ivey league academy: weeks in review!

Here's what we did over the last two weeks!

Reading:  We continued in StoryTime Treasures.  Caleb finished up Little Bear's Visit and moved on to Caps for Sale.

Spelling:  We did Weeks 27 and 28 of our spelling curriculum.

Handwriting: We continued in Caleb's joke handwriting workbook.

Vocabulary:  Our words for one week were "pity," "reduce, "jealous," and "hoarse."  Last week, our words were "abdomen," "occur," "intense," and "lack."

Math:  We continued in our Horizons Math workbook.  Caleb is getting very good at adding and subtracting numbers in his head.

Read-Aloud:  We started reading Matilda by Roald Dahl.

Science:  We studied salmon migration the first week with the help of "The Magic School Bus" and library books.  We also watched a Netflix documentary on the subject (the "Salmon Run" episode of BBC's Nature's Great Events).  To help Caleb remember the life cycle of salmon and how incredible their journey through both salt and fresh water is, we constructed an information wheel out of cardstock using a MSB printable.

During the second week, I had intended on doing deep ocean creatures, but since Caleb had developed an obsession over extinct and endangered animals, we did some informal stuff revolving around his interest.  We checked out Dinosaurs to Dodos from the library and I also found him You Can't See a Dodo at the Zoo on Ebay.  We also watched a few episodes of "Last Chance to See" on Netflix where two men (a zoologist and an actor) travel around the world to find animals on the brink of extinction.  Now, when you deal with the topic of extinction, most resources are bound to teach the theory of evolution, Old Earth, etc.  I prepared myself for this, and decided that it would be pretty difficult to find an interesting book on extinct species from an author who believed as we do, so instead I found what was available, and explained to Caleb that different people believe different ways about things.  Just because his books say a species went extinct millions of years ago doesn't mean that's what happened (like Caleb's dad said, "Were you there at the very beginning?").  I think it's important for him to learn the different theories so he'll know how to defend and explain what he believes.

U.S. Geography:  We learned about Iowa and Minnesota during these two weeks.  We learned that Charles Schulz was from Minnesota so we decided to have some Peanuts-related fun!

Links:
Magic School Bus Salmon Migration Wheel (Scholastic)