What We Studied

Literature and Poetry

Basically same thing I said last week: “Our literature selection for this month is Matilda by Roald Dahl. Arthur, J, and I attended a performance of the musical version (lyrics by Tim Minchin!), back in 2019. It was nice to start with a book that I have read before and that Arthur is mostly familiar with. After we finish (in two weeks), we are going to watch the movie with Mara Wilson and Danny Devito. Beyond our literature selection, I’ve been having Arthur read a book aloud to me a few times this week. We will be continuing this into the rest of the semester. He even picked out a few Level 2 readers to challenge his reading for next week. We also started a few winter-themed picture books literature studies. I found a couple of great resources online to go with 30 different books. We’ll be sprinkling these in through the month. And we grabbed a few winter themed poetry books.”

• Matilda by Roald Dahl

• Winter Song by William Shakespeare

• Winter Friends by Mary Quattlebaum

• The Snowman and the Snowdog by Raymond Briggs (Arthur read)

• Duck Duck Dinosaur: Snowy Surprise by Kallie George (Arthur read)

• Thomas the Tank Engine: Treasure on the Tracks (Arthur read)

• The Mitten by Jan Brett (literature study)

• Snow by Cynthia Rylant (literature Study)

• The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett (Literature study)

• Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle (Quentin literature study)

Math

We wrapped up our Ruby book and did some more activities involving aspects of computer science. Arthur really loved creating his own game.

• Mission Addition by Loreen Leedy

• Subtraction Action by Loreen Leedy

• Kids Get Coding

Social Studies

Because of other events, our social studies was shortened this week. We covered the Andes Mountain Civilizations, specifically the Nazca. We’'ll cover Mesoamerica next week. We did sneak in two mini units about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Presidential Innauguration.

• Martin Luther King Jr: A Peaceful Leader by Sarah Albee

• Eyewitness: Aztec, Inca, and Maya

Science

We reached the last week in our anatomy study. We covered the reproductive system and life cycle before doing a bit review of the body. We also watched two Magic School Bus Rides Again episodes that went along with our unit. We watched one about the nervous system and one about eyes. Always entertaining!

• Eyewitness: Human Body

• My Amazing Body Machine

• Who Has What? All About Girls’ Bodies and Boys’ Bodies by Robie H. Harris

For the second half the week, we started Blossom and Root’s The Mitten Bookseed. We talked about the book and started diving into the STEAM activities. Quentin loved doing the ordinal numbers activities.

• The Mitten by Alvin Tressalt

Art

Nothing formal

Music

Our composer was George Gerswhin. I had forgotten how much I love his music! Arthur enjoyed it and even seemed to really get into learning about Rhapsody in Blue.

• The Music in George’s Head by Suzanna Slade

• Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue by Anna Harwell Celenza

Unit Theme

Our big theme was Polar Bears, continuing the cold weather theme for January. We learned a lot about the animals along with reading a ton of great picture books featuring polar bears.

• Polar Bear by Dee Phillips

• Polar Bear’s Underwear by Tupera Tupera

• What If? Then We? by Rebecca Kai Dotlich

• Sea Bear by Lindsay Moore

• Caspian Finds a Friend by Jaqueline Veissid

• A Baby Polar Bear Story by Martha E.H. Rustad

• Polar Bear Postman by Seigo Kijima

• The Snow Bear by Sean Taylor

• Do You Really Want to Meet a Polar Bear? by Marcie Aboff

• One Very Big Bear by Alice Biere-Haquet

• The Bear Report by Thyra Heder

• Love Matters Most by Mij Kelly and Gerry Turley

• Something’s Fishy by Jean Gourounas

• The Polar Bear by Jenni Desmond

• Nanuk the Ice Bear by Jeannette Winter

• Lost and Found by JiWon Beck

• Snowy Bear by Tony Mitton

• If Polar Bears Disappeared by Lily Williams

Misc. - Random picture books read

• A Perfect Day by Carin Berger

• The Little Snowplow by Lora Koehler

• First Snow by Bernette Ford

• The Abominable Snow Teacher by Lisa Passen

• First Snow by Nancy Viau

• One Cool Friend by Toni Buzzeo

• No Yeti Yet by Mary Ann Fraser

• Mimi and Bear in the Snow by Janee Trasler

• Snow Sisters by Kerri Kokias and Teagan White

• Coming Home by Michael Morpurgo

• The Mitten Tree by Candace Christiansen

• When Winter Comes by Nancy Van Laan

Highs

• We took a break on Thursday from our curriculum and visited the zoo. We haven’t been there in about 4 months. It was nice to walk around without many people and spend time with some of our favorite animals. Quentin requested to see the elephants (love them myself!) and Arthur wanted to visit the swamp in Kingdoms of the Night (an alligator splashing scared me this time). I think we will be going again this week to do a mini study of the penguins. Our zoo has three species, so it’ll be great to compare and contrast them. And I’m hoping we get to see the sea lions. they are at the opposite end of the zoo from the elephants and it’s quite a walk in the cold and not being able to use the shortcut through the gorilla house (closed for construction).

Lows

• Between the zoo and grocery shopping, two of our days were cut down drastically. We need to find a better balance.

Next Week

Out unit theme will be penguins to go along with cold weather. We will be catching up in history with three topics: Mesoamerican Civilizations, Kushites and Aksumites, and North America Geography. For literature, we should finish Matilda on Tuesday, so we’ll be starting a new book on Wednesday! And we hope to get to the zoo on Thursday or Friday specifically for the penguins.

Next up on the TBR pile: