HS: January

Jacob and I hit school full throttle this month!  It's been great and things have been going so smoothly.  We are so happy with all that we are doing.  WOOT WOOT!

Language Arts is going awesome!  I have seen some huge improvements this month and it has been so amazing to see.  He has mastered two thirds of his phonics cards and it doing great with those.  He has also been doing well with his sight word ladders and he absolutely LOVES it when he gets to color another part of his picture.  And, we continue to keep plugging along with spelling.  He is now a fourth of the way through his spelling words and I think we have figured out some more helpful ways for him to move forward with those.  

This month we have worked on more simple words, poetry, short words with long vowel sounds, simple AY words, sentences, read some short stories about honesty, reviewed b and d recognition, nouns, the subject of a sentence, verbs, AT, AN, ALL words, syllables, and initial consonant blends.  WOW, we went over a lot!

We read this fun poem about spider webs and so we made a little art project out of it.

We were looking at some paintings and decided to do our own watercolor painting.  And we had been talking about light and shadow and Jacob decided he wanted to do a picture of the sky, trees, and cows eating hay.  I am pretty impressed and a little obsessed with how good it is!  Can you tell this kid loves ART?!

Another thing we started this month was memorizing some poetry.  This has been awesome!  I didn't know how Jacob would do with memorizing and it has gone so well.  He memorized two poems and then we memorized a scripture.  He loves when I record him and especially loves Facetiming with family to tell them his poems. 

Someone got the giggles and it was just too funny not to post!

We also did lots of handwriting practice this month and that has gone well.  Jacob loves to find out which ones are my "favorite" on each page.  :)

Math this month has been good.  We got into some new territory which was refreshing.  We went over patterns, triangles and introduced place value.  Place Value was definitely new and I think Jacob is getting it.  I don't really love how the curriculum we are using is teaching it but we keep plugging along. 

We jumped back into our science unit though and that has felt good.  We are still working on our meteorology unit and are learning so much!  Both of us!  It has been really interesting.  We talked about why we have seasons, the Earth's atmosphere, what weather is, how we measure weather, what air is, and air pressure.  Some of our new vocabulary words we have learned are: axis, orbit, equator, atmosphere, weather, air temperature, moisture, meteorologist, thermometer, wind vane, air, and air pressure.

Showing the Earth's orbit around the Sun

Jacob's poster showing the Earth orbiting the Sun transitioning through each season

Demonstrating that the Earth's atmosphere is like a giant blanket ;)

Labeling the layers of the Earth's atmosphere

Every day we do science, we use our tools to measure the weather and fill out one of these sheets.  

We talked a lot about AIR!  We crumbled up a paper towel and put it in the bottom of this cup and then put the cup upside down in a bowl full of water and made predictions about what would happen.  The towel was still dry!  Air takes up space!

More air - the kiddos drank some juice boxes and when they kept sucking on them after the juice was all gone the box sunk in.  Air takes up space!

Next we filled up this bag with air and closed it shut.  Then we put a rock on it and the bag held up the rock!  Air takes up space!

Finally, we blew up one balloon and weighed it against a flat balloon.  The one with air weighed more - air has weight!

This day we talked about air pressure.  We tried five experiments and each one was a total flop!  All we could do was laugh about it.  BUT, our final experiment did work (I was determined and had to try it three times!).  We put a little water in a can and heated it up on the stove and once it started steaming we flipped it over into our pan of ice cold water.  The sides immediately caved in showing us that when the air inside the can is heated, the molecules are spread farther apart and the air pressure rises.  When we put it in the ice water, the air inside is instantly cooled causing the air pressure to drop and the air molecules to press close together - making the sides squeeze inward.  AWESOME!

He was SO excited!

We did two art projects this month - My Garden and Pop Art Alphabet!

Finally, we read lots and lots and lots!  We finished The Arnold Lobel Book of Mother Goose, Capyboppy by Bill Peet, My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett, Dolphin Adventure by Wayne Grover, Dolphin Treasure by Wayne Grover and The Light at Tern Rock by Julia L. Sauer.  We are now reading The Apple and the Arrow by Conrad Buff and I am loving it!

It's been a busy and full month and we are learning so much.  Couldn't ask for more!