What We Studied

It took a few days, but we caught up with our curriculum. We made a lot of progress in all of our subjects and even had a great field trip with our coop friends.

Literature and Poetry

Continuing with our reading of Race to the Sun. We are about 50 pages from the end, but thankfully I built in a break week from our read aloud. We are going to finish Race to the Sun next week and then move into Japanese Folktales. We also covered a few picture book studies for our fall theme.

Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
Plum by Tony Mitton
Scarecrow by Cynthia Rylant
Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll
Hey, That’s My Monster by Amanda Roll
Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell
In November by Cynthia Rylant
“Robin Hood and His Merry Men” from Favorite Medieval Tales by Mary Pope Osborne

Math

We’re still working through Unit 3 about multiplication and division. We probably have one more week in this unit before we will move on.

Singapore Math Common Core Edition 3A
Primarily Logic

Social Studies

This week was all about the Ancient Puebloans and Cahokia. We covered both of these civilizations last year in our first year of U.S. History, but it was nice to cover them again. We found some great videos about each of these groups and the ruins that are left. We hope to visit at least Cahokia in the next few years.

DK Timelines of Everyone
When on Earth
DK History
DK Timelines of Everything
Journey to Cahokia by Albert Lorenze and Joy Schleh
Secrets of Mesa Verde by Gail Foy
Cliff Dwellings: A Hidden World by Kevin Blake

Arthur Independent Time

To allow for one-on-one time with Quentin, I have added an hour of independent work time for Arthur. Each week, he will have a mix of packet work (mostly grammar and math review), independent reading time, and special projects. Many of his projects will be aligned with our literature selections (some taken from B&R Language Arts curriculum) and history. This week, he focused on packet work and some random building projects.

Science and STEAM Coop

Continuing with our Dinosaur unit from Blossom and Root! We covered the Carboniferous and Permian periods. We also had a great coop meeting where the kids learned about Big Time and the history of life on earth. Afterward, the kids pretended to be paleontologists and worked on their own fossil digs.

Everything Awesome About Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Beasts by Mike Lowery
The Story of Life: Evolution by Katie Scott
Life: The First Four Billion Years by Martin Jenkins
When the Whales Walked and Other Incredibly Evolutionary Journeys by Dougal Dixon
Prehistoric: Before the Dinosaurs by David West
DK Prehistoric
DK Where on Earth? Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Life
DK Find Out! Dinosaurs
DK Eyewitness Dinosaur
Dinosaurium by Chris Wormed and Lily Murray Preface
Prehistoric by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld
Dinothesaurus: Prehistoric Poems and Paintings by Douglas Florian
Dinosaur Feathers by Dennis Nolan
I am NOT a Dinosaur by Will Lach

Art/Music

Nothing this week

Quentin

I have scheduled at least four 1-hour time blocks for one-on-one time with Quentin. I bought Blossom and Root’s Early Years Volume 2 curriculum to use as our base. I love the variety of activities and some of the bigger projects included. For ELA, we continued our big overview of the alphabet. We covered more counting and some basic math concepts as well as simple map skills. And we had some puzzles to round out the week. We also finished big unit on transportation.

ELA

Once Upon an Alphabet by Oliver Jeffers
My “s” Sound Box by Jane Belk Moncure
Sammy Skunk’s Super Sniffer by Barbara deRubertis
My “t” Sound Box by Jane Belk Moncure
Tessa Tiger’s Temper Tantrum by Barbara deRubertis

Math

Other

Let’s Go on a Train by Rosalyn Albert
Truck and Train by Hannah Stark
Chugga Chugga Choo Choo by Emma Garcia
Locomotive by Brian Floca
Three Grumpy Trucks by Todd Tarpley
What a Nice Car by Anita Bijsterbosch
Our Car by J.M. Brum
Diggersaurus by Michael Whaite
My Side of the Car by Kate Feiffer
I Like My Car by Michael Robertson
Let’s Go on the Plane by Rosalyn Albert
Let’s Go on a Rocket by Rosalyn Albert
How Does it Work? Airplanes by Jenny Fretland VanVoorst
Let’s Go on a Ferry by Rosalyn Albert
Lightship by Brian Floca
Boats Speeding! Sailing! Cruising! by Patricia Hubbell
Let’s Go on a Tractor by Rosalyn Albert
If I Built a Car by Chris van Dusen
Red Truck, Yellow Truck by Michelle Robinson
I Drive a Snowplow by Sarah Bridges
Race Car Count by Rebecca Kai Dotlich
Thunder Trucks by Cheryl Klein & Katy Beebe

Field Trip

We headed to Schramm State Park to look for fossils at the geologic site. It was cold and a bit windy, we had a great morning with our friends. We found a ton of crinoids and some coral pieces in the rocks. I love that we we can visit someplace that has exposed rocks from when Nebraska was underwater 350 million years ago.

Documentary Selection

I have carved out a one hour time block each week to watch a documentary related to our studies. We didn’t actually watch anything this week, but made up for it by all the PBS Eons videos for our dinosaur unit.