Sunday, January 4, 2009

Robots!

Here are some videos of the robots the boys have been building with their Lego Mindstorms set:

video video

Avery built the robot and Reagan wrote the programs. The first video is a robot that reverses direction when it bumps into an obstacle. The second is a robot that detects a ball and then hits it.

Week in Review 12/29-1/1

Here is an assortment of scenes from our week. It was another productive one. Both boys are actually ahead in their math books which has never happened before. And Avery's reading seems to get less and less tedious each week. We are almost halfway through is phonics book.


Mary and Jameson made these square paintings. They used sponges cut into squares as stamps on square paper. We read a book called What is a Square?
Jameson's painting: Mary's painting:

Reagan has been making all sorts of gummy and chocolate candy with the candy making kit he got for christmas.

Mary did some math with the teddy bear counters. Here she is putting five red bears on one side of the card and five blue bears on the other. She ended up making squares out of the bears, which she then counted: 10 blue and 11 red.



Reagan reads from a stack of books:




I have been trying to introduce some hands-on grammar. These are the montessori grammar symbols for labeling parts of speech. We've been reading the humorous picture books about the various parts of speech by Brian P. Cleary.



Reagan and Avery made these bean jars after we read about Ronald Reagan from our book of president activities.






Reagan and Avery got a Lego Mindstorms robotics kit for Christmas. It is really cool! Here Avery built a robot and Reagan programmed it to hit a ball.








Here Mary sorts pictures of living and non-living things.









Jameson made a block structure.







Avery made this castle from a cardboard box. I was impressed with his patience in carving all those little turrets!