Weekly wrap up! Its all Greek to me!

Its been another fun filled week at the Wooff house!

The week started off with another trip to story time at the library.

This week theme was hats and so Matthew and Samantha made hats for their craft.

While the younger two were busy with story time Kaitlyn read a few articles from National Geographic kids magazine and then picked out her books for the week.

I try to give Kaitlyn as much free rein as possible when it comes to the books she reads.  I may assign a history or literature book that I want but then I try to let her pick books that interest her.

I normally give her different categories and then ask her to pick a book from each category to read that week.  The categories I use are a science, a how-to book, a chapter book, a picture book, and a poetry book.

Lately Kaitlyn has been having difficulty picking out chapter books that she likes.  She is extremely picky!  This week she tried starting the Animorphs series but she hated it.

She likes picking out how-to books and she picked out a magic book and a craft book.  

Craft she made from her craft book.  It is supposed to be a teacher appreciation gift so she gave it to me since I am her teacher.

Genrally Kaitlyn really enjoys picking our her science books.  She has been on a bit of a shark kick recently and her favorite shark is the Hammerhead shark.  This week she read:

   

Eaten by a Shark was her favorite as it contained actual stories about people who were attacked by sharks!  After she read all her books she made a puppet Hammerhead and then wrote a script full of information she learned.  She presented the information to our family but refused to let me video tape it because she did not want it to appear on my blog.  She did however allow me to take a few pictures.

We also finished painting our Greek vases.  Before we painted the vases we spent some time reading about Greek Art in this book by Susie Hodge that we checked out from the library:

The kids used the book to get ideas for their pictures and color schemes.  Kaitlyn also wrote her name using traditional Greek letters.

Samantha's

Kaitlyn's Giraffe

Matthew's--he copied his from the art book 2 blacksmiths working over a fire

How do we fit it all in?  Sometimes we multitask.  While we painted our vases I played our Seeds of Worship cd.  It wasn't long before the kids were singing along.  Its moments like these that I feel so blessed to be home with my children.

In SOTW we read about the Spartans and the Athenians.  Kaitlyn did some additional reading in  The Usborne Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece.

After we finished our reading we found the cities of Sparta and Athens on a map, colored a picture of a Spartan, and then created a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting the two very different cities.

After our Venn Diagram was complete each kid wrote a paragraph choosing which city they would rather live in: Sparta or Athens.

Surprise, surprise Matthew choose Sparta!  A life full of fighting, exercising, and no reading or writing sounds like a dream come true to him!

Kaitlyn choose Athens.  For her concluding sentence in her paragraph she wrote: I would like to be an Athenian because they remind me of Americans-except without cars and computers.

What a perfect comparison.

I discovered a great cartoon series on youtube.com  It is called Mythic Warriors.  Apparently at one time it was a Saturday morning cartoon.  I think it is a fun way to be exposed to more of the Greek Myths!  This week we watched two videos:
Andromeda the Warrior Princess

and Perseus and the search for Medusa's head.

In the past 7 days we have also had 2 field trips.

Our first field trip was to the city museum in St. Louis.  We were super excited that dad had the day off of work and could join us with about 50+ of our home-school friends.

We had a blast!  The kids said that it was more fun than Disney World!  I was super sore and banged up afterwards but it was worth every minute!

Our homeschool co-op also rented out a local indoor pool for a back-to-coop party!  I don't know about you but getting to swim in the middle of winter is a great treat around here!

Of course we had to include Quack the Duck in our week!

Quack the Duck is what the kids named our anatomy model

This week we covered the small and large intestine.  Here are some interesting facts that I learned while reading the booklet that came with the model:

1. The small intestine is longer than the large intestine but the large intestine is thicker.
2. A person passes gas at least 14 times a day.

The booklet also came with a super gross activity to try. It suggested to eat corn and then watch for it to come out in your poop.  However many hours it takes for it to show up is how long it takes for it to show up in your poop is how long it takes for food to pass through your digestive system.

I did not tell the kids that we had to do the experiment.  I couldn't resist, however, serving corn with our lunch.

Kaitlyn refused to eat the corn saying that I had ruined corn for life!  Matthew and Samantha ate their corn happily!

While we have super enjoyed our break from co-op I am happy to announce that next Thursday classes resume!  I can't wait for the kids to begin learning and having fun with their friends!  So be on the look out for a co-op post next week!