Week 3 - USA and Forests

Lots of fun this week! We started off with school on Monday even though it was Labor Day. We were going to be taking Wednesday off (more about that in a minute), so we went ahead with business as usual on Monday. It was actually pretty fun because the girls got to show my parents how they do school at home. Marmie even took part by reading to Maryella and helping Annlee with some of her work. The girls loved having her in their classroom!

And when school was over for the day, Elianna had fun playing dress up with Marmie!

We discussed all the layers of a forest on Monday. I printed out pictures of animals and the girls got to stick them beside the correct forest layer. This was probably one of their favorite activities all week long.

We have been spending the week beginning to learn the names and locations of all 50 states.

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Maryella can tell you where Florida and Alabama are, but after labeling their maps all week, the other two girls have gotten pretty good! Here is one of Kaylin's attempts at naming all the states from memory.

We are in the process of making all the components for a lapbook about the United States. Here, Maryella is drawing a fox for her forest animals booklet.

We made bean and seed necklaces and talked about Native Americans one day.

Sometimes, with our geography and science, Maryella gets a little bored or things are over her head. One day we were looking up rivers of North America in an atlas and labeling them on a map. She's always welcome to take part in whatever we are doing, but she wasn't feeling it this particular day. I pulled out some reusable animal stickers and a forest background and she made her own little forest scene by choosing which animals would belong there.

These were some bookmarks we made in our Bible time one day when we were talking about the book of Matthew being written originally in Greek. They say Matthew.

Our earthworms from week 1 had done their thing and it was time for one last check - they had really moved those layers of dirt and sand around! We bid farewell to them in our front yard and I think they were probably ok with that, lol.

On Thursday, Elianna came home from preschool wanting to do school at home like her sisters. They are talking about the letter M, so I pulled out a quick craft for her to do and she was very excited. She even had to take it to school the next day to show it off.

Our other exciting thing for the week was our first Zoocademy Class on Wednesday! The Jacksonville has a homeschooling class once a month for 6 months and we are trying it out this year. The girls loved it! Maryella's class discussed the difference between living and non-living things and they got to touch a rabbit, a snake, and go see the komodo dragon. Annlee's class talked about amphibians and got to go behind the scenes at the frog area of the zoo. Kaylin's group talked about the animal classifications and the 5 types of vertebrates. They all came out all smiles and can't wait to go back. Getting to go to the behind the scenes parts of the zoo was their favorite part!

One other little note about our week, we are going to be making some changes in Maryella's curriculum. She's been doing Rod and Staff reading and phonics. She's doing fine and actually doesn't mind it too much, but it just isn't quite what I'm looking for. We have ordered All About Reading for her and I'm anxious to try it out when it gets here. It got awesome reviews and looks like lots of fun! I would also like to try to find some readers for her to work through. I'll try the library first, but in the meantime... does anyone have some good recommendations?