Weekly Wrap-up: D is for Dinosaurs! (MFW)

This week we got a lot of work done!  A few weeks ago I had decided 5 days a week of homeschool was too much on our schedule and my kids and I were getting a bit worn out.  The kids are usually tired on Monday's after a busy weekend and Monday afternoon Peanut has OT and Speech therapy (an hour of driving round trip) so that is our hardest day.  So for the past few weeks we have been skipping "school" on Monday's and doing a mini bible lesson instead.  I found a Fruit of the Spirit devotional from Raising Arrows that we started to do.  I modified it a little and we focus on one character trait a week.  Throughout the week we try to exhibit this trait and discuss it.  This week we talked about Peace (a good one for Sassy)!

Our fruit of the Spirit baskets

We read many dinosaur books including What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs? by John Morris and Ken Ham, How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague, My "d" Book by Jane Belk Moncure, God Made Dinosaurs by Heno Head Jr, and Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs! by Sandra Boynton.

We finished the MFW work as well as other supplemental worksheets, and worked on TeachMe Kindergarten on the iPad.  The MFW worksheets include a sheet to draw words that start with the letter or the week.  We haven't been doing this worksheet but I decided to start working it into their work.  Sassy was exited to do this and proud of her work.  Peanut on the other hand was NOT happy to do this sheet.  He will color but doesn't like to try to draw.  It's the same resistance I got from him with writing.  In the end we were able to work through it and get it done.  I'll be sue to start incorporating more activities like this into their assignments. 

I talked with the kids about the election on election day, and they watched a short Schoolhouse Rock about the electoral college, but they were not too interested.  The video may have been a little over their head.  They love the Schoolhouse Rock videos, and loved this one, but they were uninterested in the election.  They'll be 4 years older next election so I'm thinking we will have to do a whole unit on it to get them really excited about it.

We did some fun fine motor work.  We made dinosaurs (making sure to do a lot of pinching and rolling) out of Soy-Yer-Dough and played with them.

Here is Sassy "feeding" her dinosaur

We also took dinosaur stickers and put them on a paper to make a scene.  This was a great activity for Peanut because he not only had to pull the small stickers off the paper and put them on his construction paper, but he had to keep his hands steady to get the stickers to cooperate (which requires lots of concentration on his part).  He did a great job!

Peanut making his dino scene

I also had 2 small kits to dig "dinosaur bones" out of dry clay.  We pretended to be Paleontologists and dug up some dinosaur bones.  The kids LOVED this activity!  I got the kits for cheap at iParty.  They had a really hard time getting the bones out and we didn't end up putting the bones together but they still had fun!

Sassy digging up her dino bones

So that was our week in our little homeschool!  It was a great week!


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