First of all, let me apologize to those of you who were looking forward to our bee lapbook.  It just hasn't worked out to get that finished!  I think I had "beginning of school" excitement and might have bitten off more than I could chew!

But even without the lapbook, we have had a fun and busy first 2 weeks.  I'll recap for you most of what we have learned.

For our Five in a Row unit study using the book, The Bee Tree, by Patricia Polacco we learned.....

~all about bees, including the lifecycle, different types of bees and their jobs, how they make honey and we even got to take a trip to a local bee farm.  We also learned the differences and likenesses between bees and wasps.

~about hexagons and made a honeycomb with our hexagonal pattern blocks.

~about onomatopoeia.   For those of you wondering, onomatopoeia is the use of words that imitate the sounds something makes (for example "buzz" for a bee).

~where Michigan is on the map and where Canada, KY, NY, and CA are in relationship to Michigan (north, south, east, and west).  We also learned Michigan's capital city, state flower, state tree, state bird, and state motto.

~about the string section of the orchestra and which instruments are in the string section.   We also listened for violins in some music composed by Vivaldi, one of the 2 composers we are studying this session.

Apart from our unit study, we also learned about nouns, compound words, globes and maps, the continents of North America and South America.  In math, we are reviewing what we learned last year, but that is going quickly, so soon we'll be on to some new concepts.  Ben really enjoys our math program, Right Start Math, and using the abacus to figure out the math problems.

For Bible, we've been learning about who God is, that He was there in the beginning before the world, how He loves us, how to talk to Him through prayer and hear Him speak to us through reading His word, how He knows all and sees all.  Ben has memorized 3 Bible verses as well. 

At co-op he learned about  Baroque music, had an intro to the orchestra and to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and we began our history notebooks by learning about 3 Native American tribes...The Inuit, The Tlingit, and The Nez Perce.   We drew pictures of a scene in the life of an Inuit on an igloo, made a Potlatch mask, and made a totem pole for our history notebooks.  We also discussed things about Ben, what he loves, what he looks like, and came up with a Native American name for him....Boy who loves animals, after reading the book, Knots on a Counting Rope.

While listening to Bach's music and hearing a biographical story about him, Ben used water-colors to paint a pipe-organ.  And he also spent some time drawing a scene from the Revolutionary War to decorate the front of his history notebook.

Much of our bee study was also done at co-op.  The children also learned how to play Red Rover and Simon Says during PE  time.

  

We also got to enjoy seeing a production of The Princess and the Pauper at a local children's theatre with the co-op kids.  We really enjoyed that! 

I'm finding that the new schedule I've implemented is working really well.  It keeps Ben on target and constantly busy, which he really needs.  I find on days that we are not using the schedule (field trip days,etc) that he is more easily distracted and we don't accomplish as much.  I'd still like to add Spanish and an artist study at some point, maybe in a few more weeks, once our new schedule is more routine. 

I'm still not getting as much done around the house as I would like, but I'm moving toward the goal of getting the house decluttered so I can implement my new chore schedule!  And soon I'll start working from home, which should give me a little more time to get things done.  Of course there is work involved with getting ready to work from home, like getting the room ready.  But I know it'll be worth it.  I'm really looking forward to being home every night to tuck Ben in and not missing him while I'm at work.