February Week Two Plans!

I can't believe the first week of February is already over! As long as the days seem sometimes the time still seems to fly by.

We had lots of fun this past week learning about Chinese New Year, earthworms, groundhogs, and bubble gum. (Although we didn't get to make our wormery. I realized February probably isn't the best time to study worms! We will revisit them in the spring!)

This next week has some pretty interesting national days that I'm looking forward to, Here's an overview: (Link to PDF under picture)

(Click the file below for the PDF version with clickable links)

February Weekly Plans (2).pdf

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I can't tell you how much I love using these national days as part of our "curriculum." There are so many interesting topics that I would never even think about otherwise and this week is a perfect example of that.

I'm a firm believer in lots and lots of exposure to all sorts of facts and ideas and topics while the kids are little and their brains are sponges. We don't study anything to the point of mastery, but we just talk about lots of things to create little mental "pegs" in their minds on which information can be "hung" for when they are expected to learn about those same things in more depth later. This is exactly the goal of the first four years of learning in the classical model and why they call this the grammar stage. It's all about building a firm foundation and protecting the love of learning.

With that in mind...

Monday is Periodic Table Day! Even though the boys are only three and five, they can still learn about the elements and what the periodic table is. In fact, we encountered the periodic table when we visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science a few weeks ago, so they already have a prior experience with it. Connor even participated in one of the interactive exhibits where you could combine molecules and he learned what H2O means!

We will read through this book and talk about where we see the different elements in our everyday lives.

Tuesday is National Boy Scouts Day. Connor is actually in Cub Scouts this year so this is pretty exciting! Although I don't have a particular book about how the Boy Scouts came to be, we will read about it online and look through some old handbooks my mom found at an antique sale.

Tuesday is also National Iowa Day. Each Tuesday a new state if featured and we use this as a basis for our map study. I'll do a separate post on that soon.

It's also National Kite Flying Day. We will be reading Curious George Flies a Kite and making some paper kites and some plastic bag kites. Hopefully the weather will cooperate, but luckily kites can be "flown" indoors if needed. We will also be reading some kite poems at snack time.

Wednesday is National Toothache Day and February is actually National Children's Dental Health Month, so this is the perfect introduction. We will be reading these books and pulling out any other tooth-related books we can find to add to our reading pile for the month:

Wednesday is also National Pizza Day. I plan to make some mini pizzas for lunch or snack, but we may just end up ordering pizza for dinner and calling it a day! Ha!

Thursday is National Umbrella Day. And THIS is the kind of day I just love! I mean, who would have ever thought to stop and give some thought to umbrellas?! But this is actually a really interesting topic! Our lives would surely be different without umbrellas and they have been around longer than you would think!

We will look into the history of the umbrella and have some fun with little cocktail umbrellas in our drinks during the day. Our read aloud is going to be this book about how a gentleman brought the idea of men carrying umbrellas to London and actually made them fashionable. This is exactly the kind of book I would never think about or choose on my own and it even comes with a history of the umbrella section at the back! And just look at that vocabulary in the title! Yay!

Thursday is also National Cream Cheese Brownie Day, so of course we will be making some! ;)

Friday is National Peppermint Patty Day (yum!) and National Inventors Day. This day actually celebrates Thomas Edison's birthday, so even though there are lots of inventors we could focus on, we will be reading a book about Edison first.

And because we had talked about the invention of umbrellas on Thursday, the boys' brains will already be primed to thinking about inventions. We have other books about inventions and inventors we will pull out if they are interested. I know we will have some very interesting conversations!

I hope you were able to find something interesting or useful for you or your family! What fun things will you be doing next week? I'd love to hear!