Qq- Quail

This week we learned the letter Qq and about Quail. We read the story of the Israelites when they complained about the manna in the desert and God sent quail. We learned that because of their ungrateful hearts and their refusal to listen to God, many of them died. We talked a lot about giving thanks, and how it is the opposite of complaining. We also read several stories about people like Paul and Silas, who gave thanks in the midst of trials rather than grumbling. Boo's words to remember this week were "I don't grumble or complain; I give thanks."

I didn't have any books about quail so we looked at some pictures online. I found some info on this website below. I just summarized and told Boo the bits of info that I thought she would find interesting. 

Quail Info

Since quail are birds. We made a bird feeder out of an empty gallon water jug. We just cut a hole and Boo decorated it with stickers. We'll add a string to hang it by too. Simple huh? There's still snow on the ground so we'll wait a couple more weeks before we buy bird seed and try it out.


We also used our bird book to look at the names of different kinds of birds (this book is also used in 2nd grade Adventures and is sold on the MFW website.) We didn't read the whole book. Just looked at the names and pictures of the birds.

We read the peom "All Things Bright and Beautiful" by Cecil Francis Alexander. I've always loved this poem and it brought back memories because we sang the song in choir in high school. I was excited to share it with my girls. After reading the poem 2 days in a row Boo drew an illustration to go along with it. We also watched this Youtube video so that the girls could hear the poetry put to music and learn the song.

I introduced Boo to simple subtraction this week. So far she's only had a light intro to addition and been working through her Math U See Primer. She's been doing pretty well with it, which is a huge difference from the first half of the year when she was struggling to even recognize numbers 1-10!

Sis Highlight:

Sis is only about 3 weeks from finishing up her 3rd grade math and 4th grade spelling!! It always feel so good to finish up some subjects for the year so that our school days are shorter and we can concentrate more on other things. We're a little bit behind schedule in science, so I have a feeling once we finish up with a few of the other things we will be fitting in some extra long science lessons and more experiments. One of the cool things we did this week was make an Indian tepee! We are still learning about pioneers and the 1850's. We read Kirsten learns a lesson about when Kirsten meets an Indian girl. She gets to visit the tribe and even go inside of a real tepee. We learned a little about Indians and then Sis build a t-pee. It was a slow project that took 3 days of letting wood glue dry and putting it all together but Sis really enjoyed this one.

The finished product!