Early American History, Time Telling, Reading Progress

The boys and I have been reading about early American History and also watching a few movies, too. We've learned about the Native Americans, how they got named Indians, about Pocahontas, John Smith, Jamestown, Christopher Columbus, William Bradford, how Colonial children lived, and on and on. I feel like I'm learning history for the first time right along with them. I just don't remember much of this from my childhood, so it is exciting. We are considering taking a trip at the end of the semester to Williamsburg and Jamestown.

Caleb has been learning how to tell time in Math. As a special treat, we bought a real clock to hang on the wall in his and his brothers' room. We put a sheep sticker next to the 8 so that he has a better idea of when it is time to go to sleep and when to wake up. We have been hearing the older two say, "Oh, its past my sheep!"

Caleb has been moving along with his Explode the Code online game and has been working in his Spectrum reading workbook. Today, we gave each of the older three a Reading Rabbit computer game in each of their own levels. We discovered an author we really like, Mo Willems. Mo both writes and illustrates very funny books. It has caused Caleb's reading to take off. One other thing that has helped is that Caleb found a Transformers book that is beyond his current reading level, but he really wants to read it and so has been working hard to figure out the words. Lots of progress here!

Lewis and Clark

We learned about Lewis and Clark's Expedition West today. We learned anout pioneers, settlers, and wagon trains. Then we found St. Louis and the Missouri River on our map. We also identified the Eastern USA and the Western USA.

sick day (just a normal day here)

Caleb and the rest of the family are sick and so if he had been attending regular school, he would have not gone today, but since he is schooled at home, it was just a normal day.
He continues to do Bible using "Family-Time Bible in Pictures", which the boys and I have really enjoyed. We're only about 1/3 of the way through, so we'll be using this for quite a long time. Each section has a couple questions following.
Then he does his Math U See work. Today he learned how to skip count by tens. We have gotten into a routine of doing 2 pages a day. If he gets anything wrong, I erase his answer and he reworks each problem until he gets each correct. If I notice he's not understanding something, we go back and review. He does one chapter lesson over the course of 3 days, usually.
Today we continued on with our history book, which we really like, as well. We are about 2/3 done with this book and so I'm on the outlook for what we will do after we complete it.

Thanksgiving Week

Mondays are our history days. We read a chapter and answer questions out of History for Little Pilgrims. It just so happened that this week's chapter talked about the first Thanksgiving! I did not plan this and was surprised when I realized where our chapter was leading. After we read our chapter, we watched a small portion of A New World to show what the ships, canoes, log homes, and teepees looked like.
Today Caleb learned how to jump rope with a long scarf. Perhaps we should look for a real jump rope!
We also visited a local farm today that had peacocks, goats, cows, and chickens.

The boys made dinner

We have dinner cooking in the crock pot. The older two put a family size can of mushroom soup, 2 cups of milk, and 1 lb. chopped chicken into the pot and placed it on low. Closer to dinner they'll add chopped broccoli.
We also learned about Martin Luther in our history book. We added "Luther" to our Netflix list.