Here's what we did last week!
Reading: Caleb continued in Hooked on Phonics and finished the Green Book! We were surprised that he's already halfway through, but we're also finding that the second grade level is just quicker (thinner books, less material, etc.).
Language Arts: This week, we finished Chapter 2 and Caleb wrote a story! With my guidance, he made a word web on his trip to the zoo last year. We then used that web to list details and form a short paragraph. I helped him proofread it and by the end of the week he had his final draft!
Word of the Week/Journal: This week's word was "eavesdrop." Once Caleb understood the definition, he remembered a part in the movie "The Jungle Book" where some of the elephants are trying to eavesdrop on their leader's conversation. So he wrote about that in his journal one day and then copied an animal poem excerpt another day.
Spelling: Caleb learned his Week 4 List and got 10 out of 10 words correct on his test!
Math: Caleb continued working in his Horizons Math workbook.
Bible: This week we finished Lesson 2. We learned more about how we know what is true, and Caleb did a few activities in his workbook, including a mini-book!
Zoology: We started our time in the desert this week! The two animals we focused on were the camel and the cobra. Caleb filled out animal record sheets for both and also added them to our food chart. For our scientific demonstration, Caleb learned how the design of the camel's feet help them to walk on the sand. Using salt for sand, Caleb used a pencil to push in two cardboard circles (one about the size of a dime, to represent human feet, and the other with a bigger diameter, to represent camel feet). The bigger circle was a lot harder to sink into the sand. So we learned that the bigger the foot, the bigger the surface area and therefore the easier it is to walk on the sand without sinking in. Caleb made a similar connection with snowshoe hares walking in the snow!
World Cultures: This week's country was Jamaica! But first we wanted to finish Cuba, so on Monday we did our Cuban craft that we didn't get to last week. I made a rough sketch of a Cuban tody bird on posterboard and gave Caleb paint and a colored printout of the actual bird as a reference. He also had paintbrushes and some cheap toothbrushes to help give the brushstrokes a more feathered texture (Walmart had a six-pack of "Dr. Fresh" toothbrushes for $1!!).
We might do something similar for the Jamaican tody bird, which is similar in size but not in color! For Jamaica, Caleb filled out the country sheet and we listened to a lot of reggae music on Pandora. We read a fun story featuring Anansi, a trickster spider who shows up in a lot of fables in both Jamaican and African culture. As for food, Caleb helped me mix up a jerk seasoning blend of herbs and spices (we left out the cayenne pepper though!) and I used it on our slow cooker chicken drumsticks that night. It was a very interesting taste! We also mixed up a homemade version of "Ting," Jamaica's grapefruit soda. We combined equal parts grapefruit juice and Sprite, and also added a little sugar to cut the tartness. Caleb liked it but Micah did not. Both recipes came from our borrowed copy of "Cook Your Way Around the World."
Read-Aloud: We finished The 13 Story Treehouse this week and are moving on to the sequel, The 26 Story Treehouse.
Extras: We also recently started doing Mad Libs as a "brain break" about halfway through the school day (usually between spelling and math!). I found a junior edition that just deals with nouns, adjectives, verbs, and miscellaneous (in the case of our book, animals!). Caleb has a lot of fun coming up with different things to make the story funny, plus it's good practice for remembering parts of speech. I also got out our continent puzzles this week; I got them off Zulily during the summer but wanted to save them for school. I got out the North America one for Caleb, and even though it was one of the harder ones he still went back and tried the other continents. My only rules for these puzzles are: never work on two continents at once (it would take forever for him to sort out the puzzle pieces!), and watch Micah with them (he likes to lose things).
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