School Recap: October

We finished off another great month of school here in the Johnson household! The month started off with a week long vacation - nice, huh?! It was a nice little break with sleeping in, relaxing on the beach, and playing with family. I did count one day out of the week as a school/field trip day to account for all the educational things the beach has to offer. You know, like flying kites, seeing dolphins, fish, and crabs, and watching fudge being made. Hey, homeschooling has benefits like that! Seriously, one of my top reasons for loving homeschooling is the flexibilities it offers to make trips like this possible - especially with all our family being so far away.

Given that is was October (with halloween decorations everywhere), I decided it would be an appropriate month to learn about what's inside our bodies. We learned all about our bones and how we need them to keep us from being "floppy."

No bones

With "bones"

We put together puzzles and looked at cool glow in the dark books.

 We also learned about our brain, heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, kidneys, bladder and other "inside stuff." I outlined the girls' bodies on poster boards, and we began to fill it in as we learned about different parts. They studied books and drew in their brain and colored their heart and glued it on. It was funny to hear them talking about how their hearts didn't look like "real" hearts. We used some bubble wrap for the lungs and then moved on to talking about the intestines. We had LOTS of "potty" humor, and the girls insisted that they had to include a bladder too. We also used first aid tape and q-tips to add in some bones.

Kind of hard to tell in these pics, but this is Kerri working on her brain

and this is Emma Lee coloring in her heart.

We had a "light bulb" moment when they measured out how long the small intestine and the large intestine is

and then realized how it can squeeze into a much smaller space.

Here's the final product:

We began journaling this month, and the girls are still enjoying it. They love to choose their own quiet place and write away. It also didn't take me long to establish the rule that they are not allowed to ask me, "How do you spell ______?" Instead, they can ask, "Is this how you spell _______" and give it a try first. It helps with my sanity because they can actually figure out more than they think they can.

In math, we've been doing a lot of number sentences, learning the doubles, and using a balance.

We also took the girls one evening to see a performance of A Muskrat Lullaby, an interactive children's opera, which they loved (sorry - no pics).

We had one day when our "school room" was being repaired and painted, so we had to be creative and spend the day learning upstairs. We pulled out the games and played several math games with dice, a simplified version of scrabble, and monopoly. There's that flexibility again!

Kerri's face cracks me up in this picture. She gets really nervous about the "Go to Jail" space!

Of course, we had to make some yummy treats on the last day of the month!