What We Studied
We crammed in two holidays this week: Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day. Even though February is the shortest month, it’s full of holidays and events! We’re trying to hit most of them. Beyond that, we stayed into most of the week as the high temperatures were below zero. The boys lasted about 10 minutes outside one day attempting to play in the snow.
Literature and Poetry
We finished Just Beyond the Very Very Far North and started Fortunately, the Milk for our read aloud. I was sad to leave Duane the Polar Bear and his friends. I really enjoyed those two books.
Just Beyond the Very Very Far North by Dan Bar-el
Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman
The Missing Mitten Mystery by Steven Kellogg
It’s Snowing! It’s Snowing! Winter Poems by Jack Prelutsky
Thomas & Friends: James Goes Buzz Buzz (Arthur read)
Outside Your Window by Nicola Davies (poems)
My Friend Rabbit and the Snow Geese by Eric Rohmann (Arthur read)
Math
We continued with Singapore Math 2A Unit 2. The material is not a challenge (mostly 3 digit addition and subtraction), but it’s been good practice for Arthur before we move on to Unit 3 next week.
Social Studies
We moved on to the Roman Empire. We did a day on the Celts, a day on Julius Caesar and the fall of the Republic, a day on Pompeii, a day on the Colosseum and Roman mosaics, and a general day about the rest of the Empire. We ended up watching three documentaries throughout the week: Nat Geo’s Secrets of the Dead (Pompeii), NOVA’s Roman Catacomb Mystery, and NOVA’s Colosseum. We will be wrapping up Rome next week.
What Do We Know About the Celts by Hazel Mary Martell
Hands-on History! The Celts by Fiona Macdonald
Ancients in Their Own Words: Roman by Michale Kerrigan
The Ancient Romans by Cohn
The Ancient Romans by Shuter
Ancient Rome by Mack
Eyewitness Ancient Rome
The Genius of the Romans by Izzi Howell
Pompeii: Lost and Found by Mary Pope Osborne
Pompeii: One Roman City, One House… More Than 2000 Years of Change by Richard Platt
Roman Amphitheaters by Don Nardo
Science
Nothing formal
Art
Nothing formal
Music
Continuing our jazz unit for the month. Turns out Arthur really enjoys swing jazz but not blues jazz. Every week we are covering between 4 and 10 jazz artists. I have a giant stack of picture books featuring various artists and lots of music pieces notated.
Jazz by Walter Dean Myers (poems)
Jazz ABZ by Wynton Marsalis
Sophisticated Ladies by Leslie Gourse
Stompin’ at the Savoy by Bebe Moore Campbell
Bring On that Beat by Rachel Isadora
Piano Starts Here by Robert Andrew Parker
Duke Ellington by Andrea Davis Pinkney
Ella Fitzgerald by Ma Isabel Sanchez Vergara
Skit-Scat Raggedy Cat by Roxane Orgill
Ella Queen of Jazz by Helen Hancocks
The Jazz Man by Karen Ehrhardt
Swing Sisters by Karen Deans
Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson by Lesa Cline-Ransome
Unit Theme
We covered Chinese New Year for the first half of the week. I found a great stack of picture books from the library and we learned a lot!
Behold… the Dragons by Gail Gibbons
Celebrate Chinese New Year by Carolyn Otto
How to Catch a Dragon by Adam Wallace and Andy Elkerton
Chelsea’s Chinese New Year by Lisa Bullard
The Nian Monster by Andrea Wang
Chinese New Year Colors by Rich Lo
Ruby’s Chinese New Year by Vickie Lee
Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas by Natasha Yim
Nian, the Chinese New Year Dragon by Virginia Loh-Hagan
The Little Pigs and the Sweet Rice Cakes by Li Jian
Bringing in the New Year by Grace Lin
Peppa’s Chinese New Year
On Friday, we make Valentine’s and talked about the holiday. We’ll be continuing Valentine’s Day into next week.
Valensteins by Ethan Long
Misc. - Random picture books read
What’s That Noise? by Naomi Howarth
Lego Star Wars: A New Hope
Snow by Uri Shulevitz
I Wish It Would Snow! by Sarah Dillard
Secret Pizza Party by Adam Rubin
Pizza Day by Melissa Iwai
Winter White by Christianne C. Jones
Henry and the Yeti by Russell Ayto
Terrible Storm by Carol Otis Hurst
Be Brave, Little Penguin by Giles Andreae
Oh That Snow! by JeongHo Kim
My Penguin Osbert in Love by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel
All Right Already! A Snowy Story by Jory John & Benji Davies
Highs
We celebrated National Pizza Day on Tuesday with takeout pizza! We don’t do pizza very often so the boys were very excited.
Lows
It was too cold to get outside. Meaning I had two kids full of energy and no where to get it out. Pre-pandemic, we would have gone to the gym or the indoor playground. But obviously not right now.
Next Week
We’ll finish our read aloud and start another one (one of my childhood favorites!) and continue with our poems. For social studies, we’ll wrap up Rome to head back to U.S. History of the last week in February. I think we’ll finish Unit 3 in math and get to the 1960s in Jazz. Our theme will be split between Valentine’s Day, Mardi Gras, and Presidents’ Day.
Next up on the TBR pile:
