It's been a while since an update! We've been busy learning. ;)
We've wrapped up the liquid unit in science (yay!) and we've moved on. We'll be studying various insects and the like.
I was thinking about ways to make it fun. Reese is a hands on learner - putting a book in front of him isn't the greatest way to get a lesson to stick. We went to the pet store and picked up a few crickets and meal worms to check out. I thought it would be fun to get them under the microscope (it was awesome!), as well as make a habitat for them. Despite his severe dislike of bugs, Reese was okay with it. And then I saw this...
Aragog is a constant lesson. We now have to find bugs that he'll eat. We can't just let them roam the house (we lost a few crickets on day one...it was a loud night). So we've created a habitat for them so they can thrive and stay alive until Aragog is ready to eat. So, Reese is also getting a first hand lesson about the food chain. ;)
In Social Studies we're still focusing on Inuits. Reese is loving the unit, and keeps asking if we can cover more aspects of it. I've never known him to ask questions about anything he's learning, so it's great to see an interest. We've made mini igloos out of ice cubes and snow, we've made different crafts showing us in proper clothing (pictures on next blog - have to charge the camera!).
Reese and I decided to make an Inukshuk. All of our rocks are buried in the snow, so I cheated and bought stones from Dollarama. It was Reese's first time using a hot glue gun.
He actually did a great job. He planned out which rocks would be which part. The only downfall was, the rocks and glue didn't stick as they should have. This one fell apart about 20 seconds after getting a picture. So, we had to try again.
Off he went to explore our environment. He found my candy stash. ;)
It was a cute idea, and though it wasn't with rocks, he was resourceful and used what he could find in his environment.
We now have about 20 of these around the house. They were A LOT of fun to make though!
Language Arts is a lot of the same. We're seeing some improvement with his printing. He's taking criticism a lot better. At first it seemed that correcting him would turn him into a wreck. Now he's shrugging it off, fixing the problem and moving on. Progress!!
A few days ago, Reese blew my mind. Normally if he makes a small mistake, I'll grab his pencil and erase it - let him figure out why that happened (it's usually a 'b' instead of a 'd', or something silly). Sometimes I'll just point to the problem and let him fix it. But as he was printing a word and totally lost the line - it was curving upwards. He immediately erased it and said, "I can do better than this!". WOW!! It seems so small, but it was so great to know he's becoming aware that he can do better.
He's loving math. If he had his way, we'd spend hours on end working on only math. I'm thinking about adding multiplication in soon, just to keep him on his toes. I think he'd actually enjoy it.
That's all for now! More pictures and work samples next update!
