Lessons Learned

The first month of school is almost over.  So far, we are loving our curriculum choice for this year, My Father's World: Exploring Countries and Cultures.  The living book selections are so much more appealing to us, and having lessons planned out for me makes this mom very happy!  

We've had lots of hands-on projects that make learning much more fun.  We are learning about ecosystems, so we created an earthworm niche to observe.  Emma had to be bribed  with a Sonic slush to get her to touch a worm.

 At first, Olivia wasn't too excited about picking up a worm, but decided to give it a try.  Bailey, being a great big brother, helped her out with the first one. This was Olivia's reaction after the first touch.  She did decide it wasn't so bad after all and filled the jar.  I wasn't successful in getting Mary Grace to help out with adding worms.  She was content to layer the soil, sand, and oats.

 Here are our finished niches.  We observed and recorded for a week and then let our worms go.

 We've also done some art projects.  One of the favorites was sand art.  Olivia is busy sketching her design.

 Emma works on perfecting her sketch.

 Mary Grace applies glue and sand to her design.

We are still in North America in our studies.  We leave the USA and begin Mexico studies next week.  We've learned lots of geography already!