Busy Week

We've had a very busy week this week. It seems like we have had activities almost every day. On Monday we had Geography class. I love Geography class. But it seems the kids are not as interested in it as the parents are. At one point toward the end of the class the speaker asked if there were any questions. Four hands shot up in the air. The speaker was all excited to answer so many excited kids. One by one she pointed to each child. And one by one the kids asked, "When is this class over?" The sad part is that one of those four hands was the speaker's own daughter. Tuesday was Lego Class. I am teaching a lapbook program based on legos. This was our third class in a series of four. All of the kids were pretty attentive except for one. You guessed it, my son. Besides being very frustrated with him, I was reminded again of the speaker from Monday's class. Boy could I relate to her. Wednesday we went to Montclair Art Musuem. Everyone was attentive to Ms. Peggy as she lead them on a tour of the museum discussing Positive and Negative space. They returned to the craft room to do an activity. They had a white piece of paper. They cut shapes out of black paper and glued them on to the white paper. Dakota made a pumpkin by gluing on the eyes, nose, and mouth. He has a good grasp of the idea of negative space.

Thursday we went to a class based on the Little House on the Prairie books. They read an excerpt from one of the books about a particularly long cold winter. It was so long that they used up all the candles they had. And there was so much snow they couldn't get anywhere to buy more. Then the kids made Button Lamps, Tiny Oil Lamps, and they hand dipped beeswax candles.

The button lamps was Ma Ingles idea during that long winter. She took a scrap of cloth from the rag bin and a button from the button jar. She put a button in the center of the scrap of cloth, then she tied the cloth around the button. Ma Ingles then asked Pa to go get her some of the axle grease that he used on the wheels of the wagon. Ma spread this grease all over the button lamp. Then she lit the lamp and suddenly they had light in the tiny dark cabin.

On Friday I was thinking about our busy week. I was dwelling on the fact that we had not done any school work all week long. As I looked over the curriculum that we use, and thought about our week, I started seeing how each activity we did fit into the curriculum. Geography class was certainly Social Studies. During Lego Class, we learned about Interference Fit and Friction. Science. As we counted the lego blocks, it turned into math class. The Art Musuem was of course Art. At the Little House Class, we had reading, science, history, and social studies. Oh and weather too.

What a great week we had of learning! About the only thing we didn't study this week was spelling. So to fill out the week I found some spelling lists that I could print out. I especially like the monthly holiday lists. I printed out the Thanksgiving list that Dakota used for handwriting practice.

We really did have a great week of learning. We study a bit about every topic and we had so much fun doing it.