MFW-ECC - Week 5 - Mexico

Our Week in Review

Passport Day!!!

The kids have "mailboxes" in their rooms. (I have one for S too.) Jason and I thought it would be fun to have their passports waiting for them when they got up that morning. So, in went the passports and up went the flags. They were excited to have them "mailed" to them :)  

Art/Music

My kids are loving these songs! Of course, A's favorite this week is 'Pin Pon' and J and S's is 'Tingalayo'. I must admit, the 'Tingalayo' song is quite catchy and the kids all think it is pretty funny when you think about the words. 

This week, the kiddos chose to make the clay sun faces on page 122 or Global Art. 

Science

On Monday, we read about deserts in the 'Living World' book. This book is very busy, so I usually read the bold print opening paragraph. Then I let the kiddos take turns reading other areas of interest on the pages. Most times, they want to take turns until they read it all, but some days, we may not cover everything, and that is ok with me...they still get the main idea. Because of the age of my students, we opt not to do the 'advanced' sections listed in the teacher's manual.


The kiddos completed their desert student pages. The chart to the desert locations can be found on page 14-15 in the Classroom Atlas.

The kiddos had fun searching for the dusty desert animals on page 10 and 11 in 'The Great Animal Search'. They look forward to finding a few of the animals each day during the week. We pretty much do this pattern each week new animals are introduced.

On Tuesday, the Prop. of Eco. reading assignment was pretty long. I read the opening paragraph and touched on the bold orange words. We watched a short 3 minute video about deserts and sand storms. That can be found here. We looked up pictures of desert mirages on the internet. We also completed the 'Storing Water' activity, but chose to bypass the 'desert worsheet' and simply looked up pictures on the internet of desert plants and animals.


We saved all of our experiments for Friday when we had a little more free time. Before completing those, we read pages 54-55 in Living World. 

Turtles in the shade

Turtles in the sun

Turtles are fun!

About half a cube left from the shade

About half a cube left from the buried baggie

I thought this would be a great time to bust out our experiment lab report sheets.

I have downloaded the experiment lab report sheet template I created to google docs. There are areas to draw/write what they did, what they saw, and why they think it happened. Please feel free to click here to print them out for free to use with your kiddos and their experiments :)

Geography

The 'Illustrated World Atlas' is another book I think to be very busy. I typically use the same approach with this book as I do the 'Living World' book. I usually read the opening paragraph then let the kiddos take turns reading other areas of interest on the pages. Again, if we don't cover everything...it's ok :) Because of the ages of my students, we opt not to do the 'advanced' sections listed in the teacher's manual.

On Tuesday, we briefly discussed and looked at pages 31 and 62-65 in The Classroom Atlas.

The kids had a BLAST playing the geography game this week. I had no idea they would like it so much! They literally played for 30 minutes each time and would have kept going if I would have let them. I organized this game and cut out all of the pieces and got everything ready the night before. You will want to do this! Even with a paper cutter, it was time consuming and would have taken too much of our school day trying to get things together the day of. 


The kids enjoyed completing the spanish colors sombrero page 11 from A Trip Around the World. We used this opportunity to start up Rosetta Spanish Home School version I purchased a few months back. The kids seem to like it so far. We are hoping to complete at least 3 lessons each week. **hoping**

Bible

Monday's focus was Cuba. This really hit home for the kids because my sister had gone on a mission trip there a few years ago and gave us first hand information as to the hostility toward Christians and the government's stance against Christianity. She also had quite a bit of her Christian materials confiscated. That's ok though...perhaps someone there ended up reading it and giving their heart to God :)

We have also enjoyed reading about Cameron Townsend. Can't wait to see what happens next :)

I hope you had a great week as well!

(This post has been linked up at 2 Ladybugs and a Lizard and Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers)