Heart of Dakota: Bigger week 21

OK, you all know what my first words are going to be. This was a great week as usual. We started off learning about our 7th President, Andrew Jackson. So one of the things I did was to do flash cards for the first 5 Presidents. I happen to have had these for some years now and so before we start our History reading I run through the first 7 Presidents of the USA. Hey I finally know then…I think?!?!? LOL.

Anyway, Geography is always interesting with HOD. I love how Carrie makes it fun and yet correlates it nicely with the history reading as well and correlates it with real life circumstances. And that is exactly what she did. You know when I was a kid, I do not think I could tell you the street names around my street (we happen to be living in the house I grew up in), but after this weeks assignment, my kids know exactly the streets around us. Good Geo lesson.

Our character study this week was decisiveness. I have to admit, I would have NEVER chosen this as a character trait. But it was actually really good decision to do this trait. He he. See how I worked that word into my sentence. LOL! There were many instances that I was actually able to bring up the word decisive over this week.

Art class this week was SO fun! OMGosh. I, personally, really wanted to do this weeks art, but I held back. Anyway, the idea was to draw out a picture and then cut fabric pieces into the shapes of your picture. We were suppose to incorporate different textures, colors etc. Both my kids turned out great. Actually, I wish now I would have taken a picture of everyone’s work at art class. They all turned out fantastic.

Can I just say that Science is wonderful we are having a blast with the book Pioneer Sampler. This really is a fun book to read and the experiments have been a blast. This week we did a few things for Science. We learned the different tracks for foxes, weasels and skunks. Well, we already knew skunks because we have them in our yard all the time and when our Dog was young and spry he use to kill them. And yes he did it without ever getting sprayed. Amazing isn’t it? Anyway, all these animals love eggs and we know that too because we also have ducks and before we started putting them in a huge Dog house at night the skunks would steal their eggs. So real life learning!

We also learned about how they use to plant the seeds in the Pioneer days. Oh my, can you imagine how hard it was for them just to grow a few little sprigs of lettuce? It was fun learning all the different ways they would use all the parts of the corn they grew! Except the toilet part. OUCH! Oh, and we absolutely enjoyed making the Johnny Cakes. I had no idea what a Johnny Cake was until I started to read the ingredients. Then I figured that they were Corn bread. Mmmmm, Yum! They were so good. The kids want to make some for our Art group next week. So hopefully we have time on Sunday to make some for Mondays Art.

Our last thing we did other then of course our Time line and Notebook Page was to do our History activity. Building the boats and trying to sink them was SO much fun! The kids did it over and over and over again! Each time it took a ton of pennies to sink the ship and, well we sunk our ketch a couple times too. Not sure there was much remembering why we were doing it, but they had fun either way and they know what a ketch is now!

Overall, again this week was fun. We did an extra day from last week because we had cut our week short. I went ahead and added the photos for that to week 20. I figure I will keep it all together. So go and take a quick look at them It was all about fence building. We used the Lincoln Logs as well as popsicle sticks. It turned out pretty cool!

I am looking forward to next week and unit 22. Hmmm, as I write this I cannot believe we only have 12 more units left before school is done. Oh Boy, I guess I have to start thinking about what we are going to do during summer. Yes, we school year round, but summer months are only 3 days a week with only 2 of those days being fulltime and the third day is usually fun stuff like science experiments and art etc.

Well, I will catch you all next week for unit 22. Have a great week!

Pictures