Libby took her first test in English this week. She was a little concerned that she wouldn't do well. I don't know why she passed and the only mistakes were in her writing that has to do with her dyslexia so we don't count that.

This week we will be studying vampire myths and folklore and also vampire bats. We will compare the two and see what they have in common. today was the start of our talks on vampire bats and vampires. Liberty started off writing down what she knew about vampire bats and what myths she already knew about vampires. Teyla and Landon helped out with this too. We then started our talks on vampire bats. The first thing we talked about were how bats use their sense of smell and hearing to find their babies in a nursery that has over 500 babies in it and only having one baby to find. To demonstrate this. I glued 500 cotton balls on to a piece of paper. I then took 3 bats made out of construction paper and put vanilla, almond or lemon extract on them and gave one bat to each kid. I then put blind folds on the kids, while they were smelling their mommy bat I put lemon, vanilla, and almond extract on 9 cotton  bats. Liberty, Teyla, and Landon each had a turn to swoop into the bat nursery and find their bats, they each had 3 bats to find.

After each mommy bat found all 3 of their baby bats by using only their sense of smell we talked about how real vampire bats use not only their sense of smell but also their sense of hearing. So to demonstrate this we talked about how mommy bats and baby bats communicate by a series of clicks. I sent Liberty and Teyla into the front room. Liberty was the mommy bat and Teyla was the baby bat, they had to come up with their series of clicks. Landon and I did the same thing. I being the mommy bat and Landon being the baby We then headed outside. Liberty and I put blindfolds on Teyla and Landon flew around making their series of clicks while Liberty and I made our clicks and flew around trying to find them. After each of us found our babies we talked about which was easier using both senses or by using just the sense of smell.

Tomorrow we will be talking about how they use vibrations and talk about sound waves, we will also be discussing more on their amazing hearing. We will also start talking more about Vampires and the folklore behind them. Hopefully we will make an origami  Dracula and we also have a bat cave we are suppose to construct.

We are doing are regular work too, English, math, reading, spelling, and some Heritage studies, we are not doing our science curriculum and only a little Heritage studies because I'm counting our Vampire and vampire bat study in their places. 

Teyla is doing really well in reading. I'm very proud of her. She has been reading short stories in her reading book all on her own.  In math she is working on picture graphs and also her numbers 10 through 20. Her English goes along with her reading, she is working on sight words here, the, love, this and all color words. She still seems to enjoy school and works hard.

Liberty's is working on place values in the thousands right now. She really struggled last year with  place value with math u see, but seems to be picking it up with out any problems. In fact she flew through today's assignment without any problems. In reading we are cruising right along. We have been doing exercises that are suppose to help her brain to recognize letters and words correctly. I honestly have to say I think they are truly working. She still has her problems, but not as often and she doesn't seem to get as frustrated as she use to. 

Landon does school when he feels like it, which is most days. He is working on his letter and numbers also on following directions and making pictures out of  geometric shapes.

I am really proud of the kids and how hard they work. It isn't always smooth and we have our rough days but all in all I think this year has been a pretty good one so far.