was impressed by the stories I got. Its so funny how different the girls are when it comes to writing. They both finished the assignment meeting all qualifications but one had to get in a lot more details.

The weather finally cooperated for the kids to get their biggest Christmas present. Grandma and Grandpa got them a trampoline for their backyard. It lets them get some exercises on afternoons with Grandpa and during short breaks between subjects during school time. They were so excited to help put it together and finally get to jump.

We had to take a 30 min break during construction while Daddy was on the phone with his program director discussing his capstone project. Pretty sure she had no idea he wasn't "working"..lol

Minoans and Mycenaens-week 19

YEAH!!!!! We've made it Early Greece! The kids are thrilled. They are huge mythology buffs so getting to some of these stories is the highlight of their year. We've pulled out Percy Jackson's Greek Gods and Greek Heroes on audiobook and they have been listening non stop. Hulk didn't do much of our Mythology study last year (we took a month off ECC to do some when the girls became obessed with Percy Jackson... We've listened to ALL 10 books multiple times..lol) So this is the first time he's putting some of the stories together. Its been fun to see the light bulbs going off. He's also a boy and likes stories about war, and blood, and death.

Math has been challenging... there are days I can't decided if this is really too hard, or if I am giving too much, or what. I am kinda at my whit's end...lol.

 IN MFW 1st  we started summaries in the Bible Notebook. I was actually really impressed by Hulk's first summary. He used the reader and his notebook to help him with spelling but otherwise he did it solo. I had him write it on paper first and then he copied it over into his notebook.

 Hulk and Ying started Basketball this week. Neither has ever played before. It will be interesting ;) But in other great accomplishment Ying conquered a very difficult rock climbing path she's been trying for a while! Go Chick! In other PE related we hit the ice skating rink for home school day. They spent most of the time doing hockey slide and Supermans. Ying taught Hulk and it was over from there.