What We Studied

As we hit May, our school curriculum plan starts to wind down a bit. We are schooling through the summer, but I ease up our big curriculum and focus on smaller units and special activities. This helps us stay on top of a school mindset without the summer slump. But it always allows me to catchup a bit and relax during the summer. Only two one more real week of curriculum to go.

Literature and Poetry

Arthur and I started our next read aloud, actually a childhood favorite of mine. We’ll be finishing out our school year with this selection.

• Nat Geo Book of Nature Poetry

• Poetry for Young People: Emily Dickinson

• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Quentin finished our Antarctic selection and will be moving on to a book that Quentin picked up at the library last week.

• Nat Geo Book of Animal Poetry

• A World Full of Animal Stories by Angela McAllister

• Around the World in 80 Days by Saviour Pirotta

• Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater

• Evan Moor Smart Start Read and Write K

Math

For both boys, we have scheduled math for three days a week. One day is focused on logic, games, puzzles, and special projects. The two other days are focused on covering the main math curriculum (Singapore 4A and 4B for Arthur and Singapore 1A and 1B for Quentin). We finished our financial literacy unit. We’ve been doing a ton of review and leftover lessons this past week.

• Singapore 1B

Social Studies

Arthur continued his large study of United States history using a combination of Build Your Library Level 5 and History Quest United States History. We finished our year with the start of the Civil War and secession. We’ll be taking a history break until August.

• A Kid’s Guide to Native American History by Yvonne Wakim Dennis

• An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

• We were There Too by Philip Hoose

• Words that Built a Nation

• History Quest: U.S. History

• A Different Mirror

• DK American History Visual Encyclopedia

• Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans by Kadir Nelson

• Nat Geo Our Country’s Presidents

• Smart About the First Ladies

• Two Miserable Presidents by Steve Sheinkin

Quentin continued his study of the world with Build Your Library Level 0. Quentin wrapped up his study of the world this week with a little review.

• Nat Geo Beginner’s World Atlas

• DK Countries of the World

• DK Children Just Like Me

• DK Children Just Like Me: A School Like Mine

Arthur Independent Time

We are working on following a checklist in a planner for weekly independent work. There’s usually some math workbook pages, an ELA packet, weekly writing prompts (1-2 times a week), independent reading time, and a special creative project. There has been many drawing projects lately.

Science

Arthur is focusing on Physics this year. We are covering the text and related videos at home and then joining friends for experiments and extra projects. We covered quantum weirdness with some thought experiments.

• RSO Physics

• The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way by Joy Hakim

• The Way Things Work Now

Quentin will be focusing on animal science with BYL Level 0. Our last official science lesson of the year, we focused on climate change.

• Nat Geo Wild Animal Atlas

• DK Animal

• Lonely Planet: The Animal Book

• Why are the Ice Caps Melting? The Dangers of Global Warming by Anne Rockwell

STEAM Coop

Our last meeting of the year. The oldest kids did a lesson on organic molecules and play with paint. The littles and middles wrapped up their unit on domesticated animals. Quentin was very excited to use his new animal movement cards. And he learned to play gag ball.

Art/Music/Crafts/Cooking/Documentary

We’re planning one doing on art project and one cooking project each week as well as picking a composer or musician to listen to and enjoy. We started watched Into the West, the mini series from early 2000s. I really like how it follows two main families from the 1820s all the way to the 1870s. We get to see how the west changes in that 50 years hitting all the big events. We’ll be continuing for the next few weeks.

Field Trip

Tuesday we visited the Wildlife Safari for exploration and a picnic. The park has a special exhibit with life-size dinosaurs that moved and made noise. We met up with some coop friends and even had a picnic. It was a great day seeing animals and playing.

High

• We had a lovely, albeit windy and chilly, morning at the playground with a few friends. We ended dup staying for 4 hours, much longer than I had anticipated. Still, it was nice to be outside with no real agenda.

• We also had a splashed playdate on Wednesday afternoon. We decided that science class is finished for the year (we did finish the textbook), so we just met up at a splash pad. The city turned some of them on early this year.

Low

• Nothing really. It was good day.

Next Week

• Continuing our current read aloud (A)

• Starting a new read aloud (Q)

• Continuing with some math review

• Watching another episode or two of Into the West

• Catching up with our math and language arts packets and random pages

Next up on the TBR pile: