Owl Moon

This week was our first official week of school back after our Christmas break and also our first week of the school year getting back to "rowing" with Five in a Row.

Our book for this week was Owl Moon

We started our week by reading the story (of course) and putting the story disc on the story's location. Buzz and Boo colored in a black line map to show where we live, where the story takes place and what direction we would travel to get there.

We played Owl Knock-Out from the Owl Prowl pack on Homeschool Share.

Boo played Feather Phonics (also from Owl Prowl) and she loved it so much that she wanted to play again and again and again!

We talked about telling time. I called out different times and Buzz and Boo used our foam clocks to show what each time looked like.

Boo did a leaf graphing activity from Owl Prowl as well.

We read a great go-along book called All About Owls

There is a two page spread in the book that shows pictures of North American owls along with their average height.

Buzz busted out the rulers right away to measure how tall each of the owls is, which lead to making a chart comparing all of their heights.

Of course they had to measure Bean against the chart to see which owl she was the same size as!

The kids spent a long time on the computer listening to different owl calls from this site.

We also disected owl pellets! Not the real things because that would be yucky (can you tell I'm not really a sciencey mom?) I found a kit at Hobby Lobby called Unreal Upchuck

It came with two synthetic pellets, each with a different kind of skeleton. Boo spent most of the time talking about how gross it was and how she would never touch a real owl pellet so I'm glad I decided to wait on using the real thing :) But they got the idea behind what owl pellets are, and Buzz really enjoyed it.

We wrapped up our week with an art project inspired by this one on Walking by the Way. Somehow I neglected to make sure they we had brown construction paper until about 5 minutes before we were supposed to start. I did remember to buy the glow-in-the dark paint though! So we went with multi-colored owls and Buzz and Boo both chose to add craft feathers to their final product.  

 

 

Linked to Weekly Wrap-Up

Long Overdue!

So I haven't posted in over 3 months! We've had a lot of changes going on around here and I just haven't found the time!

1. We moved! We found out at the end of the summer that Ruben had gotten orders to a new base so we spent the month of November getting packed, living in temporary lodging, visiting family over the Thanksgiving holiday and staying in temporary lodging again at our new base. Whew!!! Relocating from the east coast to the Midwest has been more difficult on some of the family members than others. I know I, in particular, miss our home and friends on the east coast very much! But we're working hard to meet people and get plugged into the community and it's starting to feel more like home.

2. We're expecting baby #4! We found out at the end of October that we are going to be blessed with another little one next July! The big kids are very excited (Buzz is hoping to finally have a brother) and Ruben and I are thrilled to be the parents of four kiddos (4 has always been the magic number that Ruben has envisioned). So next month we should be finding out if our newest family member is a boy or a girl!

3. We changed curriculum! We started of the year with Adventures in My Father's World. I liked it just fine, the kids liked it just fine but it didn't feel like the best choice for us. So we're back to Five in a Row. We are currently rowing our first title of the year and having a great time! It feels much more relaxed and much more...us!

So, yeah, lots of changes but now that we're settled in to our new house, the holidays are behind us and I'm starting to feel less nauseous, I hope to get back to blogging regularly!