Oak Meadow First Grade, Week 1

We started off our first week with the holiday on Monday, a nice day at the railroad family day picnic. The families are invited to visit the 'carshop' and sit in an engine. Plenty of food and games for the kids. It was fun visiting Daddy at work. They are pictured here with my nephew.

We began our first week of Oak Meadow reviewing the capital and lowercase A, and the long and short A sounds. The fairy tale for this letter was 'The Magic Spindle', so I illustrated A on the board, using that story. He practiced writing the letters, next we will make a page for the Main Lesson Book (MLB).

We started the calendar making activity. I helped him use a T-square to draw the lines. It was a large one, but the only one we had handy. (A few blessings to a construction mess going on in the house!) We ended up using two pages of card stock. We have a few exciting events going on this month, so it will be fun to add to them the calendar.

Our first nature hike took us through our forest and around to Grandpa's yard.

The boys by an older Beech tree. As the tree matures and less and less sunlight filters through the canopy, the lower limbs eventually die off from that lack of sunlight.

We discussed deciduous trees and evergreen trees.

Here I illustrated the difference between two evergreen trees- Spruce (left) and Pine (right). A few differences noted by the boys were- shape and size of cones, and length of needles. I also pointed out the 'habit', that is, the overall growth shape of the tree, is different.

Honeylocust
Most definitely the thorned variety. Did you know this tree is basically a large pea plant?

This guy was found warming himself in a sunny spot.

These Milkweed pods were covered in red insects. The boys were assigned the task to research what they are, and why they like the milkweed.

I believe this to be 'Horsetail' - considered a living fossil.

Our blustery, balmy day took a quick turn later on. We had decided to add a visit to the reservoir into our nature hike this week. Not long after arriving, the wind kicked up and we were drenched all the way down to shoes full of water! At least it made for a memorable hike. LOL

The boys observed many grasshoppers, which led to a discussion of the skeleton being on body's exterior, what they eat, and how they have the ability to jump so far.