Gist Academy for Gifted Youngsters

I always know when Friday comes because that’s DH’s first day back to work for his “week” LOL! And right now, he’s puttering around in the kitchen, coughing and making his lunch. Yeah, I am a bad wife and don’t pack it for him

It was another quiet week here at the Gist Academy. Most of us were getting over the bug, and DH was getting the bug, so we tried to take it easy.

The littles mostly had free play and free art times. While Danielle and I worked on her regular lessons.

For Social Studies, we talked about Heroes and National Holidays, in honor of Veterans Day. We discussed a bit about the military, and what they do.

In Math, we are talking about counting on. I have given up for the moment on skip counting, we’ll come back to it later.

For Reading, we are alternating between her regular assigned reading book and stories from Puppy Tails, a cute book she got for her birthday Plus we are spending more time trying to write each day. I give her a prompt and have her write a complete sentence.

For Spelling and Handwriting, we are chugging along in her assigned books from school. She’s rather bored with them, but she’s doing okay

Hopefully, we’ll get caught up soon, or else we’ll be working through some of Winter break

Here are a few pictures of the little’s hard at work drawing.

We visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium for Homeschool Days, and boy was it GREAT! We drove down with Angela and Shraddha, way too early in the morning, LOL! But we had a full day there, with plenty of time to see all the exhibits. Plus, they had the lab classrooms open for the kids, and they got to touch things, and listen to presentations. I highly recommend the trip if you ever have the chance!

But if you want to go for Homeschool Days, be sure to register early because it fills up FAST. It was a wee bit crowded, but not so much as to make the trip unenjoyable!

and what we did instead

Danielle had her last cooking and art class on Tuesday. They made jello jigglers and frito boats, yeah, real healthy, LOL!. I had a meeting with her teacher, to go over the last periods work.  It went well, and her teacher is happy with her progress. We really need to start working harder on her reading and math. She loves working on science and social studies, but math we are butting heads on a daily basis. I need to find some less stressful ways to get her to see the patterns in numbers, KWIM?

Other then taking her with me to vote, and dealing with the ensuing tantrum, we really had a causal week. Due to illness, Danielle and I are both layed up with the flu. I sound like Sylvia Browne, and it’s not condusive to a good days school work.

I did get all the new books that we got from her teacher filed away and all the books that need to go back to teacher set aside, so that’s at least helpful. And the lesson plans for next week are ready and waiting.

Let’s hope we can all breath, talk and swallow by Monday

On Friday even

On Saturday we decorated pumpkins with our SpiralScout Circle.

This week we focused on “real” reading. Usually we read out of our reader book, and do the follow up pages in the workbook. This week, we read Biscuit books. We read magazines, and boxes. It was a lot less pressure then the reading book, and I think it was a nice break.

For math, we continued to focus on counting from 1-100. DD is still reversing numbers, writing 21 for 12 and such. But we are practicing and she’s getting better.

We also have been reading about sea otters, in preparation for our upcoming trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Monday. We made sea otter puppets, talked about how the wrap themselves in sea weed to keep from floating away, and colored pictures of their favorite foods.

Again, we had a pretty laid back week. We started talking about our trip to the Aquarium, and it was decided that we will focus on Sea Otters to study before and once we get there. We also have taken on our first flat traveler, and will be taking it along for the ride. It’s pretty cool, it’s from a family in Madison, WI. We still have to create ours, but Danielle wants it to be a butterfly. I am thinking our school mascot might be a butterfly, LOL!!

We went to the pumpkin patch on Thursday. When I say pumpkin patch, I am NOT referring to pumpkins lined up in rows in a dirt lot, with no vines in sight. I mean we went to a farm where pumpkins are grown by hand by a family. We cut our pumpkins from the vine while checking out pumpkins in various states of maturity. We rode around in a hay wagon and visiting with farm animals. It was all very satisfying. That’s not to say I won’t pick up a few more pumpkins for carving, but those from the farm will be extra special

We also had some fun with plastic vampire teeth

Thanks Tina, for reminding me

These are our butterflies all ready to wing their way to Mexico to spend the winter where it’s nice and warm

It’s not too late for your homeschoolers to participate in the symbolic migration! Click on the butterflies above and get started. Packages must be postmarked by October 14th.

Come spring butterflies from other students in the US and Canada will find their way to your students to take care of for the spring.

It was a busy week here at Gist Academy. Not a lot of seat work, but lots of fun. At Tuesday art class, DD studied Vincent VanGogh, and in cooking class, they made pear mice and peanut butter/banana sandwiches. DD went to the library with friends on Wednesday and had a lot of fun. Thursday we went to the Big Fresno Fair again, and had a great time with Daddy, Angela and Shraddha

We read a really cute book

that I highly recommend, and colored pictures of ants.

We’ve reached another Friday, and what do I have to show for it??

This week Danielle read her first whole non-phonics book!  Actually she read two She read Biscuit and Biscuit Finds a Friend! I was very proud of her

We went to the Fresno Fair yesterday and had a great time. Learned about a lot of neat farm animals. You can see a video on my regular blog.

Seat work has been light this week, too much end of summer energy I guess.

Danielle made a very nice mosaic picture in art class, and they cooked hot dog octopus’ and potato salad in cooking class.

And the littles colored and played, and did what they were supposed to, have fun

Well, our most of our butterflies are out of their chrysalis and are flying around in their little enclosure. We lost one, it was too deformed to survive And one is still unhatched, but we are holding on to hope because it was the last one to go into the chrysalis stage.

Please excuse the poor photography, it’s tough to get a shot of them!

We haven’t really done any seat work at all this week. We did color pages about the farm in continuting our chicken month theme. And we learned a new song, “If I were a Farmer.”

Yesterday we went to the zoo, and we looked for any animals that might have been on a farm. We didn’t find any, LOL! We got to hear a great talk by a docent about owls, and Danielle asked quite a few good questions. Plus, Danielle and I both got to participate in the Winged Wonder Bird Show. I got to have a large owl fly at my head, and she got to have a small parrot take a dollar out of her hand. After the show, the kids gave dollar bills to a raven who deposited them into a large bank! It was really neat!

 This week we have been concentrating our studies on Butterflies. Because Danielle got her caterpillars in from her birthday butterfly house! For the life of me, I can’t seem to get a good pictures of said caterpillars, and they are in their pupa stage  now, so the picture would be rather boring

Of course, all of this was in addition to Danielle’s regular studies. In Social Studies we are talking about maps, globes and our place in the world. In Science we are studying how living things meet their needs. She is rocking math, with the less then and greater then alligator trick. Reading lately had been 50% her regular reading lessons, and 50% working on her butterfly lapbook. Spelling and handwriting bring up the rear with some eye rolling and tantrum throwing, but it gets done, LOL!

We decorated our own butterflies
Jack LOVES using the glue stick, too bad I didn’t’ get the picture of him with tissue glued to his fingers, LOL!

 
Shraddha made a very symmetrical butterfly.  
Finished Butterflies, hanging to dry.  We also talked about Chickens, because September is National Chicken Month, and Shraddha brought us some shells from her chickens for show and tell!

Everyone colored their own chickens 
Then we named them, and decided what color eggs they layed (since not all chicken eggs are brown or white!)  
We also colored pictures of chrysalis to commemorate our caterpillars transformation :)