Week in Review 10/5-9/09

[busybee4]

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We are thoroughly enjoying our school year and have had a great first 8 weeks! Here's a little bit of what we did this week.
http://rubyslippersschool.blogspot.com/ ... 5-909.html

[rainbowacreshs]

Good end week to all! Its been a busy week for us. We hadn't finished unit 8 yet as I discovered Kasey needed to back up and compelete some unfinished assignments. Amazingly I am ok with that. Through these last 10 weeks of our school year something absolutely wonderous has happended. There's been a definite shift, a realignment if you will, in my daughter's approach to school and mine.
I am watching her begin to bloom as a reader. Her writing skills (as well as her outlook on writing) are improving by leaps and bounds. Even though math is still her worst subject (can't seem to make a test grade past a C, even with us pratically teaching to the test) she's truly trying. Kasey has begun to learn to manage her time and stay focused from one subject to the next.
I'm changing. I'm taking each day as it comes, realizing that ok if we don't finish in one day, its ok. I'm learning that we can squeeze it all in if we just take smaller bites, and with that came the understanding that Kasey was learning more with less. Its finally sunk in that yes we have to legally log 180 days to our association, but we have the entire year to finish what we start.
I was telling my mother yesterday of these realizations. I told her that I'm realizing that ok, Kasey may not be "genius, or brillant" according to a testing standard, but to God's eyes and mine she's everything of my heart and soul. She is a young lady fastly maturing into a creative, God-loving, animal-fanatic, devoted, deeply caring, fiercely loyal ....lol I could go on and on... beautiful young woman.
I asked Kasey yesterday if she wanted to join the astronomy co-op next semester, she answered.. I rather go back and learn from the Land Animals of the 6th Day. I was ok..."you know we have to go back to and start at Unit 1 day One, and work through next summer?" (we have been doing an introduction to physicalscience for the last 8 units and was going to start in at unit 15 with Birds of the Air). She told me she was ok with that and would'nt mind, but would like to do astronomy too, but on Fridays.
To be honest, and I don't know why, but I was surprised. Here's this kid that had gotten to the point of nearly hating any type of school work, not really caring if it got done or not, suddenly being bold enough to express her learning desires. All I could do was the breathless Wow..followed with thank you Lord and HTH!
Maybe, I'm babbling at this point. Yet even as I type, I glance across the room to the old recliner and spy a set of knees with feet tucked up underneath, and hear the beautiful sound of pages being turned in a book.

[tahami]

Love this post!!! It's so encouraging!!!!

[butterfly113]

Aaaahhh!!! Another great week in Preparing Hearts for us! It has been SOOO R.I.C.H.!!!!!
You can check out our week here:

http://joshuatreeacademy.blogspot.com/2 ... nit-8.html

I have I mentioned how much we L.O.V.E. HOD!!!???!!!

[my3sons]

We had an awesome week! One of the most exciting things was to see my youngest begin LHTH. He was just too precious. I get all misty-eyed thinking about this being my last go-around with LHTH (at least with my own dc - there will always be grandchildren someday though, right? ). Even though we had some nasty colds and my dh was traveling a bunch, HOD was our bright spot this week. I'l start with the little guy this week...

Little Hands to Heaven:
We are doing LHTH half-speed, and we're on our fourth day of it. It is filling a need for me in such a convenient, happy way. My little one is loving his time with me, and I am loving that I am no longer trying to come up with things for me to quickly do with him. He is a little over 2 1/2 yo, and I want to take around 2 years to go through LHTH with him so we don't get to LHFHG too quickly. I am using both children's Bibles and both devotionals to do this. Here's the rotation I'm doing to stretch 1 day of plans to 2 days of plans...

First half of a day's plans:
Read the story from the younger children's Bible (A Child's First Bible).
Do the Fingerplay, Letter Activity, and Bible Activity boxes.

Second half of a day's plans:
Read the story from the older children's Bible (The New Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes).
Do the Fingerplay, Letter Flashcard Review, Rotating box, and Corresponding Music.

This has been just the right amount of time for my little guy. He is LOVING it! His favorite thing is definitely the Fingerplay. He bursts into "A-A-Adam" with the action off and on throughout the day with a huge grin on his face. He even did it in the middle of the Twins game we went to! Here's a picture of him doing his sound, and you can also see the Letter Activity where we taped the large letters on the floor. He wanted "Baby a" to be taped on the floor too, so we added that one for fun:


Puppy and bear helped him hop the letters and shout 'A-A-A".

Here he is doing his painting project. He loved this so much, he's painted every day since. He colored with white crayon on white paper, and then painted black over it. The white shown through, just as the light shown through the darkness at God's command as He created it. Creation was our theme this week.

My little guy is LOVING school! I love not feeling guilty wondering if I'm paying him attention throughout the day now. This short time together means the world to both me and him.

In Christ,
Julie

[creativemommy]

We had a great week too. I love how we can work HOD around the crazy days!

We finished Unit 5 and began Unit 6 in both LHTH and LHFHG. Some of the highlights of the week are in pictures below...

Dd3 writing her "A" - the first of all 4 letters we reviewed at the end of Unit 5 in LHTH.


Dd3 showing off her Counting Page #6 - she cut & glued everything all by herself. I had used some of my scrap scrapbook paper to draw squares & rectangles for her to cut out as blankets & pillows. She loves using scissors.


Ds6's "golden calf" made from edible playdough (with SunButter)...oh so fun! We're going to have to make it again just for fun!


Ds6 making his "edible dirt" out of mini chocolate chips, crushed graham cracker crumbs and cornflakes. Mmmm!


Hope the rest of you had a great week, too!

[my3sons]

Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory:
Riley is loving reading The Bears on Hemlock Mountain. I love listening to him read because he is just naturally so theatrical. He lowers his voice to a mere whisper when reading an unsettling part of the book, and makes it boom during the exciting parts. Isn't it neat how God gives each of our dc different talents? Reading with expression is something I've always had to work on with my oldest, but it just comes naturally to my middle ds. (Of course other things are more more oldest ds's talents and not so much my middle ds's ).

Since he's reading so well now, I have a new routine that's been working great. At the end of my teaching block with him (while my oldest plays with the toddler), I go through what he'll do next on his own (after his playtime with the toddler). Then, I number those things and write them on a propped up markerboard. I set the things out for him in order, and when he comes back form his playtime with toddler, he gets busy on the tasks, erasing them as he finishes each one. I do the same thing with my oldest ds (only we don't need the markerboard anymore). I go through what he'll be doing on his own, giving any needed directions, and then he does it. This has been so effective that instead of me having to float between the 2 of them at their tables to oversee their work, I have been able to add in LHTH for my toddler half-speed. It works out great! Here's a picture of it:



Another big thing that's helped Riley's writing is for me to lightly dot the middle of each wide-lined notebook line he's writing on for poetry. He seemed to get the top and bottom stopping points, but forgot about the middle (which makes sense since there is no dotted line anymore in the wide-lined paper). Lightly dotting it for his copywork has made his writing so much neater, and he feels so proud of it.

Riley especially loves his science experiments. Here he is using different styles of bird beaks to try to pick up different types of food birds eat:



On another science day, he made the different shapes of clouds:



He can't wait for me to read his history to him and always asks me to read more, which I love saying, "Good things come to those who wait!" with a wink. It's great to keep them wanting more - makes them anticipate school all the more the next day! We had another great week with Beyond.

In Christ,
Julie

[my3sons]

Creation to Christ:
Wyatt has just blossomed with CTC this year. He is growing up before my very eyes - it's truly special to see on a daily basis. I heard him singing his Bible verse today, and while he's never been a very on pitch singer, it sure does my heart good to hear him singing with gusto to the Lord. He really likes the CD, and it's helping him memorize big chunks of Scripture easily. His history notebook is really beautiful, and this from a child who used to hate to color (in fact colored everything with big black scribbles). The CTC Student Notebook is just beautiful - there is no other way to describe it. It has graphics of artifacts from the time period, beautiful backgrounds, and neat boxes which result in it looking like a pretty cool scrapbook. Here are some pics I took of it so far:





Wyatt continues to love his history projects too. Here's his most recent one of the shepherd's headband and head covering:


I'm so thankful for these projects, and for the experiments too. As I've said before, I WANT to be a project-loving mom, but I know I just wouldn't get them done if it weren't for the easy to manage way they are planned in HOD. That brings me to another wonderful thing about HOD - we are done with school by lunchtime, and we've had a very full satisfying school day by then! We are able to have free time, like for the boys to ride 3 wheelers with their dad, or like for me to take them to a Twins baseball game with my parents. There is time for all of those memories I want to create because school is not taking over our lives and driving our days. Granted there are downs - like we all had sinus infections/colds this last week, the toddler was up all night 2 nights because he couldn't breathe, I haven't seen my dh for 5 of the last 7 days - BUT, I know life throws curveballs like this all of the time. Overall - this is an incredibly happy, fulfilling way to live our lives, and homeschooling with HOD is at the heart of that happiness because Jesus is at the heart of it. I hope you had a good week too!

In Christ,
Julie

[LynnH]

This week was a little different for us, but still a very good week. On Monday we didn't have co-op so instead we went down to a new exhibit at our museum center. The exhibit was called the Mysteries of Egypt and had just opened on Saturday so the timing was perfect. It was so cool to see all the things we had studied about.

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They had a model of the Rosetta stone so Noah was able to see exactly how the 3 types of writing looked. He was very excited when he found a cartouche in the writing. We also saw an actual mummy and many pictures of the pyramids. They had several hands on activities so he was able to move sliding tiles around that contained hieroglyphics to form a message. He also got to sit on a fake camel.

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He then pulled a block across the floor that simulated what it would be like to pull a stone for a pyramid.

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It was just so neat to see how much he understood about the exhibit all because of what he has studied in Preparing. He even talked to one of the museum workers some about what he knew and had learned.

We are really enjoying Tirzah and Grandpa's box. When we got to the chapter about the Golden Calf in Tirzah he knew what was coming and didn't want me to read it. He is a very sensitive boy. We did read it though and talked things through as we went.

We still have one more day of week 7 to do because he has now come down with the flu (probably from all of the junior high students that were in the Egypt exhibit). He was very sad to not do school, but since he and I will have to stay home from church on Sunday I told him we would do it then.

[Shimmer]

We finished Unit 7 in LHTH this week. The girls had fun using their baby dolls as baby Moses. They also liked doing the PD fingerplays with their babies while I did them with my baby. Their babies were better behaved than mine though! It just wasn't a cooperative week for my littlest for whatever reason.

The art activity with hiding baby Moses in the reeds was fun. It was neat to see the difference in their ability levels, but they both did an excellent job of hiding the basket.



I also gave them some fish stickers and I was very amused the oldest put hers in schools of fish.



My oldest really pays attention to the bible stories and asks questions while my 3 year old doesn't seem to pay much attention. Isabelle did surprise me this week. During lunch one day, she told me that God took care of baby Moses and her Mommy and Daddy take care of her. Apparently she catches some things.

For the letter activity one day, we did fingerpaints. I had written a captial F in a couple places. They traced it then had a great time making an ocean. Last minute, I traced out circle fish and fins for them to cut out and match to their Fs. I have fun adding on art. We read some fish books for storytime. It was a fun day.





We also added a burning bush art project on Day 4. My original idea was to use red/orange/yellow tissue paper for the fire, but I couldn't find any easily so I used some leftover ribbon instead. I think the girls were more excited about playing with the ribbon. I cut out the bush parts for them, but I could have just drawn some simple shapes for them to cut out instead.



LynnH - your museum field trip looked so fun. I'm looking forward to doing things like that when the girls get older. Hope your son feels better soon.

Love reading everyone's posts. My oldest saw my entry last week and really likes to see pictures of the other kids doing school.

[Tree House Academy]

We finished Unit 4 and started Unit 5 in Little Hearts this week. It has been great! My son is doing the emerging readers with Beyond and this week, he read 3 chapters in Owl at Home. He is LOVING that book. It is so cute.

By far his FAVORITE part of Little Hearts this week was the making of his quail. He couldn't just make ANY quail...oh no. LOL When he starts and art project, we must go all out to make it look its best. Here is his quail in stages. Thank you so much, Carrie, for all these fun and precious projects. There is no way I would have done this without it being written into the manual!





Okay, mom...I colored it, but it still...needs...something. FEATHERS!!!!!!







AND...it FLIES!!!

[funkmomma71]

Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory:


Since he's reading so well now, I have a new routine that's been working great. At the end of my teaching block with him (while my oldest plays with the toddler), I go through what he'll do next on his own (after his playtime with the toddler). Then, I number those things and write them on a propped up markerboard. I set the things out for him in order, and when he comes back form his playtime with toddler, he gets busy on the tasks, erasing them as he finishes each one. I do the same thing with my oldest ds (only we don't need the markerboard anymore). I go through what he'll be doing on his own, giving any needed directions, and then he does it. This has been so effective that instead of me having to float between the 2 of them at their tables to oversee their work, I have been able to add in LHTH for my toddler half-speed. It works out great!
In Christ,
Julie

I do a very similar thing with my dd, I write the stuff she needs to finish up, some of it is stuff that needs finishing up immediately and some is stuff she has to get done with by the next morning. I love being able to let her get work done on her own while I get my work done; she loves the independence. Though she does struggle a little bit with following the directions, but there has been improvement over the last couple of months. So glad to see this is working for someone else, too!