Week In Review 12-5-08

[my3sons]

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!

[my3sons]

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Even with the hustle and bustle of this busy season, I am still able to enjoy (and get done) our HOD each day. That is an incredible blessing for which I am thankful. Here's a few of our favorites (I had 16 pics and made myself downsize here ).

BLHFHG:
Riley is really understanding the process of math - mentally, not just on a rote "computation" level. This is due to the hands-on math written in the HOD guides to accompany the Singapore workbooks. Here we have some of our bunnies (cotton balls) in the cabbage patch, and some in the carrot patch. We add them to see how many all together. He loved this!



Riley was so proud of the shield he made. He liked the etching and the painting - I liked that it taught him more about God. He has played with it, and even baby brother oohs and ahhs over it.


PHFHG:
Wyatt made a long scroll for history. He wrote 2 Kings 19:32-34 on it so neatly in cursive, and it really helped him imagine scrolls and prophecies from Bible times better. I love how God's hand is shown through history in all of HOD's guides.



This dinosaur dig was a blast! We each drew a dinosaur on white paper with pencil. Then, we each cut up our dinosaurs in 12 pieces, mixed all of our pieces together, and had to try to put the 2 dinosaurs back together. It was tough work, and we put some of them together wrong. It really showed how difficult it is to properly reassemble fossils, when we aren't sure what the end product is supposed to look like, and it also showed that it is possible to accidentally put bones of 2 different animals together thinking they are from 1 animal.



So, what's going on with HOD in your homes this past week?
In Christ,
Julie

[Samuel'sMommy]

I loved your pictures Julie! We took last week off for Thanksgiving and started on Unit 8 of LHTH this week. I'll post pictures next week when we finish it up.

[wdworkman]

I haven't updated my blog lately because my digital camera was broken. My new one came in the mail yesterday, so I managed to post a couple today. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/wdworkman/628518/
We're officially on our Christmas schedule now - Reading Christmas stories, copy work from the Christmas story scriptures & crafts. This has also been a busy week of appointments, church meetings, homeschool group party, etc., so we haven't done as many crafts as I wanted to. Oh well, next week...

When we start back up in January, we'll be on unit 13 of Preparing.

[funkmomma71]

What week we had! This week we did Unit 16 of LHFHG, which had us memorizing the Lord's Prayer, which we already knew, mostly, but did not recite regularly, so now we KNOW it and will use it more often.

I work at night and Dina is supposed come wake me up when her little brother goes down for his nap so we can do school while he sleeps. One day, she decided not to... well as I'm sure you can imagine I was not pleased with her for this lapse. As it turned out she was watching TV and did not want to turn it off We had talk about her behavior and restricted her from TV for the rest of the week, but later during school we did the devotional and it was about Jesus not only dying for us but also what he suffered because of our sin. The devotional was VERY intense and by the time I was done reading it to her she was bawling. Up until now she understood in her mond what Jesus had done for us, but I don't think it was really in your heart, KWIM. I think her sinful behavior from earlier that morning was still weighing down on her and she really connected her sin with Jesus taking her punishment. It was a bittersweet moment for us, her realizing the full weight of her sin but also truly appreciating the gift of Jesus' sacrifice.

In math, we spent the week working on place value, and she really got it! We used an abacus in addition to other manipulatives (did I spell that right?) and she used the abacus to count to one hundred, by tens!

She is also making awesome progress with her handwriting. I can't believe how far she has come, she struggled so much at the beginning with handwriting and now I think she sort of looks forward to it.

[Kathleen]

We did school 3 days before Thanksgiving, and then enjoyed visiting with a lot of extended family on my husband's side for several days. This week we picked back up with school on Thursday.

LHTH:





Allison and Garret loved making the wall of Rahab's house out of peanut butter and crackers and a piece of red licorice! (They also of course loved eating it afterwards!! )

Since we haven't been doing as much school lately, they were both begging me today to do their school. I'm glad they miss it and we're looking forward to Monday.

BHFHG:


In this Geography activity, Grant was seeing the difference the angle in the sun's rays makes on the temperature in the tropical, temperate, and polar zones.


And, our favorite and most photographed activity this week...making nests like sparrows! The kids, and Dad , really got into this right before lunch!


Forming the nest from chocolate chips, peanut butter, and chow mein noodles.


The finished nests! My husband's has some "snow" on it (to make it taste more like puppy chow ). We added "eggs", too. When my husband was younger he knew where every bird's nest was in a mile radius from his house. He figured out what bird had the nest there by watching and learning what the eggs looked like. He collected ones that didn't hatch. So, Grant's nest is like a sparrow's with 5 eggs, and Garret and Allison (who really wanted marshmallows) have dove nests with 2 white eggs apiece.


The tasty part!

Allison was also thrilled when the UPS truck brought her phonics book the Tuesday before Thanksgiving!

She's picking it up fast and LOVES getting to read! She was able to read for Grandma and Grandpa and Matt and Michelle (home from college ) and LOTS of other adoring relatives!

Kathleen

OK...my pictures are huge this time. Sorry! They were looking so fuzzy on photoucket and I'm not sure why. I thought that maybe if I upped the size I downloaded they'd look the same here and be clearer. I'll do them smaller next time.

[Carrie]

Since I'm home with a sick little one this morning, I finally have a minute to get to the weekly check-in thread. I've loved looking over each of your posts and reading about your weeks. It gets me motivated to tell you about ours.

This week in LHFHG, we finished up reading The Family-Time Bible! Greyson was sad to be done with it, and so was I. When I pulled out the History for Little Pilgrims book to do our reading for history, however, he surprised me by saying, "Oh, I love that book. It's my favorite."

During science this week in LHFHG, Greyson was fooled by the pinch of salt and pinch of sugar that looked and felt alike. Yet, when he tasted them, he was surprised at the difference! We talked about the sweet versus the salty taste. Then, we experimented with other similar looking substances, like cinnamin and baking cocoa. Greyson definitely understands the meaning of bitter after tasting the cocoa! This went along with our lesson on St. Augustine stealing and tasting the bitter pears, and then realizing sin tastes sweet at first but has consequences that are bitter.

Greyson's fine motor skills are finally coming along, and he's doing a good job of writing his numbers as we count up on the number line. Singapore Math has been a good fit for him, and he really likes it. He's also coming along with his coloring and looks forward to coloring the animal that is pictured with his "A Reason for Handwriting 'K'.

We're one chapter away from finishing Grandfather Frog. Greyson is on the edge of his seat to see what will happen, as pussy has Grandfather Frog on the ground (after Grandfather Frog stubbornly went out to see the world beyond the Smiling Pool). Greyson can be stubborn too, so this lesson with Grandfather Frog has really hit home!

In Preparing Hearts this week, Shaw's favorite thing was making the scroll. He loved making it feel old and copying 2 Kings 19:32-34 to go along with the message Hezekiah received from the Lord about Sennacherib. Shaw even decided to copy some of his other favorite Bible passages on the scroll as well. He loved unrolling it and reading it to all of us.

Another favorite from Preparing Hearts is Shaw's Common Place Book. He said to me, "Mom, I'm so glad I have this book to hold all of my verses. When I read it, I can see it is full of things that I have learned that are important to me." He is steadily getting more comfortable writing in cursive too.

Shaw has also finished memorizing Psalm 34:1-9 and loves singing along with his Psalms CD. It blesses me to hear his voice lifted in praise. I am trying to sing along with him too, but am not nearly as good at keeping the words straight!

Shaw's timeline for Preparing Hearts continues to grow. He takes great pleasure in making each picture, and the other boys often stop by and look it over as it climbs up our door.

I pray each of you had a good week and that the Lord will be close to you during this busy season.

Blessings,
Carrie