Friday, January 28, 2011

Very Last First Time


Our homeschooling book this week was Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews and Ian Wallace. It's about an Inuit girl and her mother in northern Canada. They gather mussels from the ocean floor, under the ice, when the tide is out. It was a pretty interesting book. The title refers to the fact that the first time you do something on your own is your "very last first time".

Monday, for social studies, we placed our story disk on the map in Ungava Bay in northern Canada. We also talked about first-time experiences and the special things we do with mom and dad.

We talked about crisis thinking for language arts on Tuesday. We learned what constitutes an emergency and what you should do if you have one. I taught Aidan how to dial 9-1-1 and we practiced situations in which it's the right thing to do. I am currently taking bets as to how many days it will be until I regret teaching him this. Aidan considers building a "giant gear machine that falls over" worthy of emergency action.

For art, on Wednesday, we made ice wreaths. I found this craft on an awesome blog that is full of great ideas called The Artful Parent. I regularly read the blog and we find a lot of great projects and art forms to try. We made ours with a Valentine theme and added glitter, foam hearts and a red ribbon to a bundt pan full of water. We left it outside to freeze, removed it from the mold and hung it up outside. I am quite certain that it will stay frozen out there for A LONG TIME. I think these would make awesome Christmas decorations on our windows next year if they were filled with more natural elements like pine, berries and pinecones.


Thursday, for Math, we reviewed ordinal numbers. This weekend, for science, the guys are discussing levers and fulcrums, which should be fun for both of them! We continued with our handwriting practice, working on O, P and Q and started working on simple addition problems.

We're looking forward to a fun weekend with friends and a great concert tomorrow at the Detroit Symphony. Their Tiny Tots Series is really nice and is continuing even throughout the musicians' strike. In addition to the concert, they offer kid-friendly activities like a musical petting zoo, face painting and crafts. Tickets are still available for tomorrow's show, The Candy Band. They're a group of four Detroit moms who play "kid-friendly punk". I am curious to see just what that means!

1 comment:

  1. That wreath is COOL! I read that book to my kids last week and poor Liesl freaked about it. I'm pretty sure that's an ok thing, since she won't be venturing onto a large body of frozen water anytime soon. But I love your theme, and we'll be doing the wreath thing soon too! :-) Thanks for the idea.

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