Unit 1: SUN

We just finished the first unit! It was on the sun.

We learned that “Jesus is the Light of the World.”
Our letter is Ss.

 

We always start out each morning with circle time/calendar time. This consists of a prayer, Pledge of Allegiance, writing the day on the calendar, doing straws for the number of days we have been in school, working on the 100s chart by filling in the number of the school day we are on, learning sight words, and charting the weather. He is also learning American Sign Language for each letter.

To date, Ryder has learned 15 sight words!

These were our library books for this week.

 PHONICS

Ryder had several phonics and handwriting sheets to do this week.

 We went outside one morning and experimented with our shadows! Here the boys are hiding from their shadows.

 They found their shadows and are trying to run away from them!

 We did a sun-fading project.

 Our favorite read-aloud book this week was Moonbear's Shadow. Ryder had to illustrate two ways that Moonbear tried to get rid of his shadow.

  He also did a copywork page for the biblical concept of the unit.

 These next few pictures he drew things that started with the letter "s" and had to write the letter "s" several times under each picture.

 MATH

The main math curriculum is Abeka K5. He finished Lesson 34 this week. We also do the math portion of MFW as review. Ryder enjoyed the Cuisenaire Rods math activity.

SCIENCE

We did several science projects this week! Ryder's favorite... Making Raisins out of grapes! He has a chart that he fills out. He has 4 days left til the raisins are completely done, but by the end of the Sun unit, the grapes had started shriveling up! We discussed how raisins are made ~ Farmers pick grapes and place them on large trays outside in the sunlight. The sun is hot and so some of the water inside the grapes goes out of the grapes and into the air. This is why grapes wrinkle! They lose their round shape when some of the water is gone. 

We discussed Day and Night. I used a globe, flashlight, and a darkened room to demonstrate day and night. I showed Ryder where we live on the globe and I shined the flashlight (sun) on the United States to demonstrate day. I slowly rotated the globe until it became dark where we live. It was now night! We talked about how all the earth does not have day at the same time. 

We made a sundial! We discussed that the sun can be used to tell time. 

It was really hot one day so I put a few ice cubes on a plate outside. We discussed that the sun is so hot that it melts the ice into water!

Within 10 minutes the cubes were half melted!

MUSIC

Ryder listened to Tchaikovsky: Nutcracker Suite (Russian Dance). Both boys really enjoyed dancing around to the music!

BIBLE
We learned how Jesus lights our way.

 

Bible and Science are tied together. We learned from Science that the sun gives us light. The light from the sun helps us to see. Otherwise, we would stumble around and get lots of bumps and bruises. It is very hard to see in the dark! This helped us to understand the biblical concept for the week:

Jesus is the light of the world.
When we take time to read His Word and obey it, it gives us guidance and helps us do the right thing. We discussed that God speaks to us through the Bible. And we also talked about the story in the Bible of Jesus healing the Blind Man.