April 9th-13th Highlights

Our Third Week!

We took a week off for Spring break the first week in April. It was a much needed break after the craziness of switching schools over the winter. We all came back energized and ready to learn!

I surprised the kids on Monday with a fun Science class. I signed up for an online class through Supercharged Science. It was a really neat class on Marine Biology that also had hands-on experiments throughout the lesson!

The class lasted about an hour and covered SO MUCH! Aurora Lipper is energetic and fun and really keeps the kids interested.

In U.S. History we learned about The First Americans. We learned about animals that ancient Americans hunted, too.

I gave each of the kids an index card with an animal on it. They then had to go online and research their animal and write as many interesting facts as they could fit on the card.

When everyone was done with their research, they stood in front of the class and presented the facts on their animal.

 I was surprised at how they each seemed a little nervous with this "public speaking" assignment, being that they were standing in front of siblings.

They all did amazing! It was a really good experience and I will be planning more public speaking opportunities in the future.

Puppy cuddle breaks are a necessity sometimes. ♡

More silly notes from daddy. Something that started as a joke on the first day is something that the kids now look forward to every day. It's so nice to start every day with giggles.

We learned about the Maya people. We learned about their pottery and hieroglyphics.

The kids made their own petroglyph that tells something about them and the rest of us had to try and interpret it.

We also made our own versions of Mayan pottery.

The kids all loved working with the clay!

Their creations were all so great and unique!! We had to wait for them to dry before finishing them.

Our new history curriculum arrived! I had originally wanted to go with Notgrass History but switched to Harcourt at the last minute. When we realized the Harcourt wasn't working for us, we sent it back and ordered the Notgrass. When we received the Notgrass America the Beautiful I was SO happy we got it! The books are absolutely beautiful and so well laid out. We purchased the literature package to go along with it and I am super happy with the books as well. I think we are really going to enjoy this curriculum!

I also went ahead and purchased the A History of US curriculum, on Bella's request. She used this curriculum in her last online school and absolutely loved it! My child is begging for history books?? How could I say no?!? We will use these mostly for reference materials, but Bella is just thrilled that we added them to our library.

~Heather