Yesterday Gavin worked on making symmetrical shapes on the geoboard. 

 

In science we read about forest animals and he started working on his habitats PowerPoint. He added a slide about foxes to the forest section. He is very excited to have a project on the computer!  Of course, typing is taking him forever!

Gavin read this book about animals that live in an oak tree.

And I read him this book about a fox.

Austin did a forest craft.  We found leaves outside and used them as stencils.  It's a fall tree so we are a little early on the changing seasons!  First I cut out a tree shape from a paper bag and he painted the back of it and then used it as a stencil.  Austin has been such a clown this week.  I don't know what he's up to but he's trying out all kinds of very expressive faces and making us laugh!

He used dot paints to make 'leaves' at the bottom of his tree.

Then he painted the paper he used underneath his stencils while he was painting them.

Here is his tree when it was all finished.

The boys have been having many battles in the afternoons this week.

Adelaide joined us for school most of this morning because she just didn't seem to want to nap!  We don't mind having her with us though!

Today Gavin divided shapes into symmetrical halves and we talked about symmetry in nature.

Austin painted again.

We had our second day of Japan today.  We read two books and then the boys made koi wind streamers.  I found this idea on Pinterest from the website: http://www.thecraftyclassroom.com/ThemeJapaneseCrafts.html

 

We are using several of her Japan crafts this month.  Anyway, first the boys glued tissue paper scales onto construction paper.

It took some diligence so it was a good thing diligence was our topic in Bible last week!

Then they turned it around and glued crepe paper on the back.

Here's the finished wind streamers!

These are the books about Japan we read today.

In history we finished reading about the War of 1812.  Gavin updated his history journal.  It is the same journal that he used last year.  At the end of this year it should cover American history from the Native Americans to about 1900.

Austin was just playing with his soldiers at this point.

Here are Gavin's history journal pages.  The first one reads "USS Constitution was nicknamed 'Old Ironsides'.  You can see the British ship on the right broken in two from the cannonballs while the cannonballs are in the water around Old Ironsides on the left.  The black on the ship is it's cannons.

And yet another battle.  This page says, "Oliver Perry refused to surrender at the Battle of Lake Erie." and it shows Oliver Perry crossing in a row boat from his sinking ship to another ship under his command while being heavily fired upon!

Here are the books we read today in history.  They are both picture books with beautiful pictures!  The first one tells the story about Francis Scott Key writing the Star Spangled Banner.

This was a great book about a little town in Maryland that made ships for the American Navy and was attacked by the British, who were sailing on the Chesapeake.  It was raining and foggy so the people put their lanterns up high in trees around the sides of the town.  Because of the fog, the British couldn't see the town so they spent the entire night firing at the lights.  In the morning they left, thinking the town was destroyed but they hadn't hit anything in the town!

We have two more chapters left in Bobby Coon, which we've been reading at lunchtime.

And we just finished The Three Musketeers last night!