We are once again trying to wrap things up in the next couple of weeks in expectation of taking some time off after the baby is born.  Gavin has two more books to read for this month's Book It so he can get his free pizza.  He didn't read any of the 12 required books before this weekend and I told him that from now on he has to read three each week instead of doing them all the last week of the month. 

He is going to recite Psalm 23 to Dad tomorrow.  Dad is the official grader of the monthly Bible verses.  In February we won't have a composer, artist or chapter of the Bible since the month is up in the air as far as how much school actually gets done.  Check the blog though because even if we don't have school pictures we should have baby pictures!

Today I took a bunch of pictures of Austin working on his new activities for the week.  First he did an opposites file folder with help.  I would say, "This bear is hot, can you find the cold bear?" or "This bird is above the branch, which bird is below the branch?" and he would find the picture so he wasn't really finding the opposite on his own.

He did a snowman sequencing activity, biggest to smallest and then smallest to biggest.  Then he got out this ladybug matching game Gavin gave him for Christmas.  He loved this game!  There are about twelve different game boards with pictures and the ladybugs cover the pictures.  You lift the ladybugs to try and find your matches.  Austin had a great time playing this!  First he matched farm animals and then we switched the game board to vehicles.

Meanwhile, Gavin was working on his reading and cursive writing.  He had some graded work to do today in his phonics book.

Then Austin worked on this stacking shapes game.

In math today Gavin identified quadrilaterals.

Then he learned to add 10s by making them 1s.  For example, adding 50+40 in his head by converting it to 5+4 and then adding the 0 in the ones place.

There are only two books about snow in our library and both have been checked out for several months.  I think someone has taken them permanently.  Anyway, today we just read a couple books about snow, but not so much the science of snow.  We read about Snowflake Bentley.  This book talked a little bit about the science of snow but is mostly biography of Bentley.

Then we read this biography of John Thompson.  This had nothing to do with science but it's a good story anyway.

I do read to Austin too, I just forget to put the books on here.  Today Austin and I read about Valentine's Day and snow.

Here is the geometric sorting game Austin was playing.  It's by Plan Toys.

This is the ladybug memory game by Pavillion at Toys R Us.  Gavin had $10/person to spend for Christmas and he did a great job finding good things in his budget.

It's supposed to be in the 60s today so the boys are playing outside...I'm not sure what they are playing but I hear "fire" being said a lot and Gavin has is gun with him so I'm guessing it's some sort of war taking place.  Anyway, we will finish science this week learning a little bit about meteorologists.  I'm not sure when we will finish the American Revolution.  We will work on it until the baby's born and then we may pick up again later.  We are focusing more on the people involved than the specific battles, etc. (although we have read a lot about the major battles while reading about Washington) so it should be fine to pick up later.

I didn't take too many pictures this morning.  Gavin reviewed place values to the 100s place in math.  In history we learned about Paul Revere.  Wednesday we had read the comic book that just focused on his famous ride, today we read a more complete biography (although still a children's picture book so it wasn't super detailed) and then we read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 'The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere'.  We were supposed to do science today but I'm thinking about changing the plans on our weather unit.  Since we finished thunderstorms we were going to learn about hurricanes and tornados and then be done, but Gavin already seems nervous about natural disasters and I started to worry that if we spend a couple weeks learning about them it might make it worse...or it might make it better, I'm not sure.  I am going to try and decide what to do this weekend.

Anyway, after we read about Revere Gavin drew a Norman Rockwell inspired picture of an everyday event.  His event was watching the birds at our bird feeder with his brother.  It's hard to see but the feeder does kind of look like our bear bird feeder.

Then Gavin had to draw an American Revolution battle plan like George Washington (he is a little obsessed about George Washington right now).  We have a book that is actually for adults that has different battles of the Civil War but for each battle there is a map of the terrain and where the soldiers were so we used this as a guide.  We discussed how to show different things on a map and looked at the maps in the book.  Then Gavin drew his own map.

And here it is!  The red lines are 10 British soldiers, the blue (short) lines are Patriot soldiers (they are all hiding behind a fence) then there are cannons and a river and row boats on the river.  Apparently the British plan to use the boats to cross the river and the Patriots are going to stay behind the fence.  The orange arrows show the movement of the British troops.

These are the books we read today.



This morning Gavin reviewed the capital letters he has learned in cursive.  He is starting to copy complete sentences for copywork.  He also practiced marking vowels long or short and underlining the blends in words.

In math, Gavin reviewed writing equations, simple addition and parallel and perpendicular lines.

Austin wrote a note to his sister.

We read these books today.

We will read a short biography of Paul Revere and Longfellow's poem about Revere next time.  The book we read today was just about his famous ride through Massachusetts.  I had a few more pictures but the website is having some issues uploading pictures today.  Hopefully it will be fixed soon!

Yesterday Gavin wasn't feeling well.  Actually, after throwing up on the couch, he seemed to feel much better.  As unpleasant as that was, the slipcover needed to be dry cleaned anyway and that's why I picked out a couch with a slipcover.  Regardless, we didn't do school.  Gavin did watch five or six episodes of Liberty's Kids, a cartoon about the American Revolution that is surprisingly historically accurate.  He learned about the Stamp Act, the Intolerable Acts, Phyllis Wheatley, Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin and the start of the war at Lexington and Concord.  Then we read a book about the Boston Tea Party and another book (it's actually a comic book) about the Boston Massacre.

Today we were back on our normal schedule.  In math we reviewed even and odd numbers and practiced counting by twos.  Gavin laid out dot cards and had to identify them as even or odd.  Then he counted them (by twos) and put the correct number underneath the dot cards.

We also did some counting by twos on the abacus.  We learned that when you add two to an even number the answer is always even and when you add two to an odd number the answer is always odd.

In science we learned about thunder and lightning.  We were going to do an experiment but I forgot to freeze ice colored with blue food coloring so we will have to do it tomorrow.

This book is just an African legend about thunder and lightning.  Gavin thought it was funny!

And, the baby's room is finally 100% done!  Here is the beautiful bookcase Steven made for her.  It turned out perfectly!  There are a couple things on it right now that will have to be removed when she starts crawling but it's mostly holding books and toys.

And, plan A for over the crib didn't work out, so we went with plan B.  I think it turned out cute even if it was plan B.  The white dresses have flowers embroidered on them and the pink dress has white lace trim.  It's supposed to look like a clothesline but I used a ribbon instead of string.

Yesterday afternoon, after dropping off the couch slipcover at the dry cleaners, I stopped by the fire department to make sure the infant car seat is correctly installed so we are officially completely ready for her arrival!  Gavin is counting down the days until her due date when we do circle time in the morning and look at our calendar.