Unit 11: Insect

Unit 11 was all about the letter Ii and insects. Caleb learned how hard the ant works to find, gather and store food. In fact a lot of insects works hard. They are not lazy. This was a great intro to why working hard has it's rewards. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord and not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Colossians 3:23-24 NIV. What a promise to hold onto and keep.

 Now here is where I have to admit we are so far behind. We seem to do a little work, take a few days off, do a little work, take a few days off, and on and on it goes or life happens. Sigh! But then I have to remind myself this is not like regular school and when we do take a few days off the information he is learning soaks in a bit better and then he is ready to learn something new. Therefore, I've concluded this is perfectly acceptable as he is increasing in his ability to sit still and listen.

Caleb working hard in his Singapore Math book identifying shapes: circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, cylinders, spheres, and cones. This book gives a lot of practice and is setting a good foundation. Of course, I laugh because when he is on the computer playing math games he is accomplishing addition, subtraction and multiplication facts.

Another insect that works hard is the honey bee. Caleb showing off his honeycomb and inside are eggs (rice), larvae (painted pumpkin seeds since I didn't have any beans) and food (brown paper). In doing this activity Caleb learned, The law of the Lord is perfect . . . The rules of the Lord are right . . . They are sweeter than honey that is taken from the honeycomb. Psalm 19:7-10. A wonderful age to learn the Lord's word is sweeter to the soul than honey is to the tongue.

We finished Unit 11 reading The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco. A wonderful book about a little girl who complained about having to read so much. So her grandpa said oh really, you don't want to read, you want to go run and play? Then I think it's time we find a bee tree. What's that? The little girl asked? Well, grandpa gets a jar and they go outside and he ever so carefully places three bees inside the jar. He let's one bee go and they start to chase it. Along the way the towns people ask what is going on and ask to join the fun. If they loose track of the bee another one is let out until finally the tree with the honey inside is found. After collecting enough honey for everyone to enjoy grandpa pulls the little girl aside and places a bit of honey on top of her book and is told to taste it. Knowledge, wisdom, and understanding are difficult to obtain, but you must seek after it like the words in this book. Beautiful and priceless. 

Unit 10: Water

 

Unit 10 is all about the letter Ww and water. Words to remember are "Jesus gives my spirit living water to drink". We talked about being thirsty after playing hard outside or eating a salty food, which makes us thirsty for water. Our bodies need water to live. Our spirit gets thirsty too and needs living water or we become dead. Jesus is our living water and as long as we ask Jesus to nourish our bodies he will and any forgetfulness on our part and the spirit begins to die.  

 Caleb practicing writing the letter Ww and the number zero and ten. The second page I dictated three words /dad/, /mom/, and /sun/. He must listen hard to hear the middle vowel sound and still guesses. The beginning and ending letters he doesn't seem to have a hard time with.

 Letter sound discrimination page is a breeze. On the second page I cover up all words except those I am asking him to look at and recognize when I say them out loud. He was getting everything confused when I did not do that.

 His first sight word /the/. Since he has seen all of the other words previously he is better able to recognize them and say them out loud. Sam and dad were mixed up, but that was an easy fix. Caleb does not like to make mistakes so I am always telling him "mistakes are OK, you learn from your mistakes" someday he will believe me.

The math page he was supposed to trace pennies, dimes, and nickles. However, since I know tracing is frustrating for him he just drew me circles to represent the money and he still got the concept. It's a bit hard to see the pictures he drew for the letter Ww, but picture number 3 is my favorite water ski's. He did a great job on that one.

In science Caleb learned about liquids, solids, and gases. He favorite was when he got to measure water, put in a pan, place it on the stove to heat watching the steam as the water boiled then after five minutes measuring how much liquid was left. Made for a great conversation.

Here Caleb is putting salt and oil in water to see if it will dissolve. We talked about how oil doesn't dissolve or mix with water it just floats even after several attempts at mixing. Another great conversation not to mention tasting the mixtures was interesting. Caleb wanted to do that on his own.

Although the curriculum comes with a single math page he has a separate book to work from daily. Currently, he is working through recognizing shapes. He is such a math wiz.

 We finished the week reading Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey. A wonderful book that we have read before. We discussed why the ducks needed to live by the water.

Unit 9: Octopus