Preschool Week of 12/17

We got another full week of school in, just in time for Daddy to come home on Wednesday.

Reading: Crumpet moved up to McRuffy's second set of readers. The lesson plans are pretty much the same, but the books are much longer. This week, the spelling words got a bit harder - fall and doll were included, and we are still struggling with spelling these correctly, since they don't make easy phonetic sense...
Math: We began at the very beginning of subtraction. This shouldn't be too hard for Crumpet because we've always talked about addition and subtraction during daily activities. Lately he has been adding and subtracting small sums in his head while playing, with no prompting from me.
Art: I actually convinced Crumpet to do a few Christmas craft projects with me this week! A true Christmas miracle! Here's one of my favorites:
Geography: We are still making our way slowly through the Spanish speaking countries of the world. This week, we took a look at Chile. Crumpet had seen pictures of the moai statues on Easter Island before and was fascinated, so I hoped including them would boost his interest in Chile.We read quite a few general information books about the country. We also read two stories:
The Day the Stones Walked by T.A. Barron is a book about the moai and the day they came to life to rescue a boy from a tsunami. The statues were believed to be the ancestors of the people on Easter Island, and it was said that they could come to life in times of trouble. (As a side, science note - for some reason, talk of tsunamis has been included in every book or movie we've seen lately, so Crumpet is all about tsunamis... Please don't tell him they sometimes happen here!)
The second book was Mariana and the Merchild by Caroline Pitcher. This is a Chilean folk tale about huge storm waves bringing a mermaid baby to shore (more waves!).
We made a rain stick using the directions at Enchanted Learning here. Don't you just love the stunning decoration? NOT a crafty day, but he did put a face on it...
And we made some delicious peach empanadas for lunch one day.
This was a fun little study, but I couldn't find as much to do with it as some of the other countries we've 'visited'. After seeing some of the landscapes in the books, though, I need to visit Chile in person someday. Gorgeous.

Science/Nature: Crumpet found the book Sand to Sea: Marine Life in Hawaii by Stephanie Feeney and Ann Fielding while we were at the library. This was a great book describing many of the creatures we were examining last week at the beach, and others we've seen while living here. A really great find! He has now decided he's going to work at an aquarium. When he's not working at his other jobs as a police officer, a snake catcher, and a litter collector... ;)

So, as I said, Crumpet Sr. comes home on Wednesday. He has to go into work for the first couple of days that he's home, so there is a tiny chance we'll do a bit of school work, but I'm thinking we're on vacation until January. I'm sure I'll post something, sometime, but just in case, Happy Holidays!
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