Homeschool Week 3/9 - 3/13

Here's our week!


In history this week, we did a lot of reading! From our history spine, Story of the World, we read 2 chapters about ancient India and 2 chapters about ancient China. And, we read the following book, You Wouldn't Want to Work on the Great Wall of China, which was good.



In science, Maria finished her work on nutrition for her school district homeschool requirement. Next week, we should be able to get back to our usual chemistry studies!

Maria read a book about Marie Curie this week and wrote a paragraph about her.









Cati finished her butterfly lapbook and started on her spider lapbook.

















She's been practicing cursive a little bit everyday. Here's sample from last week. She enjoys putting stickers on her work when she's done :)

Here's some penguin artwork that Cati brought home from St. Vincent on Friday.

Chiara wanted to show off her artwork, too!

Matteo made this "Cat-in-the-Hat" hat during his preschool class at St. Vincent yesterday.

It's not often that I get to post a picture of Maria doing something besides reading and writing. She doesn't have much in the way of hands on activities in her subjects anymore. But, this week, she had to make a page showing decimals with decimeters, centimeters, and millimeters. She had lengths of these measurements that she had to cut and tape together according to the given decimal. (See the picture below this one for a better explanation!)

Here is Cati measuring with 1" tiles during math.

EVERYDAY, my biggest challenge with Chiara is during Cati's math. Chiara ALWAYS makes a mess with some of the manipulatives. Here she is on one of her missions this week!

Have a great week!

Homeschool Week 3/2 - 3/6

We had a good week. Dany was on Spring Break, so our schedule was a bit more relaxed than usual :) Spring break at St. Vincent also meant that the kids didn't have their classes there on Friday afternoon.

In history this week, we learned about the Punic War between Rome and Carthage.
Here is Maria's map showing Hannibal's route from Carthage, through Spain and Gaul, down across the Alps and to Rome.

Here is Cati's coloring page about Hannibal.

And, here his Cati's narration about the Punic War (in my handwriting).





Here is Maria's narration on St. Therese of the Child Jesus, based on this book:





(Maria really wants to use this regular lined paper, but it doesn't do good things for her handwriting :) She'll get used to it eventually.)

Maria's still been working on her pointelism that she became interested in during her last art class at St. Vincent.

Cati finished her Bee lapbook on Tuesday. Here is a picture and video of her Bee lapbook.

She started a lapbook about butterflies on Wednesday. Here are some library books that she read this week about butterflies.

Maria has to complete a Health credit for the district homeschool requirement, so that's what she worked on for science this week. No pictures :)

Here is Matteo keeping himself entertained during the school day :)

Cati wanted me to take a video of her playing the piano :)

Here is a video of Cati and me playing a game during math this week, the Attribute Train game. We had one large and one small circle, square, rectangle, and triangle in 4 different colors (green, red, yellow, and blue). You can see the pieces here:

We divided these pieces between the two of us randomly and took turns placing pieces. To to place the next piece of the train, your piece could only differ from the one before it by one attribute.

Here are Chiara and Matteo playing with Dany (who got to come since he was on Spring Break) during the girls' gym class on Thursday.

Look! Cati's really starting to swim!!!

Here is Chiara waiting patiently with Papa for the kids to get changed after swimming lessons. She's getting so big!!!




That's all I have for this week! Have you noticed how close that baby ticker at the top of the blog page is getting to the end ?!?!?! Baby Elena will be here before we know it :)

I added a new link showing the curriculum that the kids are using this year. It's on the right side of my blog page. I'm always so excited when I figure out how to do something like this :) :)

Homeschool Week 2/23 - 2/27

I'm really late posting for the week! And, I wasn't very good about taking pictures this week. I do have some samples of work we finished.





In history, we continued studying Rome. Here is Cati's narration listing some of ancient Rome's building accomplishments:











Here is Maria's narration based on a fictional story about gladiators.

















Maria's sugar crystals grew during the week.

Before...

After...

She also read this book this week for chemistry. It's a great book about water with wonderful pictures!




In her art class at St. Vincent on Friday, Maria learned about pointelism. Here's a butterfly that she made.

Here's another one she's working on...

Cati's still breezing through Level 2 of her math program. We went through another 14 lessons this week :) Here is a pretty picture she made when she was supposed to make a color pattern with the letters of her name:

Cati learned about honey bees this week. I was a lot of fun! But, we didn't finish that lapbook. We have just a few things left to do in it. I'll have pictures next week. Here is a picture that Cati felt inspired to draw this afternoon:

But, I do have pictures from our frog lapbook from last week...

Well, that's all I have for this week!

Happy 4th Birthday, Matteo!

Happy 4th Birthday, Matteo! Four year ago today, our not-so-tiny, 11-lb baby boy was born!



Here's the cake. There's a story behind this one. While I was writing Matteo's name, my bag of icing burst, leaving a huge glob of yellow icing on top of the "M." This happened as Matteo was standing beside me watching. He stared in disbelief for a couple of seconds, and then went running off into the living room yelling, "Mommy messed up my cake!!!!" He decided in the end that it was fixed to his satisfaction :)



Here are the traditional birthday balloons from Aunt Ginny!


Ahhhh, here comes my baby sister to steal them!!!



Here's a look at some of the present-opening!

Everyone has to join in the fun!


These are some very cool new cars from Aunt Ginny that can be taken apart and rebuilt, mixing and matching the pieces.



Here is Matteo trying out his new binoculars from Grandma and Pipa to gaze upon his balloons that have floated to the ceiling :) :)

Here is the birthday boy taking a break from opening a present from Aunts Mary and Dot, and cousins Heather and Katie, to investigate the jar of slime that came along with the box of goodies. This slime has been quite fascinating around here!

Finally, it was time to have some birthday cake!! (Chiara still has remnants of the pizza feast that we had recently finished on her face!)

And, now for a little singing!

Happy birthday, Matteo! We love you!!!

Homeschool Week 2/16 - 2/20

Here's a glimpse of some things we accomplished this week:

For art this week, we read a couple of library books: "Katie and the Sunflowers" by James Mayhew and "The Magical Garden of Claude Monet" by Laurence Anholt. I've neglected picture study this year, so this was an attempt to squeeze a little of that in this week. These are great picture books for children that are fictional, but they gently explore some fine art. There is a whole series of both of these books, and we'll definitely be reading more of them. We really enjoyed them!

In history, we read about the beginning of the Roman Empire, and it was a great opportunity to see the differences between my 2 oldest children. The 1st day of history, we read about the legend of Romulus and Remus. The 2nd day, we read about the influence of the Etruscans on the Romans. Cati really enjoyed the story of Romulus and Remus and chose to write her narration on this story and color the accompanying picture. She also spent a lot of time this week reading books of myths that I got from the library. Maria on the other hand, didn't see the point of the Romulus and Remus story. She wanted to know how Rome "really" began since this obviously wasn't a true story. We got the history encyclopedia out and somewhat satisfied her curiosity. She decided to write her narration this week on the Etruscans rather than "waste" her time on this fictional story :) Maria enjoys fiction during literature time but does not want it crossing over into history time. Cati's more of the "creative" one - as demonstrated by her pink wolf in the picture below :)

Cati finished memorizing her latest poem, Merry Sunshine, and she drew a picture to go with it.

Cati finished her study of reptiles. Here's her lapbook, in which we combined turtles, lizards, alligators, and crocodiles. We also made a lapbook about frogs, but I don't have any pictures of that yet. This week we'll begin our study of insects, beginning with bees!!

Here is Cati working on the lapbook.

Cati also finished level 2 of her spelling program and began level 3 this week! She's also enjoyed beginning her new level of math this week. It's a little bit of work for me because every math program assumes you're beginning in the fall after a 3 month break and has lots of review, so I really have to read ahead and plan. We're quickly going through these early lessons. She completed 10 lessons this week.

Maria did another science experiment about density this week, which she explains in the video below. She also started trying to grow crystals, but so far we're not seeing any results :) If it ends up working, I'll post pictures next week.

Here is Matteo working on reading. The 1st video shows him building sentences with individual words. The 2nd video shows him reading "silly" sentences, which explains why he says "ha! ha!" after each one :) He's doing very well with his reading and will move onto consonant blends this week!

Lastly, I have video of Chiara. She has a terrible habit of stealing people's chairs when they get up, even for a second. It drives the girls crazy :) Of course, Maria's swivel chair is especially fun! And, you can tell this is early morning because Chiara's hair clips are still in :)

Well, I actually posted our week review on Saturday instead of Sunday this week, but now I'm really behind of my Saturday chores!! Off I go to try to catch up! Have great week!