Week 19 - Socialization

I've come to a very happy place in terms of socialization for Oscar. Between his after school activities and his friendships with a few kids (one from the neighborhood and one from school last year) we've pretty much got it covered. But there are few things we do in our homeschool day that have been great. One is the PE Plus class we started last term, that continues this term. Instead of Spanish, they've changed it to building things with wood, which Oscar really likes and seems to blend better with the day. Cooking and PE are the same, and it's a lovely 3 hour chunk of time that I can run out and do errands and just wander without having anyone attached ;) The other class we've started again is the homeschool program through the Audubon zoo. We made it to 3 sessions last term, and will do a few sessions this term as well. Last week was at the zoo, and while the class wasn't my favorite (it was chemistry in nature but I thought it would be more related to how animals use chemistry specifically) Oscar had fun reconnecting with a friend and meeting some not-so furry friends.

Kelly the hedgehog

In English, we worked on our first non-fiction text structure - descriptive. (We'll be putting all the different types of non-fiction into a chart in my effort to put more of our work in writing.) We read a passage about Magellan (Readworks.org is my new favorite resource for reading passages) and a book about Snowflake Bentley to help learn about this type of text. Barton continues as well, and we're adding a new spelling rule every week now which is great to see it all coming together. Oscar was very excited to teach Dada the "floss" rule the other night!

We started measurement in math and it made me realize how freaking confusing standard measurement is!! Someone please tell me why we aren't on the metric system? At any rate, we're going to continue with that next week as we sort through what in the world an ounce is. Can you tell I'm not happy about this unit?

In science we've moved on to landforms, and we made a flip book with different landforms, and a diorama showing them all.

In social studies, we've covered almost the whole year curriculum from the VA schools, so we're backtracking a little and covering material he missed last year (including Ancient Egypt and Ancient China). To do this in a way that flows, I bought the History of the World as a guide and so far it's really great. Short little reading passages combine with hands on activities. Some are good, and others I pull from pinterest projects. We did some cave paintings on paper and started Oscar's own timeline. Next week Ancient Egypt begins!! I'm looking forward to mummifying a barbie, and making canonic jars :)