Books Books and More Books

 

This is how we keep track of the books Mckenzie has read.  Or listened to since September.  He's still currently working on Percy Jackson The Titan's Curse (for fun) and Stranded (for chapter reports).  He has finished the first two Percy Jackson books as well as listened to the audio book How To Train Your Dragon and part of The Hobbit.  The Hobbit only lasted a few chapters.  He's read the book but the audio version was a bit challenging to pay full attention to in our home and the chapters were very long so it was easy to lose our spot if we weren't able to devote a very lengthy period of time to listening. 

Each coloured dot sticker represents a chapter he's completed.  On the yellow one you can see where he stacked his dots on top of each other.  I like how he changes it up every single time.  It's fun seeing the designs that come out. 

The other day I brought home C.S. Lewis  - The Magicians Nephew and The Horse and His Boy.  I'm looking forward to starting those.

Building Thinking Skills

 We bought this book at the resource center and it's got some fun and interesting exercises.  Here are a few of the pages we've done. 

The Animal Kingdom: Classes of Vertebrates

 First Mckenzie made write ups about the 5 classes of vertebrates: Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Fish, Amphibians.  That included examples for each class and also a list of characteristics for each.  We then searched through our collection of National Geographics to find examples of each. 

He began this project yesterday and finished today.  Great job Mckenzie!!

The 5 Kingdoms

 100 Brownie points!  Well, actually 101 points.  The other day he wrote so neatly (a huge feat which took a lot of time) that he got himself two brownie cards.  Today he was inspired all on his own to mimic this behaviour again.  And it worked.  His effort did not go unnoticed and he bumped himself up over the 100 mark.  He decided to make a marble cake and it sure does taste good. 

Our school days in the first part of November were a little scattered.  I had a large fundraiser that I was organising for my daughters school and it took up a lot of time.  So I enlisted Mckenzie's help in community service.  He was a great help to me. 
We still did a lot of work but not a great variety of work.  Mostly Social Studies (the big family tree project).  But we also did a bit of math and reading with chapter reports.  But it didn't feel like we did a lot, probably because our routine was off.  However, we are now back to routine.

More work on Science, specifically the 5 Kingdoms (Fungi, Monera, Protista, Plantae, and Animalia).  We often do a quick pop quiz of material covered right back from September and he's retaining it!!!  Victory! 
We're covering the Animal Kingdom right now and using a bit of family tree style work to solidify the classes within that kingdom.  First it's divided into Vertebrates and Invertebrates and then it branches off from there.  He wants to do another big project for it so we will be diving a little more in depth into the 5 classes of the Animal Kingdom (fish, reptiles, mammals, amphibians and birds) and we'll finally be able to dig into some of the very large selection of old National Geographic magazines my parents gave us.
Once we make our little info package for each class in the animal kingdom, including examples and characteristics, we will hunt for photos to support each class by using the characteristics given to determine which class they belong to. 

Family Tree

 For Social Studies we were given a theme to work with and this month the kids will be showcasing their work on families.  It could be anything they want.  Mckenzie chose to do a family tree.  He's done a lot of work.  And he still has lots to do.  Thankfully his grampa has done a LOT of work before him so we had a lot of great resources to go to.  We looked a lots of different ways to display his family tree and he decided on the fan style.  My paternal side goes all the way back to the 1720's which of course Mckenzie thought was pretty cool. 

As well as just charting the names of our ancestors he is in the process of deciding who to profile - or tell a bit of their story.  Those people are marked with a star.  He's got a fantastically descriptive and detailed story written by his Great Grandmother of her life starting in the late 1800's.  It's a wonderful glimpse into the pioneer life for new immigrants. 

And as well as the names and profiles he wants to chart their movements from Country to Country - Indiana Jones Style. 

I think the final project may not be fully complete by Tuesday but we'll keep working on it and in the end it will be a real work of art.  Below you can see that he's done lots of the fan however we're just waiting on some info for the other side.  Very interesting and inspiring to hear the stories of our heritage. 

 The early stages of work.

 ********************************************************

Working on an art/painting project.  We used toilet paper rolls cut in half and flattened to create the shape.  He then painted to edge and stamped the paper, later filling in the colour. 

 We use these brownie points as a reward.  They can be for exceptional work, or even just a great effort.  They could be just for completing a full day of work.  Once we hit 100 points he'll get to make brownies. 

Below, in the blurry pictures we use paint swatch cards as book marks.  After each chapter he adds a sticky dot.  It's a fun way to mark progress although he doesn't need it as an incentive - he enjoys reading just for the sake of reading.  When he's done we put them on the wall and our goal by the year end is to have a whole rainbow of colours up there.  He's got 2 more in the works right now.