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!

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

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 :) 

Not super sure, LOL! Last week was a short week, two days of schooling really. Monday being a holiday and for some reason life got in the way of Thursday and Friday…

I did find a great puzzle for Jack-Jack at the Goodwill for $2! Still in shrink wrap

Of course our D is already missing, but I am sure it will turn up.

We have been focusing on keeping our living area (playroom excluded for the moment) neat and tidy. So everyone has been pitching in to help pick up toys, put our dishes in the sink and generally keep the place picked up so it won’t be such an effort to keep it clean. So far so good,

On Saturday at Scouts we were blessed to have a guest speaker, a Master Falconer! She brought out a Great Horned Owl and a Peregrine Falcon for the scouts to see, and she talked all about how they fly, hunt, live and such. It was really fun, and we learned a LOT.

We are waiting impatiently for our caterpillars to arrive.  Danielle got a Butterfly habitat for her birthday, and we have sent off for the caterpillars. She is so excited to have more living things to add to our ever growing zoo! I am thinking we might branch out into hermit crabs or something similarly small and contained after we release our butterflies.

So, that’s all for now from the Gist Academy.  I will try to update again soon, and maybe, just maybe my kids will put on clothes long enough to take some actual pictures!!

And it went okay. Still fighting, but the new schedule seems to be motivation enough to keep the pouting and tantrums to a minimum. At the end of the week she has 15 out of 20 stickers and got a prize from her box. (a little plastic dressable Sleeping Beauty doll).

Jack-Jack got a new game, it’s a matching farm animals game. The animals break into two pieces, and hide under hay stacks. He likes playing that a lot. And we got Pooh Bear matching flash cards, which he’s been having fun playing with.

I am going to start him on simple letter of the week coloring pages, to get used to seeing letters. He also sits in on our ASL lessons, and signs along.

Speaking of, I am loving the new book I got from the library, Sign to Learn, and so far I am really enjoying it’s lesson planning ideas! I have to buy a copy for myself Up till now we’ve been watching Signing Times videos, practicing our fingerspelling, and putting together sentances for ASL lessons, but having something more planned out would be nice.