Week 5 - Sonlight, Birthdays and Teeth!

 This week was again not a typical week as we had my mom come into town to celebrate Lily turning 6! We enjoyed a wonderful birthday dinner on Tuesday (thanks mom!), a first lost tooth that fell out in a pear on Thursday,

and a Cowboy/Cowgirl party on Saturday...whew, I'm exhausted.

Our homeschool week was kind of sporatic, and we did a lot of work in the car on the way to different events or shopping for the party. I'm excited for next week because we will have our first TRUE full week of school. I am very ready to get in a groove and rhythm.

As far as schooling topics for the week, we continued on with our Math-U-See. We only have 10 lessons left, and then Lily will head into the Alpha book. We are really loving this curriculum! Our All About Reading is coming along nicely as well. My mom even pitched in a taught a lesson or two.  One of the activities we did was play Letter Sound Bingo. The girls liked this game a lot.

 We explored the Vikings, and made fun masks that made us feel like big burly men...

I wanted to talk a little bit about how we used the birthday party to teach about the time and era of the Cowboys heading West. We panned for gold which the children enjoyed immensely. I used this tutorial from Restless Risa.  We talked about why the cowboys headed West to search for gold.  Each child got to bring home a little bag of their own gold. 

 
The children also learned 'Wild West Lingo'. lassoed a horse, shot a bank robber (with a marshmallow shooter),  learned how to line dance AND roasted marshmallow s'more pops over a fake campfire while singing camp songs. Overall, the party was a huge success!