March-ing through Another Week

March is here and we are moving right along with our learning plans. We just keep marching along. I'll share by child this week, youngest to oldest.

Tobias loved drawing with oil pastels today.

Tobias woke up tired and a wee bit cranky on Monday. He napped early. Tuesday he was happier and into everything. He's made quite the art of climbing and opening things. He has also started looking at books with paper pages without eating them, which is wonderful! By Wednesday however he started what looks to be a new habit - waking up at 5:00am for the day. Why, oh, why do I have so many early risers? Early morning is my favorite time to have some quiet. I have gotten some extra snuggles from him this way though.

Samuel started the week playing with swords and Legos. He has been extra close to Mason this week, playing with him specifically, which is fun to see. The kids often have different best buddies in the sibling group and when they shift it is interesting. Samuel and Mason have been more buddies and less antagonists this week. His favorite book this week was My "M" Book. He loved the part where monkeys end up in the mud. He tried out painting with q-tips Thursday.

Mason's school still involves lots of snuggling up to play or read - which we did before it was officially called school, but to him the name makes a difference. We read about the letters O and M this week and we read in Childcraft about our bodies, plants, and a couple classic stories. Samuel listened to some of this as well. Mason has been fascinated with building robots this week with legos. His favorite project was painting his name with a q-tip in orange and black - his favorite colors.

Caleb is in All About Reading Level 1 and finished reading aloud his first story in the Run, Bug, Run reader. He is learning to skip count by 5s this week in math, which for some reason has been challenging. Today to finish out the week he wrote the entire 5's skip count from 0-100 on the chalkboard. As he finished he said, "That was a lot of work. Nobody better erase this for a week!" His favorite thing this week was joining Mason and Samuel in the q-tip painting.

A page from what Oliver is reading.

Oliver is in All About Reading Level 2 lesson 30. His reading has grown by leaps and bounds from our two months spent just having him read aloud to me from Dr. Seuss books and Grasshopper on the Road. Math this week for Oliver is learning the order of the months and how many days they have, days of the week, ordinal numbers (first, third, ninth, etc), and how to use tally marks. He skips Thursday most of the time, which I find funny. I think we need to have some regular activity to look forward to on Thursdays to help him remember it.

Daniel is reading a book of classic bedtime stories for literature right now. In math he started learning about a fraction of a number (MUS Delta lesson 27). He's been editing sentences this week to find grammar, mechanics, and spelling mistakes - something he really hasn't done before but is doing well. He is also the first child to ask others to play a game. He has absolutely loved the new box of games we got a few weeks ago. He makes sure we play at least one or two games every day. He's also the one who makes sure we do science - we've nearly finished the chemistry portion of Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics. We're talking about mixtures right now.

Emma is still reading Eragon for literature. She has been drawing a lot recently, filling up page after page in her notebook. She is using some doodle prompts for March as well as drawing her own ideas. In math she's learning to find the mean, median, and mode of a group of numbers. She moved to week 2 of Fix-It Grammar.

Joseph is reading the third Ranger's Apprentice book. He's also finding the mean, median, and mode in math, and doing week 2 of Fix-It Grammar. He was happy to get his cast off this week. He'll wear a splint for at least 2 more weeks to let the arm finish healing. He has been listening to The Hunger Games for the first time. It is so interesting to see the differences in children. Makayla was very chatty when she read this book for the first time, wanting to discuss it all. Joseph is much less chatty - short descriptions for the most part. He is enjoying the book.

Makayla did a 10 minute live presentation to her Veterinary Medicine class (online) on Monday. In geometry she's learning about 30-60-90 right triangles and how to find the length of the sides based on whatever information is given. She's reading Praise to the Man for literature and The Magna Charta for history. Writing is moving along with The Power in Your Hands. She has been practicing piano and this week practice started for track, so she's gone every day for that.

Fun Movie of the Week: Moana - This was a movie we didn't make it to theaters to see. Emma got to view most of it at a birthday party recently and assured us we would enjoy it. I've not really processed it all yet, I want to watch it again. However I will say that we all laughed hysterically at different parts and enjoyed the movie. I loved the music.

Games this week

• Forbidden Island - This was our first week playing the game and it was fun from the start. I love having some cooperative games where we are a team working together for a goal.
• Gubs - Still enjoying this creative card game. Of course sometimes we get some feuding going on between two players who steal gubs or trap them.
• Sushi Go - This is a great filler game, quick to play and lots of active changes with passing the hands around the circle so much.
• The Scrambled States of America card game
• Chess - the kids have been pulling this out at the breakfast table and fitting a game in before chores.

Linking here.