Week 11 - Communities

This week we continued learning about communities.  We focused a lot on the differences between rural, urban, and suburban areas and Big K decided he would like to live in an urban area best because he loves the tall towers (which is kinda funny because he HATES elevators!).  One of the activities we did was use construction paper to create our own cities.  Big K decided he wanted to make a skyline, so he cut out lots of tall buildings and even numbered the floors.  Then he glued them onto a big piece of blue paper to create a skyline artwork!  While he was doing that, I made a city map.  When all the pieces were dry Big K helped me brainstorm all the different types of businesses that a city needs and we labeled the buildings.  My favorite thing he put in his city was a thrift store.  He said the people needed a place to buy clothes!  (We buy most of the kid's things second hand.  I refuse to pay full price for clothes that are just going to get stained/ripped/ruined!!)

This week was also our monthly visit to read to the therapy dogs!  Big K and Little E look forward to it all month long.  This month some of the dogs were even wearing their Halloween costume.  So cute!  Little E even got in on the action this month and "read" a book to her favorite dog that comes, Holly.  Little E tells me each time we go that Holly is "just her size."

We also went to a program put on by our local park district called Nature Basket.  This time we learned all about fall and what animals do in the fall to prepare for winter.  We learned that some animals find a place to sleep all winter, some animals migrate, and some animals adapt.  Then the kids made a bird craft.  Normally this program is mostly attended by preschool aged children, but we were thrilled to meet some new older homeschool friends this time!

We only have a little more than a month until Big K's debut stage performance.  He has been hard at work learning his lines.  Memorizing lines is hard work when you are six, but he is doing an amazing job.  He has several parts in the play and is getting a real hands-on experience and is really enjoying it!

One thing that Big K has been working on is punctuation and capitalization in sentences.  Each morning I write a sentence on our big white board that has lots of mistakes.  Big K's job is to find the mistakes and rewrite the sentence the correct way.  He is getting really good at finding and fixing all my mistakes!  Now if only he would translate that knowledge into his own writing!  

 

Big K's favorite thing this week is his new writing tool.  We found a squiggle wiggle writer on amazon and thought it would be a great way to work out those hand muscles and help him with his fine motor skills.  I remember having one of these as a kid, and they are just as cool as I remember!  Big K did spelling work with it among other things!  I think we wore out the batteries more than once in a week.  That it a lot of writing!!  

 Happy Learning,

Momma C