This week we are back to our regular school schedule.  It has gone pretty well.  Austin has been very excited about starting kindergarten this year and he is happy to be doing history and science with Gavin.  This year Gavin gets a list of things to complete in the morning while I work with Austin and then we work together after lunch.  So far he is doing  a great job getting his work done without me being right there with him.

 

We are starting this year with a Bible Study about the different names of God in the Bible.  The boys are making a poster with the names of God on it.

We are using this wonderful book.  It has great information, the chapters are short and there are suggested activities at the end which makes my life easier.

Austin is starting RightStart math this year.  Tomorrow he gets to use the abacus for the first time and he is super excited!

In history we are starting at the decline/fall of Rome where we left off last year.  Gavin has been reading about the Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Huns, etc.  Austin has been reading about some of the early saints and King Arthur.  The books they've been reading are at the end of the post.

 

I found this craft on a website called catholicicing.com.  We are not Catholic, but they had lots of saint themed crafts to choose from.  Austin, Adelaide and I read a book about St. Patrick, then the kids did the craft together.  First they colored St. Patrick.

Then we used strips of construction paper to make a rainbow on a piece of white cardstock.

We taped St Patrick onto a skewer and I cut a slit in their rainbows so Patrick can "walk" across the rainbow.  We also added the shamrock to represent the Trinity.

Austin was going along with this craft happily enough...I think he thought we were going to just glue St Patrick onto the rainbow...but when I made it so Patrick could walk across the rainbow for some reason he just thought that was hilarious!

Today, our fourth day back at school, we finally took first day of school pictures.  Better late than never I suppose...

Then Adelaide had to join the fun and of course she wanted a sign too!

Today Adelaide stuck stickers where they belong in a Kumon workbook.  Since she always wants to do school with us she has a few Kumon workbooks and a couple Abeka 2-year-old books.  She really likes having her own books to work in.

Here she is coloring her 1 dog.

When she got tired of workbooks she just played with the toys.

Austin is doing great in his books so far.  He even is enjoying cursive writing which surprised me a little.

I tried to coordinate the boys history and science so they could work together but it's not happening every day.  Gavin does both history and science each day and Austin is on an every other day schedule.  In science we are starting a space unit.  Gavin has an actual science book this year.  He has finished the first chapter and seems to like it so far.  Today we made a model of the solar system together using balloons.  Both the boys had to record their findings and draw the solar system (we tried to use a tape measure to make the planets to scale).  Here is Austin working in his science journal.

This is our to scale model.  The sun is not to scale because it would be too big to fit in our room and Earth turned out too big because it came with this great Earth balloon that had the continents and everything in it but Earth is so small it couldn't be blown up at all to be to scale.  We blew it up a little so we could see the continents on the side.  All the kids loved having the balloon planets going up on the ceiling. 

Here are the history books Austin, Adelaide and I have read the last few days.

Gavin has read (some he read half and will finish next week)...

Giotto is our artist for this month.  He was the oldest medieval artist I could find, born in about 1266...  way past the fall of Rome.  I am trying to coordinate artists with the time period this year as much as possible.  Sometimes, it's just not happening.

Gavin is reading this as literature.  I have books picked out for him throughout the year that we discuss both the events/characters in the book as well as story elements.  They are all history books but we will be using them for both their historical narratives as well as their literary aspects.

Austin, Adelaide and I read these books today about space.

And this is the science book Gavin is using this semester.