Week in Review 12/8-12/12

Monday was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Avery has decided that feast days should be celebrated with cake, so he baked one! It was delicious! Here is a picture of Reagan adding some frosting:
On Tuesday it snowed. The boys have been having fun playing outside even Jameson goes out with them. They have fun throwing snowballs, collecting icicles, tracking squirrels, and sledding down the snow pile at the end of the driveway.Inspired by our trip to New York we have been studying bridges using a K'nex bridges set with a study guide. The boys experimented making different types of structures out of paper and testing how much load they would hold.
We talked about shapes and materials used in building bridges and loads and forces that affect bridge structures.Reagan built a bascule bridge from the K'nex.Jameson had fun revisiting his Montessori shelves, after two weeks away. I presented him with the circle drawer, the blue circle puzzle in the picture below, as a follow-up to the circle art project and story we did before we left. He is getting pretty good at these sorts of puzzles, he only mixed up the smallest two circles.

Mary learned about the letter J in her workbook, we jumped up and down and talked about things that start with J, like jelly beans! Maybe I'll remember to pick some up at the grocery store. She had a cold this week and was a bit under the weather.

Reagan did some activities from his Have Fun with the Presidents book. He made "Lucy's Lemonade" inspired by the wife of Rutherford B. Hayes and we read the biography of the 19th president. Next he wants to make Ronald Reagan's jelly bean jar.

He also read through the book Robots: From Everyday to Out of this World and talked about it with me.

Avery wanted to make a robotic arm so he had me read to him the chapter from How to Build Your Own Prize Winning Robot on that topic. He was disappointed that rather than giving specific directions the books gave suggestions for brainstorming your own plans to build from. He ended up deciding that was too difficult.

Math was uneventful for both boys this week, Reagan is learning fractions and decimals, Avery covered money and addition up to 20.

Avery is chugging along, somewhat grudgingly with is reading, we started short o words this week.

Reagan is reading The Chronicles of Narnia, he just finished The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We are going to watch the movie tonight for movie night!