Here are a few pictures of what we've been up to this week.  Adelaide enjoyed stacking the pegs.

Gavin worked on figuring out the area of squares and rectangles in square inches.

He also added the ancient Greeks to his Book of the Centuries.  He has been adding people and events and is starting to see quite a bit of overlap. 

Austin played with this magnet board for over an hour this morning!  It has cards with different shapes and you recreate the shape on the card.  He loved it!

Gavin has spent the week working on a persuasive writing letter pretending he was a turkey trying to convince the farmer not to eat him for Thanksgiving.  This was his third final draft.  He finally figured out that if it wasn't neat and if there were mistakes he was going to have to rewrite it.  Today he took his time and did a great job so we can move on!

Austin was still hard at work with his magnets.

Gavin is learning about Renoir for the next few weeks so today we read a biography and talked about his paintings.  However, his art project was actually for history.  Since we are learning about ancient Greece Gavin painted a fresco.  I mixed plaster of Paris into a paper plate mold and let him paint a design while it was still wet.  He painted a Greek soldier.  Because we only had primary colors it kind of looks more like a clown!

He continued to read this book today.

And he read these books in science.

I had a few pictures from last Friday on my camera that I had forgotten about.  Luckily everyone was feeling better on Friday because we had a Halloween party to go to with our homeschool friends.  First we had to get some school work done though.

Gavin was given word problems like, "If Mary has three shirts and four pants, how many outfits does she have?".  Gavin used tiles to figure out the answers.  I appreciated that he was confused at the beginning because he said the colors didn't match so they weren't outfits.

Austin is working on the letter R this week.  We read a book about Roo, of Winnie the Pooh fame, and today we read a book about raccoons.  He is doing a great job with his letters and is reading blends with no problem.  He has even read a few words.  He is very good at identifying the beginning sounds that he has learned and he is even telling me when a word has a certain letter he knows in it at other times during the day.

He is working on his second book that he gets to read.  It's mostly blends but has a couple words as well.

Gavin is going to learn how to find the area of a shape tomorrow.  Today he reviewed subtraction strategies and then he measured a rectangle and had to figure out how many tiles would fit inside.

We started China today in geography.  He opened his package from Little Passports.

He was very excited to get chopsticks!

I made beef and broccoli for lunch so he could try them out.  We have been very multicultural this week because yesterday we went to an Indian restaurant for lunch to try Indian food.  I was very proud of the kids because they all tried lots of new foods and ate well.

Austin wanted his picture taken too!

After Gavin was done with school he was playing ball with Adelaide.  They had a great time!

I read this book today with Austin.

Gavin read this book about the ancient Maya.  We are starting ancient Greece tomorrow.

He read a chapter about the Maya in this book.

And he read this chapter book about the Maya.  It's a short chapter book.  He did not read all three books today!

We finished Chemistry.  I had planned another week but felt like it was starting to drag a bit and so I decided to wrap it up for now.  I think he learned a lot.  Now we are starting an short oceans unit.  These are the books he's read so far.

We had a bit of a rough Halloween but we still managed to go trick or treating.  Austin and Adelaide both weren't feeling great today so we had a quiet day at home.  But, Austin insisted he wanted to go trick or treating this evening so we went on a bit shorter route than usual but the kids got plenty of candy.  Adelaide had no problem following her brothers and even carried her candy basket the whole time.  She screamed when someone opened the door at the first few houses but she soon caught on to the idea and was marching right up and taking her candy.  Here are some pictures.

Austin has a helmet to match this knight outfit but insisted on wearing the blue one.  

Adelaide made a very cute little owl.

Here are the kids setting off on their adventure.  It rained all day but was nice enough to stop in time for kids to go trick or treating.

This week Gavin has been learning about crystals and making some of his own using this kit from Smithsonian.  The kit has been okay.  We haven't gotten anything even close to the pictures on the box but Gavin has been happy with what he has gotten.

Adelaide is obsessed with glue.  I finally gave in and let her use it while Austin was gluing yesterday.

This week Austin is learning the letter S with a snow theme.  I found a great little snow unit to use this week on TeachersPayTeachers.com for free!  Yesterday I gave Austin a bunch of little cutouts of kids playing in the snow and had him glue them into little boxes on a piece of paper.  Then he had to graph how many he had of each child and then he answered questions using his graph.  He really enjoyed this activity.

Adelaide glued the extra pieces onto a piece of paper.

Our neighbor got the kids a bloody doctor set.  I'm not really sure what else to call it.  It's really gross but Austin and Adelaide both love it.  Adelaide was wearing the hat around and then stuck it on the cat's head!

Then she was playing veterinarian with Austin.

Gavin is still learning about ancient China this week.  He put together a display about Chinese inventions.

Here is the first crystal Gavin made.

This morning Austin played with Hot Dot cards.  Basically you use the dog to point to the right answer and he barks and makes noise for yes or no.  He really liked this.  He did some counting cards, some phonics cards (beginning and ending sounds) and rhyming words.  His Halloween party at school was this afternoon so he wore his costume all day.

Today Gavin looked at all his crystals under a magnifying glass and drew what he saw in his science journal. 

Here we are at the party.  Actually, this is pre-party, Adelaide and I had an hour and a half to blow before party time. 

I was getting things ready and lost Adelaide only to find her participating in story time with her big brother's arm around her.

Austin declared it the best party ever so I guess it was successful.  Here are some of the books I've read with Austin this week.