Monday, October 8, 2018

Socials with a little LA

In Social Studies this year we are learning to research, watching videos, reading text books, searching online information, and building lap books. We are also incorporating learning about family history with learning about immigration.

We started the year off watching a documentary of Canada for review of the provinces and learning about people's stories from each province. Then we decided on starting with our Scottish heritage. We talked to Great-Grandpa Campbell to make sure we were on the right track and then jumped into researching online and gathering books from the library to start our lap-books. 

Keiran's map of Scotland and map of Canada with the areas highlighted where Scottish Immigrants first settled (Nova Scotia, PEI, and Quebec). 

Gemma's title page with the Scottish Flag.

Gemma's maps of Scotland and Scottish Immigrants in Canada. She also learned about the United Kingdom while she researched in our books. 

Aiden's maps, highlighting Scottish Immigration in PEI, Nova Scotia, and Quebec. Aiden was in charge of finding maps and researching online for the group. 


Our textbook reading. 

Science and Math

This year in Science we are learning about the human body, as well as our nature studies. It is purposefully picked as our text as we are talking about health and body workings regarding Daddy. Understanding always helps us work through life situations.
We are a Math-U-See family for life I think! Working on though or cyclical workbooks.


Gemma's bone facts. 


Aiden's bone facts. 


Keiran's bone facts. 


 Aiden's skeleton. 


Gemma's skeleton. 

Keiran's skeleton. 


Finn's body puzzle. This serious little man is building the muscular system. 

Finn's bone drawing. He was magnificent explaining it all too. Too cute!




Math! Finn has begun Math-See-U Primer. 



Gemma is continuing in Gamma this year. Multiplying by seven here. 


Keiran is in Beta, working through multiple digit subtraction. 



Aiden has started Epsilon and is doing awesome adding and subtracting fractions. 





LA Layers

Each day comes with a little LA but in different layers and Aiden, Gemma, Keiran, and Finn are all expected to write, print, read, and express ideas at their own level.


Copywork helps with memorization, spelling words, technicality of printing neatly, as well as getting in some scripture learning. This is Aiden's. He is a fast thinker and his pencil often has a hard time keeping up. He has been working on slowing down. He is a great speller so no problems there at all. 


 Gemma's lovely work. She is tactful and neat in all her work. She is still working on spelling rules a bit. 


 Keiran. We are ever so proud of Keiran. He has overcome some reading difficulty last year and needed glasses to help focus his eyes. This year already he is being brave when it comes to challenging himself to write longer. He is stepping up!


 Finn is a force to be reckoned with. He is ready to learn and wants to be included at all times in this family school. He is learning to read with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Here is his printing sample. 


Each day we have half an hour silent reading. Each kid can pick their reader. This is Gemma's pick. There are six books of a collection in this one and she is flying through it. She chooses to read beyond the half hour and also reads in the evening before bed. 

Aiden has finished reading through this pick your own adventure novel. Aiden has always been a great reader so no problems there! Trying to find some older series to engage him. 

Keiran fell in love with Little Critters when he first started to read well after he got his glasses and so he wanted more of this collection. he read through these four stories. 

Keiran picked this chapter book next. He also reads this series with mom in the evening. 

Finn is so excited to already be reading some words. It is so fun to teach Kindergarten and the wonder of learning. He is picking up and remembering his letter sounds easily. 




Some more scripture copywork... (These pages actually are from our science workbooks and correspond with biology lessons.)





Story development. We start the year with who, what, when, where, why, and how. Each week we are learning about one part of speech, playing a game, brainstorming that part of speech, and then adding a new draft to our story. 


Keiran's brainstorming of nouns. 


Keiran's adjective assignment. 


Gemma's noun brainstorming. 

Gemma's adjective assignment. 


Aiden's noun brainstorming. 


Aiden's adjective assignment. 






Monday Morning (Science, Art, LA, PE)

We are working through more of a flow.... gather, explore, read, write, research. So, I am going to try reporting this way today as our subjects are intermingling now. Our Mondays are made up of LA, Science, PE, and Art aspects.

Ticket to Curlew by Celia Barker Lottridge is our family reader. We start each morning by gathering together and reading from this novel. It is about primitive life on the prairie and we have been able to talk about different story elements as we go, as we as early Canadian immigration. 

On Mondays we head out for a nature hike to explore nature, seasons, etc. and to get some healthy fresh wild air. It makes for a great start to the week and gets our brains and hearts working. Before we head we read about an aspect of nature in this text. It has been great for spurring on ideas of what to open our eyes to. 


Hiking in the Lac Du Bois Grasslands.
 Sage
 Bear or coyote droppings! We didn't want to find out which. 
 A beautiful tree changing into Autumn colors. We took some home for our collection to study. 
 Finn chose a rock to collect. 
 Rattlesnake safety in the Grasslands. 


 Back home we add to our nature journals and try to figure our collected treasures. Aiden chose a rock and looked up what it could be, while drawing it's color and edges. 
 Finn painted his rock and declared for mom to write down it was emerald. 
 Gemma chose many samples and drew and printed leaf, adding scientific terms she learned from the nature text about trees. 
 Gemma also was drawn to the sage. 


 Keiran loved the science of the leaf and remembered how to classify this one as spoon shaped with serrated edges. 
 Part of the collection .