Week 20 - January 29 - February 4

Language Arts: Nathan continues to LOVE reading Hardy Boys. Every time we go to the library he orders 5 more books! He heard many chapters from The Swiss Family Robinson. In spelling Nate is enjoying Spelling City. He finds it really helps him learn his new words in a fun way. He is really learning many new words quickly. Nate watched some movies including Shrek, Gilligan’s Island, and Heartland.

Math: Nate completed Lessons 12C, 12D, 12E, and 12F. He watched the DVD Lesson 13 and really enjoyed learning how to do a factor tree to find the prime factors. He did lessons 13A and 13B. We did some internet research and found out about Eratosthenes – 275 – 194 BC who created a “sieve” to filter out prime factors so Nate made a prime number chart to find out the prime numbers from 1 – 100! We also played Battleship and Uno and of course Nate keeps score! Nate and I played some addition, multiplication, and fraction games on the iPad.

Science: On Sunday, January 29, 2012 Google had an interesting page. It was the 125th anniversary of the largest snowflake recorded in history. So that sparked an interest in researching snowflakes! Very interesting information!!!

Social Studies: We are continuing our Viking study. Nate built a Viking ship from Lego complete with Lego people walking the plank. Viking means PIRATE!!!

He also did some excellent mapwork, added to our Book of Centuries about Vikings, Leif the Lucky, and Viking ships. He completed pages 4 – 9 in Canada Map Book 6 which looks at the history of Canada. Nate used his iPad to research about L’Anse aux Meadows the Viking settlement in Newfoundland which is now a UNESCO heritage site. We also enjoyed building a paper ship model and home of a Viking. Nate and I also played a couple of Viking games that we made from the Discovering Canada Series book – Vikings. He did some review questions and a cross word puzzle about Vikings.

Other stuff: Nate enjoyed playing with his Etch-a-Sketch – pre-curser to the iPad? Nathan enjoyed an overnight trip to the cabin with his dad and brother.

iPad: Nate uses his iPad for many purposes. When we find a word or animal that we don’t know from The Swiss Family Robinson we look it up on the iPad. We play math games. Nate does a lot of research for science and social studies. And of course, he just has fun playing games. His new favourite is Cars 2 which his sister downloaded onto his iPad for him.

PE: Nate was an outside guy this week. The new snowfall was wet so he was able to create some wonderful snow sculptures. Nate made a huge snowman all by himself.

He also made a snow fort with Sarah. Nate even rode his bike in the snow! He stacked wood, did chores with his dad that includes opening water and feeding the critters.