Week-in-Review: May 24-28 2010

It's been a little while since I've done a full wrap up of our preschool week. I've spent a lot of time reviewing our since and Bible, but we have been doing other things as well. Although it was a very full week, it was also a very relaxed one. This was the last week for many of our weekly activities until the Fall.

Music Recital

We started the week with Lexy's music recital. I couldn't have been more proud of my little princess. She sang loudly for everyone to hear and tried her very best!

Besides their keyboard songs, they also got to show some of the other instruments that they learned.
Afterwards, we celebrated with Mamaw and Papaw at Steak-N-Shake!

Writing/Spelling

We finished up Get Ready for the Code for phonics, and we're waiting to get our next book. In the meantime, I'm just following Lexy's lead with what she wants to do for Reading/Spelling/Writing. She loved doing the Code book, so we will definitely continue on with it.

This week, Lexy wanted to write her own book. So, we looked at some books and talked about the different parts of a book. We had a blank Little Golden Book. She brainstormed what she wanted her story to be about and then got to work.

Her story is titled, "Bell Lost Her Shoe." The basic story line is all of the princesses looking for Bell's shoe. She hasn't finished it yet, so I'm anxious to see how she ends it. So far, she has kept with the story line, which isn't always the case when she writes a story.

She has taken a big interest in how to spell all kinds of words lately. One day this week, she went to work writing on the white board. She called for me to come and see what she wrote. This is what I found...

She had written her name along with Mommy and Josiah. I didn't realize that she knew how to spell these words without any help.


Cooking

Both kids do a lot of helping in the kitchen, especially Alexis. She loves cooking! I plan to do a post soon about Math in the Kitchen. She has learned to read fractions and many other math concepts while helping me in the kitchen.

I've recently taken up cake decorating, and Lexy has been eager to decorate her own cake. So after making a cake, I saved my left over icing for her to use on her own cake.

Josiah helped make the batter.

They took turns turning the mixer on and off.

Once Josiah went down for his nap, she got to decorate it. She had so much fun...

...and was proud of her creation!

The finished product!

Science

We wrapped up our formal Human Body Unit this week by studying the brain. I'm sure we'll continue learning and talking about the human body, because her interest continues to grow. I failed to take any pictures, because there wasn't much to take pictures of. I couldn't believe how fascinated she was to look through big books about the brain. I tried to read some more on her level, but she just wanted to go through the books talking about what all the pictures were. Through our discussions she learned quite a bit...

Lessons Learned:

1. Our brains are about the size of two fists put together.

2. The brain is like the control center of our body.

3. The brain allows you to think, feel, move, etc. by sending messages through the body.

4. It sends messages through the spinal cord and nerves.

5. Different parts of the brain control different things.

6. The brain is protected by the skull.

To see our other Human Body lessons see these links: The Digestive System, Muscles, Bones and Lungs, The Five Senses, the Heart and Book List, Introduction

Experiments:

Our brain experiment wasn't much of an experiment. We combined our study of muscles with the brain and talked about how the brain allows us to feel emotions. She used the muscles in her face to show different emotions...happy, sad, surprised, angry, etc.

Random experiment: Lexy asked me why the room spins when she gets dizzy from spinning in a circle. I explained that it was because of a fluid in the ears that helps control balance. When you spin quickly the fluid in the ears moves, and when you stop the fluid keeps moving. While the fluid is still moving around your balance is off. I read somewhere that if you hold your ears after spinning around that it would help that dizzy feeling to go away. We decided to give it a try.

We both made ourselves dizzy and then held our ears. We still felt dizzy. Lexy came up with a few other ideas that she thought would work...hold your head, wrap your arms around yourself. She tried both and neither worked.

Dance Rehearsal

We wrapped up the week with a dress rehearsal for her ballet recital coming up. This will be her first dance recital. She learned that there is a whole lot of waiting, and she was very excited when it was actually almost her turn.