Back to work after Thanksgiving means one thing…the start of Christmas school!
First, the regular stuff. In math, Turkey and Bunny worked on mean, median, and mode. Once they refreshed their memories as to which term was which, they sailed through it with no trouble. I did discover that the short amount of time they spent on binary plus our break equaled a hiccup on their test this week, though. We went over that again, and I think they’ll remember it this time. Ladybug, meanwhile, has entered the world of multiplication. She’s really just grouping items right now, but she’s very excited to be doing some of the same stuff as her big brother and sister.
Language arts was pretty standard. Turkey and Bunny are now getting into spelling words that even I have to think about…their books are far more challenging than I remember mine being at that age! They continued to work on writing a description of a place in their writing assignments, and even had on example using A Christmas Carol, which they enjoyed. Ladybug is still working on narrating her writing, and then copying it down from what I’ve written.
In science, we’ve continued our botany lessons and have been learning about stems, and how they work. We did a fun experiment with a stalk of celery in a glass of blue-tinted water, and even I was surprised how fast the leaves started to turn blue. It was really fun to be able to spot the celery’s individual veins, even from the surface, thanks to the blue stripes running up and down it!
The real fun this week was Christmas school. We’ve replaced our poetry and short stories study for the time being with A Christmas Carol, one of my very favorite books to read aloud. The children are really enjoying discussing it, and even though I’ve read it at least two times before, Turkey and Bunny have been noticing details in the story that they have never picked up on before…fun! We also moved on to the fourth Grandma’s Attic book, Treasures from Grandma.
We replaced our regular history lessons for the week with some “Christmas Around the World” studies. This week, we covered Greece, Italy, and France. We read a few legends from each country, learned how to say “Merry Christmas” in the native language (French and Italian were easy…Greek was a bit more challenging!), and learned about the customs, celebrations, and foods enjoyed in each country. We’ll be sampling a few such foods over the weekend, which is always one of my favorite parts. No crafts yet…I’m saving those for next week, or even the week after.
We’ll be doing more Christmas Around the World next week…I haven’t decided yet if we’re totally suspending our history lessons until after the first of the year, or if I’m going to mix them up with our Christmas lessons a bit. We’re definitely going to be learning about Christmas in Russia (a nod to our Olympics lessons earlier this year), and Sweden, and we may also revisit Germany and the United Kingdom as well. It’s a busy time of year, even in the classroom!