Monday:
We started out the week a little slow. The kids were happy though as we had a Ciravola-Kinsler Family Kid Swap. We got the boys, and the Kinsler’s got the big girls (the little girls are too little to swap them yet). Luckily for me we had already planned a down day as I was horribly ill with a stomach thing that plagued me in some form for most of the week!

Tuesday:
This was our only full day at home to get things done so it was a busy busy work day.

Ava has been working on writing sentences this month. Each sentence has been January related, either to the weather, holidays, time of year, etc. She is so proud of each and every thing she does!

We started our 18 week Africa Unit study off with some basics this week by making a vocabulary pocket for our lapbook/notebooks. We followed this by putting together a paper puzzle of Africa and labeling the countries, as well as a couple of major landmarks such as rivers and mountains. We finished with a fun numbers square containing 6 facts:

1. number of languages spoken

2. number of people

3. total square miles

4. number of Countries

5. miles from east to west

6. miles from north to south

Can you match the facts above with the numbers in the picture below?

Wednesday:
We completed our Picasso Unit study today with lapbook inserts including pictures of a few of his most famous paintings, such as The Three Musicians (Jayden made a copy cat of this one) and Girl Before a Mirror (Ava has not quite finished her copycat of this one), as well as a blue period painting and a cubism piece.

Thursday:
During our lesson from First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind we pulled out the white board to work on abbreviations. From your own initials, to Mr./Mrs./Dr., as well as measurements, months, days of the week, streets and states, we covered it all. The kids really enjoyed the change of pace of the white board. It was fun for them to take turns filling in abbreviations for the things they knew and made a great visual aid for the ones they didn’t. Believe it or not, I hesitated on the abbreviation of March! I was thinking it wasn’t abbreviated (like May, June and July). Turns out, it is….. Mar. (just in case you were wondering)!

Friday:
Jayden, Chloe and Poppy headed off this morning for Jayden’s Chess Club. This leaves me with a short time of quiet to hang with Ava (we read books today), and finish this blog post (seeing as I didn’t get to one last week). We have a busy weekend ahead with a gymnatics competition for Chloe, attending a soccer fundraiser breakfast for a friend/neighbor of ours, and Mother/Daughter Book Club for Ava and I….oh, and who could forget the SUPERBOWL! Despite non of the teams making it that I wanted to, I am looking forward to chicken wing dip, veggies, and hopefully a good football game!