Term A, Week 6 Report

I'm late getting this one up because we have had such a nice week off!

History: The New Kingdom of Egypt
We learned about Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh, and Tutankhamen. Both interesting characters. I printed off a Who's Who in History page and both kids drew a picture of Hatshepsut--Spud drew her fake beard, which was pretty cute. One of the suggested activities was Be an Archaeologist, involving making the kids a map to follow and setting up a "tomb" like treasure that they have to find and then sketch it to document before they touch anything. David drew the map for me and had the kids go around the front yard, around the house a bit, and then around the back yard before ending up in the shed.
So, the rocks were arranged in a circle around their two chihuahua beanie dogs. I'd filled a jar with oversized plastic coins (the packaging actually said "Ginormous Coins") and filled their candy jars with Cocoa Puffs. The wrapped parcel with the string and spider on it was a package of little foam animal puzzles that you punch out and put together. The kids had a lot of fun with it.

Science: Rivers & Floods
We just read books. I had fun plans of doing a field trip to the river, but it was really cold most of the week and not conducive to outside adventures. We had a Bill Nye show to watch as well.

Language Arts
More of the usual. One of Spud's activities was Sound Match, where he had a bunch of items in his bag and the corresponding letter cards. Pretty straightforward, but he enjoyed it.


We also played "Scrambled Sentences" from the Happy Phonics. I think it is a good way to have him read without the pressure of reading a whole book. For some reason, he isn't excited by the prospect of reading books "all by himself." I guess I shouldn't be surprised, seeing as he hates being on the spot to do things he doesn't think he can do as well as others. But the games are a good way to practice the reading skills he does have. We also did the Word House and a game suggested called "Read Me Cards". He liked the house but didn't care much for the Read Me Cards game.

I did the EA Game from Happy Phonics with Noodle this week, too, as a review.

Other Stuff
We had our first Fun Friday where the kids got to invite some friends over. It went really well. We made mini pizzas, the kids played in the yard for a while and then came in to the garage for a dance party. We took a break in the middle of the dance party to have a nighttime sack race in the back yard.
I personally like the blurry pictures better as they capture the movement and lighting, but you can't see the kids that well.

I think before the next one I'll learn some of the "old" dance moves (Mashed Potato, etc) and teach those to the kids along with some of the disco moves. I also really want to learn the Miley Cyrus line dance and teach that to them. The dance party was amazingly fun, even for me. Nothing like cutting loose with a bunch of kids. We might even invite some more next time, now that I know we can handle it.