This week...

It was a crazy & jumbled week, so I'm going to do an entry for the entire week instead of separate days.

We worked on the calendar, month, days and year. We talked about fall and how Friday was the first day of fall-and no longer summer. The weather is going to change and get cooler. I explained that some people like to call fall 'autumn' but that they mean the same thing. Ben said that he likes to use the word 'fall' for this time of year.

We read 2 theme related books: The Life and Times of the Apple by Charles Micucci and Apples by Elaine Landau. We learned more about apples, the apple life cycle, the role of bees in the apple's life, about different types of apples, parts of an apple flower, and how to graft an apple tree. Before reading non-fiction, we always start out by pointing out the cover, checking out the title page, table of contents and then begin reading whatever chapter we're interested in.

Ben went to karate class 3 times this week. He worked on kicks, sparring and with his weapon (chong bong). He is learning to control his movements. His instructor is having him count 2 seconds between moves so that he slows down. He really seems to love his karate class.

We worked on letter formation by tracing letters (Hannah joined us for that). They love doing letters and especially tracing them.

We worked on our little color books and added more words onto the flashcards (seen here). I have the flashcards on a ring so anyone can grab them to read, look at and practice them. We have words that we find in our books: apple, red, stop, orange, goldfish, carrot, yellow...

We worked in the garden (science). We planted some lima bean seeds as well as repotted some snapdragon flowers that Ben has been growing (from seed) & taking care of. They were getting a little big for the pot they were living in so we transferred them to a pot with a little more room. We observed the roots and talked about how they are looking for more space and water so that they can grow their flowers. We also turned the compost piles, we love to see the black compost under all the kitchen scraps and yard waste as we turn it with the pitchfork.

We met with our playgroup on Thursday and the kids got to see some friends and meet new ones. The park we went to is always pretty busy so there are always kids playing.

While I was sick for two days (Monday and Tuesday), the kids worked with Corey on letters, they went to the Museum of Man in Balboa Park and they checked it all out. They even were shown the way to the kids' section...Corey wasn't happy about that because he wanted them to learn about the museum, not to play with legos.