Home Schooling Summary for Last Week

I have not been doing a good job of capturing some of the kids' activities on camera. For the last 5 weeks big sister A has been taking a "play acting" class. She made friends with 2 of the girls now and I think it has been a great class for socializing as well as performing in front of a small group.

They are preparing a play based on the book called Mr. Tiger Goes Wild.

We did a really fun math activity this week -- connect the dots -- but "by 2's".  She said them aloud as she was drawing them.  A much less boring way to learn to count by 2's.

Little brother M is anxious to do his "school work" too and I have been reaching for A's old pre-school workbooks more and more.  Is he really old enough to start learning his letters and numbers?! Time seems to be passing way too quickly.

 Making silly faces for the camera:

Big sister A has been doing this gymnastics class for about 8 months now. It is ridiculous trying to photograph her from the parent observation deck upstairs, but a blurry action photo is better than nothing, right Grandmas?
They have 3 large trampolines and a tumble track trampoline.

Here she is getting ready to do the rings. This class is co-ed so they do some "boy" equipment which is cool. After the 5 year old class they split them up by genders so they can focus more on the various types of equipment.

On Thursday, I taught a little class about being a missionary in Russia to the youth at church (ages 12-17). It was a lot of work to prepare, but I had tons of fun doing it.
Here are some "doors". I asked them to choose which one they wanted to "knock on"  and then I had photos behind each door of people I knew from Russia. I told a story with each picture.

We did not have a lot of time so I decorated the entrance to our classroom with pictures of Russia and Russian culture so they could get a quick 60 second overview.

I served them tea and  cookies like a good Russian hostess. Of course, I also had to make them try "dirt" (xalva). We practiced some other missionary skills while we drank it.

 And we talked about ways that Russian culture and Mormonism are in sync using some of the examples on display (ie. preparedness, self sufficiency, christianity, emphasis on education, patriotism, and word of wisdom.)

On Friday at the nature center they read and discussed My Spring Robin.

We walked outside to look for robins. I learned the difference between a blue bird and a robin - which are easier to confuse than you would think.  We saw a couple blue birds, but no robins.
Then the kids made a craft with their foot print:

 You can tell by the size of the feet (or the blurriness) whose is whose. Big sister A colored hers all by herself and the teacher was very impressed. She also wrote some information about the bird. I had to help the boys do the coloring on theirs.