Week In Review 9-25-08

[MamaMary]

Ok Girls,

What was YOUR week Like?

You can post:

a- A picture
b- A blog Link
c- A written synopsis
d- Your favorite memory
e- Anything you want that shares your HOD excitement!

Important Note: If you are linking us to your blog, please make sure it's not just a general link, but to your specific post of HOD. That way if someone reads through these a year from now they can find your share without needing to hunt!

[MamaMary]

We had a wonderful week, but it went totally different than I had planned. I had made the big decision to take my two younger boys to "Little Hearts". I had planned out our week, tabbed all the books and yet my heart yearned for "Beyond". We are just too far in to stop. I need to finish the story. I could tell the boys were happy with this. I think next year I will go back and do "Little Hearts" with my two younger boys, but this year I am going to finish up "Beyond". Since we had a major 8 week interruption I decided to go back to the week I was working on prior to stopping. I hadn't been able to do a lot of the activities and it gave us time to do review.


Our Science Experiment from "Beyond". We learned about how oil floats, but when you add salt, the salt makes the oil heavier so that it sinks. Being a Betty I messed up the experiment the first time. Rather than following the directions I thought to myself, "More is better" and had too much oil. So it didn't sink even with a TON of salt They had a ball doing this experiment:






Pictures of the Mayflower

[Marie1225]

Well this is our 5th week of using Beyond and it was great! We had a lot of fun with the tulip in the flower pot art project in unit 5 associated with the history reading this week. I even made one Usually during history and sometimes science I let the boys sketch, paint, or use playdough, just whatever medium is appropriate. I find they pay attention more. Sometimes I'll even notice the same idea I have is there later for an activity that Carrie has picked out, which is kind of neat! Today my older son started the Preparing to Build English series from Rod and Staff. I like the simplicity of it.

My largest complaint, which has nothing to do with the HOD curriculum is that I'm running over my time limit. I suppose if we're all having fun, then I shouldn't look at it as going over, but rather quality time being spent with my children. This is my second year homeschooling and I still feel that need to fit everything in each day. I suppose its self doubt and not being completely de-schooled yet.

This week I have to admit was the first week that we followed the activities with the poetry. The other weeks we did day one, and the other days we just read it together. Everything was really fun, the picture drawing, as well as the cutting and putting back together. The boys and I both enjoyed it. I really love poetry. I am happy to see it as a part of the curriculum. I write poetry, and I wanted to teach it last year, but wasn't sure how to implement it. Today I found a neat website: http://www.poetryteachers.com/ in case anyone is interested.

Thanks for letting me share! God bless!

[gracelikerain]

We finished up unit 4 in Preparing & it was fun...even though we had a bad cold traveling around my family! So, we did'nt get to do the map project but thats ok. The girls love decorating their poetry each week & that is good cause it helps expand our minds in an area that I like but I am not good in. I'm finding the history readings quite challenging...in a good way for my 11dd. I have to explain a lot more to my 8dd but I figure she will still get lots out of it. Especially vocabulary. Even in our Bible reading/verses. I am just glad she asks me, "hey mom, what does that mean?" My dd11 gets frustrated & says, "mom, just get the dictionary out & give it to her!" LOL! So, now I am teaching 11dd to be respectful of her siblings even when you are frustrated! Always learning!
Hope to post pictures soon!

[trustinghim]

WOW we have had a great first week

I loved it, and so did the kids. DH and I cannot believe how much they learned, it was so much fun!!

But even more than what they learned, was the fun we all had together. I love being with my children, but often don't really know how to fill the time with meaningful fun things. This week, I think the biggest blessing was how much fun we had as a family, and the memories that were created and lived.

So many times this week, I found myself thanking God for Carrie, and the great ideas He has inspired her with. Carrie if you are reading this, know that our prayers are with you and your family as you do this amazing ministry to serve and bless other homeschooling families

So after almost a year of homeschooling, I have had my most productive, fun, consistant week.

"chat" soon

Love Deb

[MamaMary]

I love being with my children, but often don't really know how to fill the time with meaningful fun things. This week, I think the biggest blessing was how much fun we had as a family, and the memories that were created and lived.

Deb! This is a GREAT testimony..., I agree.

[MamaMary]

We finished up unit 4 in Preparing & it was fun...even though we had a bad cold traveling around my family! So, we did'nt get to do the map project but thats ok. The girls love decorating their poetry each week & that is good cause it helps expand our minds in an area that I like but I am not good in. I'm finding the history readings quite challenging...in a good way for my 11dd. I have to explain a lot more to my 8dd but I figure she will still get lots out of it. Especially vocabulary. Even in our Bible reading/verses. I am just glad she asks me, "hey mom, what does that mean?" My dd11 gets frustrated & says, "mom, just get the dictionary out & give it to her!" LOL! So, now I am teaching 11dd to be respectful of her siblings even when you are frustrated! Always learning!
Hope to post pictures soon!

Georgette, I am so sorry you guys have been sick I love it though that Preparing is working so well. Everytime I see your beautiful name I get this big smile on my face. I can't wait to see the pictures my friend...., Mary

[Carrie]

Mary,

I think that going on with Beyond is a good decision. It seems like it's a good fit for your little sweeties, and they look like they are enjoying it so much. It's good to have you back.

Marie,

I'm so glad that you had a good week! Your tulip pictures turned out much prettier than ours ever did! I love having the poetry integrated for me too! My boys have become lovers of poetry. I've developed a love for it too, which is surprising, since I never was exposed to it or enjoyed it before!

I'll just merge this part of the thread with the other weekly review, as I think both you sweet ladies started one this week! Thanks for sharing!

Georgette,

I'm so sorry you've been fighting colds this week at your house. That is no fun! It sounds like you are settling into Preparing and your kiddos are stretching to meet the upped level of readings found in that guide. You'll find that your kiddos will grow so much throughout this year. The beginning of a new curriculum always requires growth and adjustment. We always have this phase at our house too!

Deb,

I'm so blessed that you had a joyful week of sharing fun times and making memories with your kiddos. I am a planner at heart, and I love the fact that the HOD guides plan for me to do those projecty things with my kiddos. Otherwise, I'd miss out on the memory making part of it too!

Taffy,

It looks as if we were posting at the same time! I'm so glad your little sweeties are enjoying LHTH and Beyond. My boys loved the readings in Beyond. My little ones enjoyed every bit of LHTH too! Your sharing brought back wonderful memories for me. We're currently heading into doing Preparing and LHFHG (along with my 7th grader doing his own version of our new ancients guide and my 2 year old tagging along)!

Blessings,
Carrie

[tafania]

What a fun week. This was our first week and we LOVE it!! I love how the LHTH and Beyond work together. My 3 year old has learned the Bible text and the "Storm" poem even better then his sister!! For LHTH He loved running his car on the letter 'A'. Another highlight for him was finding patterns and colors around our house.Probably his favorite part has been the action songs!!

Emilie has love Beyond. It takes only about 1 1/2 to 2 hours a day for us to finish. The history is all I asked for and more. Both kids listened attentively to the story of Catalina and Pedro. Timmy even asked for more. I start the day with Bible and end it with the science or art/history portion. We have so much fun that Christopher often joins us as well! (18 months old)

When I figure out how to post pics on here I will!

THe only trouble we are running into is that I cannot find "Squanto" or "Floss" anywhere! My original idea was to get them from the library but they only have one copy at the downtown branch and it is checked out. None of the book stores have it either....so off to Amazon I go and we will have to wait even longer!

I am proud of Emilie though, she started on chapter books this week and is doing to well!!

Have a great weekend everyone!

HUGS
Taffy

[gracelikerain]

Carrie,
I am so glad you told me about the learning phase. I tend to forget about that part!! With all the posts I read about how other kids just seem to breeze through their work or they add in more stuff to challenge them, I start wondering if my kids are behind in some way. I know I shouldn't compare & I know better but the thoughts creep in there!
Another sweet lady mentioned once how her dc were just plain average learners & I thought phew I am not alone!! LOL!
I could easily see how your guides can meet the needs of the older spectrum....even with out all the extensions. Which are great....BTW. (I am learning so much too!)

Thanks for all of your hard work & your personal attention to us. I really appreciate it. You are like family & i need that.

Blessings,

[Kathleen]

Ahhh! A wonderful week of homeschooling...and FREE TIME to read about your weeks and share ours with you!!

Last week our family had a wonderful trip to Colorado to enjoy the mountains. It was so fun to be together ALL week (without my hard-working husband having to do any chores!! ) and to be able to hike, hike, hike and take in all the beautiful mountain scenery. It's so majestic and awe-inspiring. (I did mention to my husband and in-laws how much "happier" I think the dairy cows would be in that cool, dry mountain air... For now we're staying in Kansas though. )


We were all genuinely glad to be home though, too. Grant and I were excited to dig back into Bigger. He told me every day this week how much he really likes school this year. In his words, "The things you read to me, mom, are really interesting. I'm learning lots of new things. AND, I really like the fun things we do. Now I'm not jealous of Allison anymore. You did a good job picking out our school books." I think he's figured out what's expected of him as we go through our days, and he's quit dawdling! Hmmm...this makes it so that his work is done more quickly and it's much better quality and he has more free time. I'm so glad he figured that one out and we're into our groove!!

We ablsolutely loved making our Indian Sand Art painting. Grant's favorite part was making the "sand" from salt and food coloring.

Our finished product (an archery target for the Indians to use ) didn't end up "frame quality" but he loved the process even though the colors blurred together when he was doing it. (We may have to try this one again for fun!!)

We've finished up One Small Square" Seashore. His favorite notebook page so far is the one where he's drawn examples from the seashore of the parts of the Animal Kingdom. He put a lot of effort into it!


We've started "Adventure" books for storytime and DITHOR this week. Grant loved rolling the dice to figure out which character/setting/plot our storytime book was going to be about. We're reading Guns for General Washington for storytime, so Will & Henry Knox are in the dangerous mountain wilderness and they need more guns. He's started Stone Fox for DITHOR.

The science experiment using glitter as "germs" is brilliant!! I didn't get any pics of it, but I think we're going to have to redo it and include the younger 2. I think the lightbulb went off as to why mom says to wash with soap. (Maybe I won't be reapeating myself quite as much. You know..."Did you wash your hands?" "Yep." "With soap?" Child turns around and goes back to the bathroom... )

My younger 2 really enjoyed finishing Unit 4 of LHTH this week. Here we're pretending to be Jacob and "hopping" to Rachel. It's a LONG ways and the idea was to do shorter, farther hops, etc. (We did this several times!)


We almost had a major crisis this week, because on "Tape Day" , the masking tape was nowhere to be found. We had to postpone until the next day, when, thankfully it surfaced on an obscure shelf in the dining room. Whew! Allison loved tiptoeing nicely aroud the D and jumping off saying "d". Garret took the racecar approach.


They loved acting out Jacob wrestling with the angel. They gave up on using the stuffed animals and decided to try it in real life. (No one was injured either! )


We had more fun with the letter D... I love all the varied activities that you have for learning the letter shapes, Carrie! They're so fun...and I don't have to try to be creative during our busy homeschool days. Here we're gluing pasta on big "D's" and making them in pudding. (Ok...Garret's just licking up pudding. )


And...one final activity. We had so much fun "wrestling" the balloon back and forth. We let Grant join us for this since he's proved to be so dilligent with his time this week! It was much harder to do without legs. (This went with the story of Jacob wrestling the angel, and the angel touching his leg so it was harder to use...)


I know that I've totallly overloaded y'all with pictures again...but I couldn't resist trying to show a some of the fun week we've had. I know it's a blessing to ENJOY school! HOD really makes every day fun and memorable!

(Now I need to reread this post and see if I made any sense. My hubby called and needed me to make a bunch of phone calls for him, and then the younger 2 woke up from their naps...bye-bye free time...I think I started this post about and hour and a half ago! But it's been a joy to come back to and finish!)

Kathleen

[inHistiming]

Well, I have finally begun to gain some energy back...and this week we started each school day 'on time', which is at 8:30-8:45 a.m. Though we did not actually finish everything for the week, getting started earlier helped me feel like we actually did accomplish enough! We had co-op today, and we were going to finish the couple of things we had left after that, then go grocery shopping. However, it turned out that I had cleaning duty ( I had not looked at the schedule closely enough) and we did not get any school work or grocery shopping done today. Oh well, life happens! It was nice to be able to serve in this way to insure that our co-op day runs smoothly...and the kids behaved really well, which was very encouraging. Overall, the new schedule I created worked well this week, and I anticipate it going even better next week. We will be starting Unit 5 on Monday..woohoo!!

Something we really enjoyed this week, and I thought showed exactly how much we've learned, was doing the acrostice with the name POCAHONTAS. Here is what we came up with...it was a cooperative effort between myself, dd, and ds.

Pretty Indian girl
Obedient
Called John Smith her brother
Across the sea she went
Helped the settlers by bringing them food
Open communication with the settlers of Jamestown
Needed her father to pay her ransom
Taken prisoner by a Jamestown resident (Captain Argall, it turns out...we couldn't remember!)
Asked her father not to kill John Smith
Stayed in Jamestown to marry John Rolfe

I learned something this week...I always thought that Pocahontas married John Smith...turns out it was John Rolfe! Who knew?!

We had fun doing our experiments in Science....we learned what happens to regular and salt water when the sun shines on it. We also learned how a river makes it's path and where the source, mouth , riverbank, and riverbed is located. The kids enjoyed making their columns with the mollusks and drawing each one, as well as learning about bivalves and univalves.

We had another great Bible Study and verse this week...and the character trait is important..trustworthiness. This is something we've struggled with in our home and I was glad to see that it was covered during our study. It's so great to be able to get them thinking about these things...and that I don't have to come up with the questions and ideas on my own!

We are moving ahead in English and Math quite quickly. I am wondering, though, if doing 2 lessons a day is adding too much to our day. If we still don't finish the things we want to get to this week, I may have to think about slowing them down a bit.

We will finish reading Phillis Wheatley on Monday...then we will begin Come On, Seabiscuit! for our storytime selection. We have all enjoyed getting to know Phillis and The Wheatleys, and I feel sure we will have a great time learning about little Seabiscuit, too.

That's about it for our week. I hope to post pictures of what we're doing, eventually, but we still can't find the cable we use to transfer pictures from the camera to our computer. Once we do, I'll post some pictures.

On other thing...we did the graham cracker continents this week, and the kids loved it. My 5 yo also joined in...he made Texas! Anyway, we had seen somone else's pictures on here a week or two ago from when they did it, and when the kids learned Thursday was the day we were doing it they were so excited! They did a great job, and had fun too. Thanks, Carrie, for all the great activities in your guides!

I'm looking forward to reading more about everyone else's week.

[water2wine]

It was great to read all your weeks review and see all the pictures of your beautiful children. I need to do more pictures of school time. But we did have just such a happy HOD week I had to check in with you all. First it was happy because we actually are doing HOD again. We are so glad to be back doing HOD. This year is a four day a week HOD schedule and our fifth day is Bible, nature/science. I really like it this way. I have ideas about Bible study that I want to do with my kids that I just can't let go of and really love how it all works in with HOD. We are planing on doing the NT this year or at least a huge chunk. I am aiming for the entire thing but Revelation light. We do still do HOD Bible every day though BTW because we love it and who could skip that.

Anyway we are back to LHFHG and BHFHG. We just had some amazing moments. It was all the stuff that flowed from HOD. In LHFHG, Reddy Fox had us having a very nice talk about how Jesus wants us to love our enemies and that tied into Joseph in the Bible lesson of HOD as well. We had that Reddy Fox showing us also how sometimes when you are not wise that can follow you and have many lasting things that just keep coming up over and over again. And why God wants us to have wisdom. And my girls just went wild over the fact that I remembered all the special little voices we had for the animals last year in the story time. I just love LHFHG my little girls just get so much joy out of it.

With Bigger We got into some talks about how it is not good for parents to favor one child over the other and what happens in that (that actually led to the decision that I would take one child out every other week alone for us time because some jealousy was confessed that sometimes I take the little ones more, I assure you that is a safety issue because dh is out of control and never grew up but it was great that it got confessed and cleared up ). Also the character of Joseph that whatever he did he did it for the Lord no matter what his circumstances were. It gave us an opportunity to discuss how God has to know that He can trust us in little things and that we always have integrity no matter our circumstances before He can trust us with great and bigger things. It also led into a another thing we are doing on our fifth day that is basically going into what does it really mean to live for Christ. I love how HOD weaves into even our unrelated things. It just always fits. Pocahontas showed us love that lays down her life for a friend much like Jesus did for us so we had a long talk about that. And also her true friendship that she displayed no matter what.

We had some amazing unrelated lessons that were completely spontaneous but totally blessed and what I love about them is we were still able to complete school and have them. One was on how do they test for a level of protein in your body. It actually in a way stemmed from HOD and how they are asked to guess what will happen in science before they do experiments sometimes, a protein that I needed tested in my body and 10 years in the lab. And in that we had a long talk on all the assumptions that are made when you are testing for a protein (ie has it degraded or is it hiding by being bound to something else). It was just this amazing science moment. Just by asking the question how do you do it and how do you know your results are real. That was one long unrelated talk that we had and still finished our day. It all started from the question being asked about why try to guess ahead on an experiment like HOD has you do and how guessing ahead helps you find your assumptions in the experiment and ultimately helps you understand your results and have results that really mean something.

Other even more unrelated lessons (and even longer) was some questions on what will happen when Jesus returns and how will we know Him. How will we recognize the anti christ and are we close to those times. Now this may sound heavy and it is. I was wondering how and if we would cover this if at all this year in our Bible reading. (the added story is I opened up the book of Revelation when I was young and it took until I was 25 to open the Bible again because it scared me so bad) I guess God knew my fears and He completely took care of it before we were anywhere near it. I simply was answering questions my kids had. I have an unspoken rule about Bible study and that is there is nothing that you can't ask or challenge when we do it. It just turned into the most amazing talk about how do we recognize Jesus in each other, the fruits of the Spirit and how important it is to really allow the Holy Spirit to guide us so that we are not led astray. It was not scary and in fact it was very uplifting. We connected it right back to HOD's Bible lesson that was on being trustworthy and how do we know someone is trustworthy and why do we want to be trustworthy. It was a blessing. It was a completely unplanned hour and a half blessing that still allowed us to finish our day when we were done. What I loved was we had the freedom to discuss where God was taking us. Never would have I indulged them the way I did answering these completely unrelated questions that seemed to have no relation, if I felt we were going to not finish our day. And we would have missed an amazing blessing that came from having just answered a few seemingly unrelated questions and indulged them. I love that we can have Spirit led homeschool in that we have the time and still have the organization that I so need. It has been like God just has His hand on us with HOD, literally every side character or Bible lesson I have on my agenda to do just because I am teaching my kids The Word and His Ways always correlate and are supported by HOD and I never see it ahead of time. I just feel like there is so much to teach and so little time that we actually have their heart to teach. If I did not have HOD I do not know how I would actually accomplish it.

So we had a great week. Sorry for the long check in, the good news is I usually just read all of yours rather than report ours.

[Carrie]

Georgette,

I'm so glad that my words were an encouragement! Whenever we begin a new guide, there is an adjustment period. It's good for the kiddos to have to stretch and grow into a new guide as it means they're learning new skills (which often isn't easy)! But, it's very rewarding in the long run!

Kathleen,

I loved all of your pictures! I'm so glad that your little Grant is settling in and enjoying his school year! His Animal Kingdom picture turned out so well! I always have to smile at the contrast between your younger 2 kiddos too! It's fun to see Allison doing LHTH, as I just get the boy version at our house!

inHistiming,

I loved your Pocahontas acrostic! You came up with such wonderful details about her life. 3 heads together are better than 1! I'm excited for you to begin Come on Seabiscuit too. Ralph Moody is a terrific author. My boys loved that read-aloud so much. By the way, make sure you give yourself permission to slow down the English and Math to one assignment a day. It will help keep your day at a better length and keep your kiddos from wearing out!

water2wine,

I'd love to be a fly on the wall at your house for those great Bible discussions! Just getting a glimpse of your time with your kiddos is a blessing! I love seeing how your mind works and the wonderful connections that you make between life and the Bible. Thanks for sharing with us.

[holyhart]

I love reading about everyone's weeks, so much fun!

This is a little late, so I'll just post the link to the blog so you can read if you want to....http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/holyhart/597899/