Recap of the Last Three Weeks
Life has gone by crazy fast the last three weeks. Our days are spent watching little puppies grow and learn to walk, toddling about their playpen area. They went from being shy and easily scared, to adventurous and playful really quickly! After their mother, Cookie Dog, we named each one after a type of cookie: Peanut Butter, Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Chunk, Oatmeal, Sugar Cookie, Blossom, and Ginger Snap. The boys have been learning a lot about puppy behavior, development, and how to clean up after puppy messes. ;)
We have blasted through three more chapters in Story of the World, learning about Norsemen, the First Kings of England, and England after the conquest. We discussed how England became a feudal systems, where the English language comes from, and how the English live on a day to day basis. The boys already had an interest in Viking lifestyle, so we have done a lot of focus on Norse history and religion. Emmet listened to Rick Riordan's Magnus Chase: The Sword of Summer on tape and has been obsessed with Norse history since. Usborne Books has a beautiful book called Time Traveler with a chapter on Vikings. Gorgeous illustrations gave us a good representation of how northern vikings lived, their exploration and ransacking of England and northern Europe, and their travels West, including finding North America. We also visited the library and checked out every book on Norse Mythology. And, although not totally related, but still keeping with the theme, we have been on a Thor and Avengers movie binge the last two weeks. Basically if we are not discussing Norse Gods, reading books about them, or watching movies about Thor, the boys are involved in imaginary play revolving around vikings and Norse mythology. One local library has cool "play away" devices that are essentially MP3 players pre-loaded with books on tape. Currently, each boy has one with a Rick Riordan book.
We have been focusing on learning Spanish numbers the last few weeks and just switched to body parts. We have been doing work sheets and reading our beginner Spanish readers as well as singing "head, shoulders, knees, and toes" in Spanish.
Swimming has been a lot of fun for everyone. The YMCA membership gets the boys two hours in their play club group the afternoons. They switch between playing in a daycare like room, swimming, gym games, and a "rec" room with pool tables and Dance Dance Revolution. So some days they are getting more physical exercise and some days they are just socializing. However, they are having fun overall and I am getting to work out and have some time by myself, which benefits us all, haha.
In Cub Scouts Michael has been working on knife safety skills and whittling. Emmet's group did Flag etiquette one week and now healthy bodies. Avery's group I lead and we are also focusing on healthy bodies, healthy eating, and exercise right now. The boys got to have an evening with veterans, learning about experiences in the Navy and Air Force. We also participated in Scouting for Food, where we went door to door asking for food donations for a local food pantry. Our group gathered together over 1,200 pounds of food!!
Last week we went on a tour with other TeachNW friends, who happen to be friends from Village Home as well, to Scrap, a recycled art supply store in Portland. We talked about the four R's of waste and toured the store, ending with making shrinky dinks out of recycled materials. The boys picked out some items and spent a few days making a huge messy crafting exploration on the kitchen table. It was lots of fun. The next day I came down with a cold and felt terrible, so John took the day off and took the boys to the play Matilda again with TeachNW. John said it was the most well behaved group of children he had ever witnessed (we went to the ballet for a kids performance a month ago and everyone was crazy restless in the theater). Apparently the play was really good and captivated every ones attention really well.
Avery has completed 21 lessons in All About Pre Reading. We are almost all the way through the alphabet of upper case letters. The older two have made it through 12 lessons of All About Reading Level 2 and have been learning mostly about syllable division rules. All About Spelling is much shorter program and we are almost halfway through on lesson 10. The boys spelling has impressed me, being able to write out three letter words when prompted. We haven't been reading books aloud lately, so are behind on reaching our goal of books read, so we are going to work on that primarily over Christmas break to catch up.
Lego Robotics we have also fell behind on and haven't completed a lesson in a few weeks. Instead the boys have been building with the WeDo set and using the app to make their creations move and make sounds. Honestly I think this exploratory type of learning is better suited for programming type lessons at this stage in learning. It gives them the opportunity to think organically and problem solve in situations that are unique, which the WeDo app does not offer (it gives straight "build this and make it do this" lessons, no solution seeking lessons). I am working on getting Scratch Jr to work on our laptop as well so we can additionally start exploring that type of programming.
The boys have been working through their Usborne math books diligently and I believe after Christmas we will start math journal pages like I had planned the beginning of the year. I am trying to write up my own lesson plan for them and I haven't got as much done as I had planned before school started.
We decided to do no screens for the boys during the weekdays this month. Getting them to sit down and focus on school has been harder as that was their incentive to get to screens. However, Emmet has constructed an entire outfit out of paper, Michael wrote this weeks entire meal plan to cook himself and already shopped for ingredients, and Avery has done a lot of playing. All of us have done a lot of playing, they have all gotten along better, and I have been able to read several books to myself!! I think we need tecnology in our lives because job wise in the future the boys need the experience and exposure, but I sure do like who they are with limited screens. I feel like it is the biggest parenting challenge of our time, being a good role model of usage of technology at our finger tips. The boys are supposed to tell me to put my phone down this month too, I need the break as much as them.
Here is to snow for Christmas, puppies that continue to grow, and boys who keep on creating and learning to love learning.
The Dillmans
We have blasted through three more chapters in Story of the World, learning about Norsemen, the First Kings of England, and England after the conquest. We discussed how England became a feudal systems, where the English language comes from, and how the English live on a day to day basis. The boys already had an interest in Viking lifestyle, so we have done a lot of focus on Norse history and religion. Emmet listened to Rick Riordan's Magnus Chase: The Sword of Summer on tape and has been obsessed with Norse history since. Usborne Books has a beautiful book called Time Traveler with a chapter on Vikings. Gorgeous illustrations gave us a good representation of how northern vikings lived, their exploration and ransacking of England and northern Europe, and their travels West, including finding North America. We also visited the library and checked out every book on Norse Mythology. And, although not totally related, but still keeping with the theme, we have been on a Thor and Avengers movie binge the last two weeks. Basically if we are not discussing Norse Gods, reading books about them, or watching movies about Thor, the boys are involved in imaginary play revolving around vikings and Norse mythology. One local library has cool "play away" devices that are essentially MP3 players pre-loaded with books on tape. Currently, each boy has one with a Rick Riordan book.
We have been focusing on learning Spanish numbers the last few weeks and just switched to body parts. We have been doing work sheets and reading our beginner Spanish readers as well as singing "head, shoulders, knees, and toes" in Spanish.
Swimming has been a lot of fun for everyone. The YMCA membership gets the boys two hours in their play club group the afternoons. They switch between playing in a daycare like room, swimming, gym games, and a "rec" room with pool tables and Dance Dance Revolution. So some days they are getting more physical exercise and some days they are just socializing. However, they are having fun overall and I am getting to work out and have some time by myself, which benefits us all, haha.
In Cub Scouts Michael has been working on knife safety skills and whittling. Emmet's group did Flag etiquette one week and now healthy bodies. Avery's group I lead and we are also focusing on healthy bodies, healthy eating, and exercise right now. The boys got to have an evening with veterans, learning about experiences in the Navy and Air Force. We also participated in Scouting for Food, where we went door to door asking for food donations for a local food pantry. Our group gathered together over 1,200 pounds of food!!
Last week we went on a tour with other TeachNW friends, who happen to be friends from Village Home as well, to Scrap, a recycled art supply store in Portland. We talked about the four R's of waste and toured the store, ending with making shrinky dinks out of recycled materials. The boys picked out some items and spent a few days making a huge messy crafting exploration on the kitchen table. It was lots of fun. The next day I came down with a cold and felt terrible, so John took the day off and took the boys to the play Matilda again with TeachNW. John said it was the most well behaved group of children he had ever witnessed (we went to the ballet for a kids performance a month ago and everyone was crazy restless in the theater). Apparently the play was really good and captivated every ones attention really well.
Avery has completed 21 lessons in All About Pre Reading. We are almost all the way through the alphabet of upper case letters. The older two have made it through 12 lessons of All About Reading Level 2 and have been learning mostly about syllable division rules. All About Spelling is much shorter program and we are almost halfway through on lesson 10. The boys spelling has impressed me, being able to write out three letter words when prompted. We haven't been reading books aloud lately, so are behind on reaching our goal of books read, so we are going to work on that primarily over Christmas break to catch up.
Lego Robotics we have also fell behind on and haven't completed a lesson in a few weeks. Instead the boys have been building with the WeDo set and using the app to make their creations move and make sounds. Honestly I think this exploratory type of learning is better suited for programming type lessons at this stage in learning. It gives them the opportunity to think organically and problem solve in situations that are unique, which the WeDo app does not offer (it gives straight "build this and make it do this" lessons, no solution seeking lessons). I am working on getting Scratch Jr to work on our laptop as well so we can additionally start exploring that type of programming.
The boys have been working through their Usborne math books diligently and I believe after Christmas we will start math journal pages like I had planned the beginning of the year. I am trying to write up my own lesson plan for them and I haven't got as much done as I had planned before school started.
We decided to do no screens for the boys during the weekdays this month. Getting them to sit down and focus on school has been harder as that was their incentive to get to screens. However, Emmet has constructed an entire outfit out of paper, Michael wrote this weeks entire meal plan to cook himself and already shopped for ingredients, and Avery has done a lot of playing. All of us have done a lot of playing, they have all gotten along better, and I have been able to read several books to myself!! I think we need tecnology in our lives because job wise in the future the boys need the experience and exposure, but I sure do like who they are with limited screens. I feel like it is the biggest parenting challenge of our time, being a good role model of usage of technology at our finger tips. The boys are supposed to tell me to put my phone down this month too, I need the break as much as them.
Here is to snow for Christmas, puppies that continue to grow, and boys who keep on creating and learning to love learning.
The Dillmans
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