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.