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!