This week in school.

Here's what the week looked like in our homeschool. :) I'm hoping to start a series of these posts, so that you can get some ideas for your own homeschool. And, more importantly, so that you can see that homeschooling doesn't have to look like "school at home." You will also notice that we watch a LOT of Brain Pop Jr. videos. I cannot say enough good things about this site. My girls love it and have learned so much from the developmentally-appropriate videos on a huge variety of topics. There is often a video about everything we're covering during the week.

Reading/Writing:
The girls each worked in their Explode the Code and Get Ready for the Code workbooks. My 3-year-old is welcome to do as many pages as she likes, while I encourage my oldest to finish one lesson per week. "Reading" is her least favorite thing to work on, so this is always our biggest struggle during the week.

Both of the girls also did some work in their supplemental BrainQuest workbooks, played some phonics games on www.pbskids.org, and, of course, we read a LOT of books together.

Math:
We are using Singapore math with our 5-year-old, so we did a bit of work about ordinal numbers and adding with tens. We also watched the congruent shapes video on www.BrainPopJr.com and did the corresponding worksheet.

Later in the week, my oldest did some two-digit addition on www.KhanAcademy.com. It's amazing to me how much she enjoys that website. It's very basic, but gives her good practice working with math problems.

Science:
We are currently doing a huge unit on the human body that will take weeks to complete. This week, we talked about germs. We watched the Magic School Bus episode, "Inside Ralphie," as well as the videos "Colds & Flu," and "Washing Hands," on www.BrainPopJr.com. The girls colored the corresponding activity pages. Later in the week, we also watched the Magic School Bus episode, "Goes Cellular," and read some library books about germs.

World Study: 
We are using the Story of the World: Volume 1 for our world study. This week, we read some library books about the Nile river and read Chapter 2 in SOTW. Using the SOTW activity book, we made our own Nile river and will continue "flooding" it for a few weeks as our crops grow. We also did some coloring and map work.

Our Nile river. We flood it every week to simulate how the Ancient Egyptians depended on the yearly flood for their crops. The girls ask every day if they can flood the river.

Thing1's "Book of the World." She dictates something she's learned and then draws a picture about it.

We watched a GREAT video about Ancient Egypt on www.BrainPopJr.com, as well as the movie, "Prince of Egypt" on Netflix (one of the girls' favorites). I also found a great game that allows you to answer questions and build a mummy from BBC.


Life Skills:
We watched a video on BrainPop about fire safety, and I plan on delving into this topic in a few weeks. We also watched a video about going to the dentist and having good hygiene when it comes to teeth.

Foreign Language:
My oldest takes Japanese lessons every Friday and she also experimented with Rosetta Stone Japanese one night this week.