What We Studied

We’re officially done with our first year of homeschooling! For next week and July, we will be taking it easy. Arthur will be working on his Highlights and BrainQuest summer bridge workbooks. We will be continuing our read alouds and picture books at night. Beyond that, we are going to focus on downtime, games, and fun excursions.

Literature and Poetry

We’re still reading Scary Stories for Young Foxes and really enjoyed it, even if it is really scary. Beyond our reading selection, Arthur completed his end of Grade 1 spelling assessment. Not too shabby! Especially considering that spelling has not really been a focus this past year. (I’m debating about adding it in for next year.) Finally, he’s been working on his Highlights and BrainQuest summer bridge workbooks. These pages are the focus of our language arts and math for the summer.

• Scary Stories for Young Foxes by Christian McKay Heidicker

Math

Highlights and BrainQuest summer bridge workbooks

Social Studies

None

Science

We covered motion and forces for our last official week of the school year. I was amazed at how quickly Arthur got the concepts of potential and kinetic motion. Definitely a science kid! We also watched two Magic School Bus episodes about energy and motion.

• Forces Make Things Move by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

• Give It a Push! Give It a Pull! A Look at Forces by Jennifer Boothroyd

• Why Do Moving Objects Slow Down? A Look at Friction by Jennifer Boothroyd

• Cece Loves Science: Push and Pull by Kimberly Derting

• Experiments with Motion by Susan H. Gray

Art

None

Music

We continued listening to the Beatles. We covered recordings from 1964 to 1966. Arthur has only been a fan of a few songs (seriously, is he even my kid?). His favorites have been “Help” and “Nowhere Man.”

Unit Theme

We did a simple unit theme based on ice cream. We read a ton of ice cream books (fiction and Nonfiction), plus watched a great Modern Marvels documentary about the making of ice cream. Of course, had to also eat some ice cream!

• Ice Cream: The Full Scoop by Gail Gibbons

• Ice Cream Soup by Ann Ingalls (Arthur Read)

• Sweet Success by Liz and Jimmy Reed

• Ice Cream Summer by Peter Sís

• The Scoop on Ice Cream by Bonnie Williams

• Ice-Cream Cones for Sale! by Elaine Greenstein

• Saffron Ice Cream by Rashin

• Should I Share My Ice Cream? by Mo Willems (Arthur read)

• Francesco Tirelli's Ice Cream Shop by Tamar Meir

• Vanilla Ice Cream by Bob Graham

• Fox Tails: The Giant Ice Cream Mess by Tina Kügler

• I Scream Ice Cream by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

• The Little Ice Cream Truck by Margery Cuyler

• Chuggington: Wilson and the Ice Cream Fair by Mara Conlon (Arthur read)

• Curious George Goes to an Ice Cream Shop by Margret Rey and Alan J. Shalleck

Misc. - Random picture books read

• Sealed with a Kiss by Beth Ferry

• Be Who You Are by Todd Parr

• Rainbow: A First Book of Pride by Michael Genhart

• Welcome Home, Whales by Christina Booth

• Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love

• Trapped! A Whale's Rescue by Robert Burleigh

• Phoenix Goes to School by Michelle and Phoenix Finch

• Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress by Christine Baldacchino

• Curious George Good Night, Zoo by Gina Gold

• Whale Trails: Before and Now by Lesa Cline-Ransome

Highs

• We took advantage of a day with below 90 degree temperatures and went to the zoo. Apparently we had the same idea as everyone else in Omaha. But it was still fun. We finally got to ride the train (it’s been closed since summer 2019)!

Lows

• The heat got to all of us and it wasn’t pretty. Lots of grouchiness and terrible attitudes.

Next Week

We’re officially on summer break. We have a stack of library books and our summer workbooks. Plus we have our summer bucket list to check off. And we have made sure to schedule lots of outings and field trips.

Next up on the TBR pile: