D's School Days

We've  been on an unannounced blog break! The truth is that life has been so busy this past month that I have had no time to update this blog.  Schooling and interesting learning has been happening in spite of our busy schedules.

We've been running around for rehearsals and end of the year performances and concerts.  D has been practicing all year for the play "The Nutcracker".  This cast, tech, set and direction has been a creation of our local home schooled kids!  We also had an amazing lady who knows so much about direction help us.  She is a homeschooling mom too! This was such a learning experience for us.  D loves to be on stage and aspires to be an actress, so this was perfect for her.  We had two performance shows just before D's birthday!

D had also been participating in an elementary chorus class conducted especially for home schoolers in our local city.  This class has focussed on music awareness and singing and we just finished with the Christmas Concert! Such an amazing group of kids and an amazing teacher too!

In between all this, D turned 6! My baby is now a little girl, I can't believe it!

Here are some snapshots of some of the work that has been happening around here.  As a follow up on our Volcano research, we got into layers of the earth and some plate tectonics too.

D examining the play-doh model of the layers of the earth.

Testing out our cast iron pan to see how heavy it is!

We used the three part cards from Cultivating Dharma.

D used the Circles drawer from the Geometric cabinet to make her Layers of the Earth Chart.

Trying out how mountains can be formed when plates push against each other.

The Spheres chart that I made to learn how plates move in the Lithosphere.

We watched a ton of youtube videos on Earthquakes and Tsunamis.  We also love the "Bill Nye" videos on the same topics.

We also worked with magnets a lot.  We have a couple of kits that I bought off Amazon and the kids have been playing and discovering the various laws and rules of Magnetism.

Trying a boat race with pins taped onto cork.

Freely suspending a magnet to see whether it points to earth's North.

We've also been working on our Grammar.  We've had  presentations on every part of speech except Interjections.

Trying some prepositions using an apple and a plate.

She used the grammar farm labels (Montessori Print Shop) ones to create her own sentences and labeling those.

We've also been writing and diagramming sentences.

D had been working on the Construction Triangles a lot.  She is right now in a Geometric Obsession!  Here is her work on the Sensorial Decanomial.  Anything to do with geometry and patterns is a huge hit with her right now!

In Math, the Subtraction Strip Board is not of much interest to her at all.  May be because we worked on Addition so much that she knows most of the answers for the Subtraction equation slips and hates using the work to find her answers out.  Instead she has been focussing on Equivalences in Fractions.

I feel that we have spent enough time researching based on the First Great Lesson.  D's interest has waned and she has been asking for the next book in the Jennifer Morgan series.  So last week we started on the second book and read through it.  She loved the drama of the origin of life.  So this week, I would be presenting the clock of eras and we would go through each period with as much drama as we can!

Hope all of you are having a great holiday season!