Weeks 20 and 21

Their Comin to America - can't you just hear Neil Diamond! Honey is a Neil Diamond fan and over the last 13 years I have heard many of Neil's songs and Comin to America is by far my favorite.

Week 20

I was looking forward to getting into America for our TOG studies. Last week we studied Jamestown. The boys made a paper model of the Jamestown fort.

Here is the link for the Jamestown Replica. The boys enjoyed getting to build it. http://www.homeschoolinthewoods.com/HTTA/promo/Jamestown-Replica.htm We also read about Pocahontus. I borrowed the Disney movies Pocahontus I and II for the boys to watch after we had read the books. Turkey Lips said "I'm really disappointed the movie isn't right." We had a discussion about that but he wanted to see a movie on what he had read that stayed true to the facts. :) Ever the logical one :)

This weeks was the first time I used the Writing Aids portion of TOG. We had been concentrating on narration, dicatation, handwritng, and grammar to this point. We felt like it was time to go ahead and start some of the writing program. The assignment for the next unit is for Turkey Lips to make a book of colonies. This week Turkey Lips wrote a paragraph on Jamestown. We started with covering what a paragraph is and how it is set up. We talked about how all of the sentences need to stay on topic. We also discussed topic sentences and conclusion sentences. Here is the finished product for this weeks lesson:

Jamestown was hard to live in. One reason is because there wasn't enough food. The settlers planted corn but it wasn't harvest time yet. They could not go hunting because the Indians would attack. Then the Indians and the colonists became friends. Then the Indians and the colonists would trade for corn. Later the Indians would not trade becausethe colonists wouldn't give the Indians weapons. The colonists would starve if the Indians would not give them food. Life was hard in Jamestown because the colonists could not find food.

I find writing instruction very intimidating, however Writing Aids instructions were very straight forward and Turkey Lips understood. I think this is a good first go of it :)

Week 21

We are in Plymouth Colony this week. Turkey Lips wrote another paragraph for his colonies book. He decided to write about Squanto. We also made band boxes for our activity.

Turtle Toes and Turkey Lips got to decoupage their band boxes with Transformers wrapping paper. Definetly not true to the time period but fun none the less. :)

We took a break from SWR this week to get caught up on some of the reference pages that I had let slide when we first started SWR.

Math U See is going very well for both of the boys. Turtle Toes loves doing his Math. There have been several times when he wants to more than one lesson a day. Turkey Lips is learning his mulitipication tables. He has been a bit frustrated because he doesn't already know them. I have to keep explaining to him that no body knows them at first. To practice them we have been drilling while keeping time, using Timez Attack, and a Leap Frog drill thing ( not sure of the name).

We are trying to finish up or space unit and then we are moving on the body. This week we planted some seeds to try and start a garden (in pots) on the patio. We shall see how we do at that.

Now for something not school related. The boys had a karate tournament and Turkey Lips came in second for his form and first for sparring. Turtle Toes came in fourth for his form. Both of the boys had fun and have been really trying hard for their karate.