This week all our extra curricular activities are back in full swing so it's getting a little busier around here.  We are getting in to our school routine for the year.  It changes a little each year so the first few weeks of school is adjusting to how long things are taking and how much help each child needs with each subject.

 

Austin has been learning about making change and using different coins to get the same amount of cents (two dimes and a nickel, one dime two nickels and five pennies, etc.).

Last week we were studying the skeletal system.  The boys were challenged to make a human body that could stand using Play-Doh.  After trying several times to make it stand, I gave them toothpicks to stick in their creations legs, arms and head to act as bones.  They discovered that using the toothpicks helped make their creation stand up.

As we learned about Cherokee Indians, the kids made Native American headdresses.  First they colored the pattern and glued it on a piece of cardboard.  Then we used construction paper to make a band to fit their head.  To dress it up a little we punched holes in the top, stuck in some pipe cleaners, added beads to the pipe cleaners and then glued feathers to the top.

We used an empty cereal box as our cardboard.

The pipe cleaners didn't stand up as well as I hoped.  I should have cut them to make them shorter but obviously didn't.

The boys added the skeletal system to their personal person.

This week we learned about the Plains Indians so the boys made tomahawks.  I found kits at Hobby Lobby so the kids just used marker to make designs on the handle and then we strung the top part on with a leather string.

We learned about the muscular system this week.  Just for a fun activity, I made an obstacle course in the backyard for the kids to run through and use their muscles.  Crawling under chairs isn't as easy for Gavin as it used to be!

They ran over board.

They did a bean bag toss and then jumping jacks.

Austin's jumping jacks.

They ran around our tree three times, then ran to the other side of the yard and back to the deck.

They also had to jump back and forth over a broom handle three times.

Of course Adelaide tried it too!

This week we had time for a little nature study.  We went to a new nature area we haven't been to before and looked for different types of grasses.

While we were at the nature area we worked on some poetry.  Both the boys wrote a couplet about fall.  Gavin had to do two couplets since he's been writing poetry a few years now.

 

Austin's says,

"The pretty colors of fall

make the trees look tall."

 

Gavin's says,

"In the early fall

when the leaves doth fall

the leaves fall on the ground

in a massive mound."

The kids drew the grasses they found in their nature journals.