Blessed Beyond Measure: Home's Cool: Week Seven

**I scheduled this to post late. By the time you read this, we have already gone and come back from our trip!!**

Can't believe it has already been 7 weeks since we started this school year! And thanks to my new organization, I feel like we are actually getting a lot accomplished. We are taking next week off for a mini vacation to visit family. That is another thing I love about home schooling. We can take our breaks whenever we choose! Here is this week's home school run down....

Bible - We have continued to study and discuss our memory verse, John 6:35. We have talked about Communion and what the unleavened bread represents. The yeast symbolizes sin, so the bread without yeast symbolizes our Savior Jesus Christ who is perfect. We read about Elijah and how God provided for his needs and of those of the woman and her son. Isaac and Julia have memorized John 6:35 this week....

History - This week we talked about the settlers from France who came over to settle Michigan in the area of Detroit. We read about their journey there, how they befriended the Indians, and how important canoes were to their travels.We are still reading The Courage of Sarah Noble and are a few chapters shy of finishing.

Science - This week we began learning about pollination. We learned about the process of pollination, the way God designed pollinators and flowers to work together for survival, and about special flowers that trick the bees into pollinating their flowers. We learned about all kinds of different orchids and how they have different shapes and smells to attract the pollinators. One smells like rotting food to attract the flies and gnats. Another looks and smells like a female bee to attract the male bees. Figures! Ha! The kids got to design their own orchids on Monday....

This is Julia's smelly orchid that looks like a human. She named it the human plant.

Hard at work

Isaac named his orchid the Crazy 2.3 mil. Not sure what they means, but it was a hamburger looking orchid that attracted flies and gnats.

And by the way, did you know that bees can see ultraviolet light? Because I didn't know that until this week. I love learning and re-learning with my kids!

Art - We had fun with art this week. On Tuesday we looked at the work of M.C. Escher, Day and Night. We talked about print making and symmetry. They got to draw a design on a potato and I helped them carve it out. Then they made prints with it. Then we talked about symmetry and we did the "ink blot" technique.

Love this little table in the kitchen for our messy projects

Isaac making his prints

Not sure what Caleb is doing here, but love his little face. So serious!

Julia loves art. She told me the other day that she wanted to be an illustrator when she grows up.

Isaac's art

Caleb's art

Julia's art

Math - Isaac is doing so great with math. I never question if he is getting it. The concepts seem to come easily to him. The only difficulty comes when he has to sit down and work through a set of problems and then he tends to get very distracted and looses his focus. He doesn't really do this as bad with any other subject. Maybe one day he will grow out of this. Fingers crossed! This week he has been learning about addition with renaming. Easy peasy! Julia started the week with some addition and subtraction. For the most part she gets it, but I have realized that we need to spend some more time practicing this before we move on. May have to dig out the Math U See Primer book for a few lessons. The rest of this week she learned about Ordinal numbers. Very easy.

Reading - Same as last week. Isaac is reading Stuart Little right now and Julia is on chapter 6 of Andi's Pony Trouble. Not much new to report.

Language Arts/Spelling - Isaac aced his L.A. chapter 2 and cumulative tests this week!!!! He also did very well on his spelling test! Way to go Isaac!!

Julia has attempted to teach Caleb a few things this week. I say attempted because Caleb's sits still for a total of about 2 seconds before he is off on his next adventure. Nevertheless, Julia patiently tries to get Caleb to learn a new word or two. This morning I caught Caleb sitting on the floor near Oliver (our dog) with his one arm around him while holding a picture card in front of Oliver's face. I guess he was trying to teach Oliver too!! So cute. I grabbed the camera but the moment was over before I got back with it. I did mention that Caleb's attention span is about 2 seconds long, right?!