School Update - Mid October

I realized that I hadn't posted a school update in over a month!  Overall, things are going well.  We were starting to hit a good rhythm but I broke my big toe a few weeks ago.  I'm embarrassed to admit it has been quite the setback.

William is checking for a match with the sound cylinders.

Pink Tower and Brown Stair combo extensions have been very popular lately.

I love watching the two of them work together to complete a work.

Elora began working with the 100 chain.

Here she turned it into a hundred square and compared it.

She was proud of herself for labeling the chain.  She quickly completed it in one try.  Obviously I held this work back for too long.

I went ahead and put all short chains out to entice her.  Don't ask me what possessed me to drill into my lovely door in this age of command strips.

Daddy left for a long business trip.  We made cards for him.

Even the little guy got in on the action.

I finally came up with a good use for the pocket chart on the other side of our calendar.  I have the wood cards in there for this picture.  I have since replaced it with laminated cards that I printed.

We reviewed land forms. Lockelan insisted on helping.  Amazingly, he easily repeated lake and island.

William is mapping a shelf.  To teach mapping,you begin by creating a life sized map.  William is tracing the items on the shelf.

He isn't sleeping.  He's writing his name on his map.  I wish I had a clear photo of the victory dance he did when he finished.

Elora created a map as well.  She wrote everyone's name on it.

William is sorting animals into biomes.

Where did the sorting beads go?

William loves to sit and look at books.

Elora is creating food chains.

Meanwhile... Lockelan is cleaning up one of nearly one hundred spills per day.

The food chain work is complete.

I posted about the life of our toddler in this post.  This is currently his favorite work.

Here he is resetting the activity.

Elora is writing words of her choosing.  She decided to get a b and a d from the moveable alphabet to prevent confusion.

Lockelan is working the latches board.

This isn't the clearest picture but Elora is arranging the knobless cylinders in a stacking pattern.

Here she is matching them to a non-stacking extension.

She began to wonder which tower was the tallest.  I challenged her to build all four and see for herself.

We planted a rain forest from a biome kit I found on clearance at CVS.  I hope something spouts!

Thankfully it had two discs of dirt to dissolve.

Dumping... er, planting the seeds.

The completed product.

We have also turned our focus to our unfinished basement.  Both our art studio and our music shelves are there.  We took some major steps to make it seem less like a basement.

Art area... yes, it needs to be cleaned.  The wood was cut inside so we had to clear a space.  Now everything is covered in sawdust.

I finally cleaned up the music shelves.

Classical Covnersations continues to go well.  Given William's age, I tend to spend most of our class time in his room.

Circling our hypothesis for the weekly science experiment.

Observing the effects of a magnetic field.