School Update

Yes, we are still having school. It's a little hit and miss, but this week has been mostly hit. Yeah.


This poster (feel free to click on it to see it bigger) represents New Amsterdam before Peter Stuyvesant became governor. It was a very dirty colony. The kids really enjoyed making garbage and putting animals all over the place.






This is New Amsterdam after Peter. Notice how tidy it is and all the animals are in pens.














Miriam holding the book, "On the Day Peter Stuyvesant Sailed Into Town." The kids all LOVE this book. So do I, actually. We've read it at least once every day this week and none of us are tired of seeing the Dutch lady poor a basket of scraps on Peter's head, or seeing a goat knock Peter over and a pig nibble his toes. Very cute book.











This is Miriam holding up her completed cousin's favorite color graph. Thank you, all the cousins, for telling Miriam your favorite color.


Blue, yellow, and pink were the runaway winners of the popularity contest. The bottom line is white, but Miriam used brown because white doesn't show up. White as a favorite color?? That was unexpected. If any of you count up the colors and count up the cousins you'll find they don't match up. Garrett has three favorite colors and someone else (I don't remember who) has two favorite colors.







Miriam with her New York (New Amsterdam) project.













Miriam fastidiously coloring her graph because "princesses are neat and tidy." I'm glad to hear that. Don't you love her princess outfit? She did her hair special for the ball and put on her ballgown (with a shirt underneath so the sleeves wouldn't scratch), plus the hat. Loved it.







Cowen coloring his graph.

The blue marker is almost used up and I've let them use the markers about three times since I bought them.









Emeline contained and out of the way playing with the princess. The whole time she kept saying, "Hi, princess; hi, horse," in her adorable voice/speech. So, so, so cute.










Miriam making the graph on the computer. Okay, I made the graph, she typed in all the colors. It was so fun to watch her make sure that everything was spelled right and find all the right letters.

She loved getting to use the computer, as you can imagine.






Making the New Amsterdam posters.













Making a blue house for some lucky Dutch family.

So school continues. I finally found a book that challenged Miriam's reading level and kept her interest. Sad for me it is a Disney Princess collection--but each story is about 40 pages and the vocabulary is challenging but the pictures keep her interest. Not to mention it is a book about princesses. So today we wrote down two of the words she didn't know from the first chapter of Snow White and looked them up in the Scholastic Children's Dictionary. We had a blast. A really good children's dictionary with pictures is a must-have for all kids. Cowen found a picture of a knight and two different motorcycles. He has some sort of boy sixth-sense. Miriam and I oohed and aahed over the picture of a squid and went through all the vegetables to see which ones she'd eaten and which ones she hadn't (okra, for example). Fun, fun. She picked up the idea of alphabetization a lot faster than I expected. Maybe because she is used to looking up scriptures?? I don't know--but it was a fun little activity.

And that's about it. I'm currently putting together a unit on the body because my kids LOVE their DK anatomy book for children and spent 45 minutes at Barnes and Noble laying on the floor looking at DK's very large, very expensive, very cool anatomy book for adults without so much as twitching. The unit should be fun when it is all put together. We're also finishing her tablecloth and finishing up the math chapter on graphs.