Xx-Fox

This week we learned the letter Xx. It's never really occurred to me before that there aren't words in the English language that really begin with the X /ks/ sound. Words that begin with 'X' like "xylophone" do not make the true x sound they say /ex/ not /ks/.  So our theme for the week and all of our worksheets used words that end with the X. This was a little bit confusing to Boo, but I guess it's the only solution to the problem. We learned about foxes this week. In most children's stories the fox is a sly deceitful character. For whatever reason they have this reputation. We compared Satan to a lying fox who's intent is to decieve and destroy us. We talked about how God wants us to be wise and know what His word says, so that we will not be fooled by Satan's lies. Our words to remember were, "God's word makes me wiser than my enemies."

For our story time this week we read books with a sneaky fox as one of the characters. When I mentioned a sly fox both Boo and Sis immediately said "Mr. Tod!" (from Peter Rabbit). A while back I scored a 384 page book "The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter," at Goodwill for $0.50! I hadn't opened it before now, so I pulled it off our shelf and we read the story of Jamima Puddle duck. About a duck who is tricked by a fox into laying her eggs in his shed. We also read the story of "The Gingerbread Man," who's pride ends up getting him eaten by a tricky fox.

 We learned that foxes, dogs, and wolves are all part of the same animal family. Then we made a chart comparing foxes and dogs. (Sis helped us with this one) They tried think of similarities and differences between foxes and dogs. I wrote them on the chart I made. The last one cracked me up."dogs bark or howl" but "What does the fox say?" My kids are crazy! Then Boo preceded to answer the question by dancing around singing! (For those who don't know that is a super annoying song that makes kids go nuts.)


I found this simple craft on Pinterest for our words to remember craft. We made a fox using hearts. I taught Boo how to fold your paper into to make a heart. I drew the heart halves and she cut them out. It was good cutting practice.  Then we glued him together and wrote our words to remember on the back.

One of the last things we did this week was talk about animal habitats. Boo had an activity where she had to separate pictures of animals into 3 groups: water animals, sky (I accidentally wrote air..opps!) and land animals. I made 3 separate pages for her to glue them to.

We ended up only having a 4 day week for our X unit because Friday happened to be Boo's 100th day of school!! So we had our 100 day celebration, which I will write a separate blog about.

Sis Highlight:

Sis finally finished learning about the war of 1812 and that time period. Now we will be moving on to pioneer days. She also gave her very first oral report! I gave her an assignment to take notes of things she would like to include in her report. Then I left her alone to work on writing what she wanted to say. I did not expect her reaction! Sis is one who loves to feel "grown up" and loves to write stories. She wants to be an artist and a writer someday. Apparently this sounded like a real big kid assignment to her. She got so excited. She worked on it for about 20 mins. Then to my surprise I found her working on it before bed that night and again then next morning before breakfast! She ended up with almost 4 pages and I didn't help her with any of it! I didn't check her spelling or grammar, because this was for history. I was more concerned about content and showing what she had learned. She presented her report orally in front of the whole family. She did an excellent job! I was surprised at how well worded her report was, and how much info she had actually retained. She included an overview of the American Revolution in the introduction. It showed me that she has gained a good understanding of the American Revolution and the War of 1812 this year. I'm so proud of her.