Life as homeschoolers is definitely busy!  In addition to our daily routines, this spring included a quick road trip to the Oregon coast to visit family, a visit from Grandparent's and Smiley's birthday, participation in our local community happenings, like a lively drum circle and performing at the Spring Festival at Riverwood Community School, and lots of work around the house.  Of course the boys seem to have boundless energy and love to stay busy.  They happen to be learning a lot too!

Smiley has continued to spend a lot of time learning to read and write word endings.  He has worked with all the vowels and knows the sounds they make.  He has started learning consonant blends and practices writing in sentences and using punctuation.

 

 

Caleb is doing most of his reading independently now.  He read the book Pippi Longstocking and recently started reading Matilda, which he is really enjoying.  He also reads poetry and recently made a book of spring poems that he copied and illustrated.  Each week he writes a list of spelling words to practice and use in sentences.

 

 

 

Smiley is continuing to practice subtraction in math.  He also does story problems and learns practical applications of math.

 

Caleb is learning more multiplication, including multiplying three and four digit numbers.  While his math work can get a little sloppy or including doodling at times, he has really gotten his multiplication facts down well.  He also has been working with place value to read and write numbers in the millions, and uses multiplying to solve story problems and determine units of measurement.

 

Since our favorite way to use maps and learn about history is usually while following along with a story, we are all reading Tree in the Trail together.  It is a fun story that gives a picture of America's West over several hundred years.  Caleb's page here is about the wagon trains that came west along the Santa Fe trail.

For Science, we did a unit on reptiles and amphibians, which included reading lots of books together and Caleb learning the main differences between reptiles and amphibians.  Caleb has recently started a more in-depth study of flowers.  We do nature study outside all the time, but he is doing more writing and drawing in his journal, learning the parts of flowers, pressing flowers, and more.  The picture below was a comparison of different seeds.  He did several pages like this and really enjoyed seeing how much seeds can vary and how incredibly tiny some of them are.  Smiley's picture is of himself collecting wildflowers.

As always, artistic and creative endeavors add so much to our homeschooling academics!  Wednesdays at Riverwood are full of drawing, painting or modeling, storytelling and poetry, knitting, and lots of outdoor play with their friends.  At the Spring Festival, the kids played songs on the wooden flute, recited poetry and performed a short play (the boys were the gnomes in red hats).  The boys are also practicing Spanish each week.  (I love the page where Smiley illustrated his familia!)  Our Friday Outdoor Day has included hiking and foraging (we made a whole meal with foraged food!), visiting our friends at the animal farm, and a whole day spent learning primitive skills at a local outdoor workshop.  That Friday was a lot fun; we did everything from starting fires without matches, cooking bannock bread over a fire, art projects with wool, helping tan deer hides into leather, and more.  So yes, we are staying very busy doing all of these fun things while finding time to practice the violin, bake and cook together, ride bikes, jump on the trampoline, work in the garden, and try to keep the house clean too!

 

We're loving early Spring here in the mountains!  We've been doing some really fun things for school, and when we take a break, we enjoy picnics, hikes, splashing in the creek, and hunting for buttercups (the very first spring wildflowers to show up on our hills.)  Here is what the boys have been working on:

Smiley is working on learning to read and write word endings, most recently ON, OT, ORE, OR, and OW.  He is also learning some of the most common sight-read words.  He practices building and reading words aloud, but listening to stories and poems read to him is still his favorite part of Language Arts!

Caleb is learning to recognize and use nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  His writing has really improved and he is writing more complete sentences when he does his weekly journal writing, spelling sentences and more.  As usual, Caleb is reading a variety of books aloud and to himself.  We recently began reading from several different poetry books every day, from seasonal to classic ( like Robert Frost) to fun and silly (think Shel Silverstein) and we all really enjoy it.

Smiley is getting his single-digit subtraction facts down.  Math is one area where both boys are actually ahead of schedule for the school year, and will probably be finishing their math books before anything else.

Now that Caleb has learned the basic multiplication facts, he is applying them to multiple-digit multiplication.  He has also been working on rounding and inequalities.

We have had a lot of fun with our unit on Native Americans, reading nonfiction books and studying Indian artifacts and cultures, as well as reading Indian folk tales and poetry together.  Caleb has a map he is drawing and when we spend several days learning about a particular tribe, he writes down where in America the Indians lived.  Art projects have included totem pole drawings and tipi-models, but the most fun art project was on a field trip with the Riverwood class.  We visited a local woman who practices Native American healing and a variety of Indian art forms.  In addition to sharing her authentic instruments, decorations and animal skins with the kids, she taught them a legend about the Talking Feather.  Afterwards, the kids all created their own version of a Talking Feather, using feathers, leather and beads.  The Talking Feathers were traditionally used in many Indian ceremonies and the kids' feathers were very beautiful and special.

Through seed-sprouting projects indoors (we're trying to grow an avocado plant), hiking, journal writing, and reading, we've been studying plants and the seasonal changes from Winter to Spring.  On a particularly cold and snowy end-of-winter day, we got to take a field trip to the Children's Science Museum in Spokane.  It is a fairly new museum that was chock-full of hands-on exhibits that kept us all intrigued for hours.

As usual, the boys have had a variety of other activities to round out their homeschooling.  They enjoy their weekly Spanish class, where they learn songs and phrases and also complete pages in a fun workbook to reinforce what they learn orally.  Art includes drawing and sketching and a variety of fun projects at home.  Last week we decorated eggs using only homemade dyes from natural ingredients, like blueberries, beets, orange peels, and spices.  It was great fun and the results were really lovely and unique.  In addition, art class at Riverwood usually includes knitting or sewing, watercolor painting, wax modeling, and form drawing.  Their days at Riverwood also give them a chance to run around and play group games with their friends, everything from marbles to tag and tug-of-war.  Both boys have gotten really into jump roping, which is such an excellent way to exercise.  And now that the weather is getting nice, the bikes have come back out and there seem to be endless ways to stay active outside.  It must be Spring!

We're looking forward to spring here, watching the snow gradually melt away and enjoying some beautiful, sunny days.  Although we've had a few snow showers today, we took a hike last week when it was 50 degrees out!  Here's some schoolwork samples of late:

Caleb is working on grammar and spelling rules each week.  He does journal writing where he can write about whatever he wants and he also writes about the folk tales we read together.  Together we are read The Little Prince.  Independently he has been reading Dragonolgy books and he recently discovered the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, which he loves.

Smiley is continuing to learn to write and read word endings, for example he most recently worked with words that end with ED, ET, EN, EW, IT, ID, IS and IN.  We also read a variety of books together, and Caleb practices reading aloud to Smiley, which is fun for everyone.  This week we've been reading the I'll Read To You, You Read To Me Books.

Caleb is continuing to work hard on multiplication.  He has learned all 1 - 10 times tables and applies them in many applications like counting money, solving story problems, finding area and perimeter, and more.

Smiley is also doing great in math.  He has pretty much mastered single-digit addition and just recently started learning subtraction.

We finished up our weather science unit.  The last thing Caleb did was put together a Weather Lapbook, which is large book filled with mini-books he created.  It was a lot of work for him and turned out really good.  We read many weather books with both boys, so Smiley could do more simply assignments like drawing pictures while Caleb did in-depth writing and drawing about what they both learned.

We've began studying Native Americans, through Indian folk tales and other stories.  It helps round out our use of maps and understanding of American history.  This is an example of Caleb writing about a story and Smiley drawing about it.

 

The boys had a great month of art projects and other fun creativity.  In the first picture, Caleb is showing his most recent completed knitted project.  It is a felted knit pouch with a velcro clasp.  Smiley knitted a square, which he will use as a blanket for a stuffed animal.  It is Smiley's first complete work of knitting.  The kids at Riverwood made decorated Valentine's mailboxes.  They had a Valentine's Day party at the school where they all (8 kids in all) shared homemade Valentines, had Show and Tell and other fun.  On our Outdoor Day we have been coming inside after our nature hikes and working on various art projects.  We have some field trips planned for later this month, and soon we'll be back visiting our local farms and exploring our neighborhood woods and rivers.