Horn Homeschool: Week 3

We had LOADS of fun studying airplanes last week. Especially fun because we took two field trips to see planes up close and personal. This week was enriching for me personally because I know virtually nothing about airplanes. It's gonna be hard to top airplane week!

Here's what we did:

Monday, September 6
* Reviewed long-a and "all" sounds by reading simple readers together (I read 1/2 and Chloe read 1/2)
* Handwriting page
* Annos math games
* Read two chapters in Dr. Doolittle

Tuesday, September 7
* Read several airplane books, identified parts of plane
* Made airplane models from balsa wood and popsicle sticks
* Read two biographies of the Wright brothers and also the book So you want to be an inventor?
* Airplane lunch and airplane spoons. Consisted of string cheese wrapped in salami for plane body, pepper strips for wings, carrot for tail. I taped "wings" on the kids' spoons so they could fly their yogurt into their mouths.
* Handwriting page
* Math workbook page
* Annos math games
* Taught "air" words, wrote on the blackboard and Chloe made a guessing game for me using "air" words
* Matched rhyming words from two columns on the blackboard using long-a and "all" words
* Watched "There Goes a Plane" dvd
* Finished reading Dr. Doolittle
* Sang and listened to "I'll Fly Away"

Wednesday, September 8
* Reviewed "air" words
* Reviewed vocabulary words: biography, inventor
* FIELD TRIP: Military Air Preservation Society Museum. I impulsively threw the kids in the van for this impromptu field trip. It was perfect for our little crew! This small museum was a gem! Run by retired volunteers, the place was nearly deserted and all the older gents got quite a kick out of my active kiddos. We even got a personal tour guide who patiently answered my very dumb questions. :) It was a fairly hands-on museum -- the kids especially enjoyed playing in the gondola (passenger part of a blimp) and manning the anti-aircraft gun.
* Taught "air" combination words (i.e. airplane, staircase, hairball)
* Constructed rubber band airplanes and flew them outside (These cheap little wind-up propeller plane kits were great! Chloe got LOTS of practice counting to 100 as she wound up her plane's propeller.)

Thursday, September 9
Took the day off to pick apples with friends

Friday, September 10
* Read blimp, helicopter, and hot air balloon books -- compared and contrasted these with airplanes
* Suitcase number activity. Since one of the kindergarten objectives is for students to know their number words, I labeled 10 suitcases/bags with the number words from 1-10. Then Chloe and Clive (mostly Chloe) filled the suitcases with the correct number of items. They also put the bags in numerical order. Lots of addition and subtraction was involved in this simple activity, not just counting. Often Chloe would lose track of what she had already placed in a suitcase so she'd recount and I'd ask her a few questions to help her figure out how many more or fewer things she needed to match the number label.
* Airplane/airport game. Chloe and I worked all afternoon setting up an airport. We made tickets, boarding passes, luggage tags, set up a metal detector, ticket counter and created seat assignments. I can not even begin to tell you how much learning went on during this fun activity! Chloe typed our address and phone number for the luggage tags (practice reciting information), she wrote and cut out the tickets (handwriting, spelling, writing monetary values), wrote names on each luggage tag (reviewed spelling family names, wrote proper titles such as Dr. and Mrs.), grouped and organized luggage tags, creatively used household items to construct a (non-working) metal detector. After dinner we led Matt & Clive through the airport process and ended by showing an in-flight movie on the "plane" complete with snacks.
* 9/11 history. In the process of setting up the metal detector, Chloe asked me why such devices are needed. It was the perfect opportunity for me to tell Chloe a little about 9/11.

Saturday, September 11
* Kent State Aviation Heritage Air Show