Photos from the Classroom

Since we came back from Thanksgiving Break, our main lesson topic has been The Human Body. (Our previous block was The Age of Exploration.)

I've been writing separate posts for each system of the body with teaching resources and detailed descriptions of our lesson activities, as well as our literature study of Lord of the Flies, plus posts for clubs like Philosophy and Science. But we have all kinds of other lessons, so here is one more post to catch up all of my parents on everything their children have been doing!

I also have made complete pages on my website for our current topics:

Human Anatomy & Physiology,
Ecology: The Ocean,
Organic Chemistry: Food & Nutrition, and
Philosophy: Nature.

The week of Nov 27, our Virtue of the Week was Creativity. We read

• Dizzy by Jonah Winter

and we listened to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker play Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945 during our lunch time

• An Undone Fairy Tale by Ian Lendler
• Pop! The Invention of Bubble Gum by Meghan McCarthy

The week of Dec 4, our Virtue of the Week was Determination. We read

• Six Dots: A Story of Young Louis Braille by Jen Bryant
• Norman the Doorman by Don Freeman
• The Unbeatable Bread by Lyn Littlefield Hoopes

We finished our read aloud of The Cat Who Went to Heaven and started The Book of Think, a tie-in with our Human Body main lesson.

In Farm Day news, students finished their Track & Field unit and began Survival Skills, learning first how to read a compass.

Our new Specials have begun including American Sign Language (ASL), Yoga, Music, Crafts, Structured Word Inquiry (SWI), and Script. Students were very excited on Friday to finally use their new fountain pens!

These beautiful fountain pens can be used as dip pens or they can have an ink cartridge inserted.

In ASL students have begun with the alphabet, numbers, and greetings.

We have also had individual lessons in math (addition, subtraction, and division using the Stamp Game; multiplication using the Checker Board; multiplying fractions by whole numbers using the Cut-Out Labeled Fraction Circles) and language (Commas, Homophones, Homographs, Homonymns, Prefixes, Suffixes, Guide Words) using the Montessori materials. We learned the Nim game from Jamie York (a fun math strategy game which you play with a pile of gems). I have also given Handwork lessons on making knitting needles and learning to knit. Students set up the badminton net in the yard as well as the horseshoes stakes, determined to enjoy the warm weather while it still lasted. Boggle and Labyrinth remain the favorite board games.

Some pictures from the classroom over the past month:

working on our coral reef sculpture of dyed coffee filters and cotton swabs

dyeing the coffee filters with markers

hand-stamped invitations for the "Creep into the Deep" Expo

dynamic multiplication with the Checker Board

the first step in making knitting needles:

sharpening the wooden dowels in a pencil sharpener

then sand until smooth, oil with grapeseed oil,

and glue an acorn cap into the end

working hard on his first project, a knitted chicken

"Under the fence,

Catch the sheep,

Back we come,

Off we leap"

brand-new silver folders for ASL!

Becca presents the Third Great Lesson:

How Humans Came to Be

the Timeline of Early Humans is a new work in the classroom

the whole work... completed and correct

dyeing pompom yarn to look like seaweed

for a Museum exhibit

tracing a sewing pattern

the U.S.A. Location map

looking at the simple nervous system of the mussel

trying to identify some body parts

making a life-size construction paper collage of a giant squid

starting with eight 9-foot long arms

(the two 50-foot long tentacles will extend up my stairs)

making tissue paper transparency Rose Windows

for the Middle Ages

the Montessori Teaching Clock

regrowing bok choy from its base

it is doing well!

collaborating / competing in a math game

dynamic addition with the Stamp Game

presenting the Second Great Lesson,

How Life Came to Be

sharing books from the Geologic Periods set

Joe, our life-size giant dragonfly from the Carboniferous Period

examining fossils from our collection

"something surprising I'll show you at the end is how much time

passed between these Periods"

the Earth emerges as a molten mass

 the rains fall for millions of years on a barren planet

the emergence of blue-green algae!

trilobites!

every day on his calendar = 13 million years

the Age of Fishes

the Age of Mammals

 Venn diagram comparing Zheng He and the Spanish conquistadors

our oil pastel map-transfer technique for the main lesson books

dyeing rainbow chickpeas for Zac's sensory bin

starting to drape seaweed all around the living room ceiling,

"The Sunlight Zone" in our Museum

making our krill swarm

(paint side of your pinkie finger orange, then stamp)

the krill look even better on black paper!

our badminton net, successfully put up,

doubles as a volleyball net

This post contains affiliate links to the materials I actually use for homeschooling. I hope you find them helpful. Thank you for your support!