Gist Academy for Gifted Youngsters

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.

Hopefully I did that right, and I uploaded a Word Doc with our weekly schedule. The squares with balloons filled in, we don’t do that subject on that day. I do reward Danielle, but not just for doing the work. She has to have a good attitude and not throw tantrums or cry in order to get a sticker.

I’d like to give credit to the author of this wonderful song http://nataliesnexus.blogspot.com/  You ROCK!

(not sure what that phrase actually means, might have to research that, LOL!!) And things went as well as can be expected. There was much whining, tantrums, eye rolling and general dissent among the troops, but mostly we got it done. Danielle fights tooth and nail against school in general, doesn’t understand why she has to do it, thinks it’s all an evil plot on my behalf to make her life miserable. I try to explain to her that ALL children go to school, but she’s not buying it.

Today we had an impromptu unit study on dinosaurs, thanks to Tina and her new contest at Fresno Family to win tickets to Walking with Dinosaur. I printed off her clues (and a list of the dinosaurs that could be possible answers) and we pulled out all our dinosaur books. The favorite was the Research Guide for Dinosaurs before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne! We had fun talking about herbivore vs carnivore, guessing which ones would eat brother and such. We guessed how many daddys or sisters tall each one was. We sang with Laurie Berkner while drawing dinosaur pictures (Jack drew cows, LOL!!)

This week we made a Thomas the Tank Engine Tot Book. Jack LOVES it!

We visited the zoo and discussed different animals.  We even played animal follow the leader on the way out

Jack got to paint with water on his magnet board, and played with different magnets shapes.

We worked on our signing, and Jack did a perfect sign for more cereal!

Excuse the lack of pictures, it’s been HOT, and so clothing has not been on the top of our to do list, LOL!

(I saw this one someones blog, but with my internet issues today, I didn’t get a chance to grab the URL to credit.)

This year I hope to achieve the following goals for Jack-Jack’s education:

1. Learning his colors
2. Learning his shapes
3. Learn to recognize numbers and letters
4. Learn animals and the sounds they make
5. Simple songs and finger plays