Playing Catch Up with the blog!
Math
Math Mats are working wonderful for reviewing math facts. SharkMan used the cubes in his math activity earlier and then decided to build his own tower.
Concentration at its finest.
A Job well done!
My favorite math activity came from Family Math. SharkMan had to take dry beans and glue them in pairs to determine if they were odd or even. Then we used our Do A Dots to discover a pattern of odds and even on the number line.
Reading - We are continuing to do many read alouds and working on Phonics. SharkMan is enjoying using the sandpaper letters. I think they are helping to internalize his letter formation. We also enjoyed learning about Johnny Appleseed during his birthday week. To finish our week, we added him to our timeline.
Science - We are learning about the needs of plants this week. We conducted several experiments including the classic celery in colored water to see the water move in the veins.
In addition, we are testing to see which direction plants grow by placing a plant on its side to see if it will change directions as it grows.
Twice a month, we will do Science Day with a group of homeschoolers. For our first day, we learned about how to make a hypothesis using Starburst. First, we had a bag with all purple Starburst and the kids made a guess on what color candy they would get. Next, we conducted the experiment and checked answers. Then we had a second bag with a majority red and just a few purple and they made hypothesis and explained their answers. 
Papa Shark is teaching SharkMan chess.
I love this shot. Our Deep Thinker!
Concentration at its finest.
A Job well done!
My favorite math activity came from Family Math. SharkMan had to take dry beans and glue them in pairs to determine if they were odd or even. Then we used our Do A Dots to discover a pattern of odds and even on the number line.
More odd/even work on the hundreds board.
Reading - We are continuing to do many read alouds and working on Phonics. SharkMan is enjoying using the sandpaper letters. I think they are helping to internalize his letter formation. We also enjoyed learning about Johnny Appleseed during his birthday week. To finish our week, we added him to our timeline.
Science - We are learning about the needs of plants this week. We conducted several experiments including the classic celery in colored water to see the water move in the veins.In addition, we are testing to see which direction plants grow by placing a plant on its side to see if it will change directions as it grows.Twice a month, we will do Science Day with a group of homeschoolers. For our first day, we learned about how to make a hypothesis using Starburst. First, we had a bag with all purple Starburst and the kids made a guess on what color candy they would get. Next, we conducted the experiment and checked answers. Then we had a second bag with a majority red and just a few purple and they made hypothesis and explained their answers. Next we did an experiment called Dancing Raisins. We used our new knowledge of the word hypothesis to predict what would happen to raisins put in water and then in Sprite.
In all of my years of teaching, this activity was one of the most enjoyable. I think that I saw a value of homeschooling I had not considered before. The kids weren't concerned about grades or looking smart in front of each other. Since all the parents were present, I not only did not have to worry about behavior but I didn't have to worry about giving individual attention, because the moms worked with me to help the kids. I love that learning is all fun at this age. We had readers and nonreaders, English speakers and dual language learners, and various ages around the table and the kids all felt valuable, not in competition with each other. I loved it.
Fun and Games
Fun and GamesSharkMan and Papa Shark enjoying the Legos.
Papa Shark is teaching SharkMan chess.
I love this shot. Our Deep Thinker! 
We then stamped the equation onto the mat.
We also used play mats from Developing Number Concepts to visual math problems. We used the ocean mat this week. SharkMan told "math stories" using the Unifix cubes. For example, three sharks were swimming in the ocean, then two whales swam up. There were 5 animals altogether. He really enjoyed this and experimented with larger and larger numbers of animals/sums.
We also played Roll a Tower Race from Developing Number Concepts. We rolled the dice and built unifix towers to match the number on the dice. The first number rolled four times was the winning number. We enjoyed predicting which number we thought would win. Great practice in counting and reading dice.
I sent surveys to our friends and family asking for basic information like eye color and for preferences like favorite color, pizza topping, ice cream flavors. We will use our data from the survey over the next few weeks to introduce and create bar graphs. Here is our first one about eye color. SharkMan figured out that blue should represent blue eyes, green for green and red for brown. Great introductory activity for graphing.
We also used Family Math for a fun activity. We had 72 beans that SharkMan had to count out and place in the correct pocket.
Another fun activity was dissecting a seed. I soaked the seed for a couple of hours, and then we split it apart to find the baby plant inside and to look at all the food stored for the plant in the seed. We then planted some bean seeds to track their growth over the next few weeks.
