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: