heartofdakota.com

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!

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We completed UNIT 1 this week in Bigger & LHFHG (we made the switch back to HOD last week). It was a busy, but very fun week!

You can see pics of our activities from Tuesday:
http://ourlittlethinkers.blogspot.com/2 ... twork.html

And our activities from Wednesday - Friday:
http://ourlittlethinkers.blogspot.com/2 ... plete.html

Revival to Revolution:
There is much to be thankful for this Christmas season, but one of the things I am especially thankful for is the way HOD is helping me share my faith with my oldest ds through RevtoRev. "Who Is God?..." is giving me lots of wonderful opportunities to share my faith with my ds, and to help him share his with me. We've been having some pretty deep discussions, and this partnered along with the Hebrews "Heroes of the Faith" study Wyatt is doing for Bible Quiet Time in RevtoRev is really working to get Wyatt's wheels turning in a good direction. He really wants to grow into a strong Christian man, and these books, discussions, and journaling topics are helping him navigate this well.

I really like the balance of teaching time and independent time in RevtoRev. It feels just right for this stage in life where Wyatt is wanting to be more grown up, but still needs me for some things. We enjoy meeting together to go through his boxes in RevtoRev. I have my coffee, he has his hot tea, and we discuss, share, and check his work together. This has become our midpoint check-in routine, I guess. It is like we are two good friends sharing what we've found fascinating about what has been read, created, drawn, or written. I check-in with him during his work time as well, but he often says, "Mom, I've got this" with a little sideways smile and a pat for me on my back. He does "have it", but I still love to check in. My teaching time is more streamlined and focused on the skills he needs more direction in, as they are new and developing skills. I enjoy this time with him as well.

This week Wyatt has been studying the Rosetta Stone with great interest. For his history project, he made his own "Rosetta Stone", complete with his own hieroglyphics. This project involved many steps, and he did well with all of them. As I was snapping a picture of his finished project - a hieroglyphic of his first and last name etched in "stone" - he gasped and made me promise I would not also take a picture of the index card that acted as a key for each letter of the alphabet's hieroglyphics. Apparently he and Riley have grand plans to use the hieroglyphics to write spy messages in code so they can stump their cousins, and they were concerned I may put a picture of the code on the Internet and ruin it. So, no picture of the code here ladies - top secret stuff.


Wyatt also drew a picture of the White House this week. As a younger child, he did not enjoy drawing, and it was not one of his natural given talents. HOD's "Draw and Write Through History" has really helped him develop this skill through the years, and now he confidently draws and colors pictures, and shares them with others happily. I'm glad for this, as it is a form of communication that carries over into many areas of life.


It is very interesting having 3 sons at 3 different stages of the oral narration process. It is also very interesting having 2 sons at 2 different stages of the written narration process. You would not believe the progress from the beginning stages to the more advanced stages! HOD has really held my hand through this through the years, and it works. Going back to the beginning stages is hard, because I sometimes forget how far my oldest has come in these skills. The lessons HOD teaches and the editing tips in the Appendix HOD has dc work through partner together to help dc learn to become excellent narrators. One of the very best teaching tips HOD gives is to have dc read their written narrations out loud to us. This helps dc in so many ways. They can hear if their narration has a good flow and sounds "good". They can discover spelling errors and grammatical errors as they read and fix them. They can practice oral reading skills, and it is just one more way for them to better retain what they have learned by "hearing" it one more time in their own words. Here is Wyatt's written narration about Catherine of Russia, which I will type below it, as the picture didn't turn out well...


Catherine of Russia played her role in life very well. Even though she was 65 years old, she still played blind man's bluff with her grandchildren. She wrote a friend that she was as spry as a water-wagtail. She hated the French Revolution but did not take part in it. She was more worried about Poland and how it was trying to win independence. Catherine defeated Poland and took it easily. She laughed heartily now and then and wrote a friend about how laughter kept her going. Finally, she got the colic and, shortly after, died. She left Russia as she had come into it. A half asleep giant that was too big to reform. Her most famous quote was, "In order to change Russia, I would have to live as long as Methuselah". As she died, she predicted that Napoleon would be France's next leader.

While Wyatt was reading this aloud to me, he added a comma, added the words "now and then", and said, "I should have started a new paragraph with the word 'Finally' ". He should have, but I LOVED so much about his narration that I didn't care.

We had our little family's Christmas here at home last night. Wyatt made Christmas gifts for everyone. I can trace back to HOD's projects the idea for every single gift he made. I'm putting this as a fun post on the board after I finish this. It is amazing how much HOD creeps into the rest of our life, in a good way! I hope you all have had a wonderful week and are looking forward to celebrating our blessed Savior's birth in the coming week!

In Christ,
Julie

Preparing Hearts for His Glory:
"Grandpa's Box", "Child's History of the World", and the Bible have been weaving a wonderful story of the past for Riley and me. This week we read about the Trojan Horse, and Riley enjoyed putting his drawing and coloring skills to the test with his "Draw and Write Through History". He is naturally a good artist, so he especially loves these activities!


The star of the week was definitely the scytale message Riley got to create for his history project. He got a strip of paper, wrapped it around a rolling pin, and wrote a secret message vertically, scytale-style for his big brother to decode. Guess what the message was? "If you can decode this, you and I can both eat fifteen chocolate chips each." Needless to say, they LOVED this project.


Riley has been setting his alarm and getting up early to do his science each day. One of his favorite days this week in science was the experiment day. He got to make his own cytoplasm, and it was ooey, gooey, involved marshmallows, and was right up his alley. His lab sheet showed he understood it well, and I am just so happy with his science with HOD.


The creative writing lessons in PHFHG are helping Riley become quite the poet. He loves reading Robert Louis Stevenson's poems. He makes his voice whisper, sound joyful, be LOUD, or pause for dramatic effect as he reads the poems. He is fun to listen to. He is doing a super job of transferring some of the style of RLS to his own poetry writing, thanks to HOD's guidance. Here is his poem "The Wind", which he especially enjoyed adding personification to, as RLS did in his poem "My Shadow". Riley likes to play with words, and I especially enjoyed his phrases "lullabying to the leaves" and "breaking innocent glass".


In just a few months, Riley has come such a long way in his written narration skills. This week his written narration topic was focused on the topic of Rome's Remus and Romulus story. We followed the plans exactly and had an excellent discussion. He then wrote his narration on his own, read it aloud to me, and we edited it together. I thought he did a good job! Here it is...


This has been such a good week for us in PHFHG. Riley is growing leaps and bounds, and I am enjoying seeing him bloom.
In Christ,
Julie

Little Hearts for His Glory:
My, my, my are Emmett and I having a ball with LHFHG. We have been reading about Abraham, and the way LHFHG connects everything together in a theme for him is really helping him connect together the stories so well. He loves the Fingerplay and finally is not leaping on and off the couch as he does them (thanks LHTH last year for helping him learn to do this with some control ). We talked about how God promised Abraham his descendants would be as numerous as the stars, and Emmett LOVED the follow up activity with the flashlight. He made his star little, he made his star BIG, he made it streak across the sky, and twinkle on and off. Thanks LHFHG for some great activities that are fun!


Another activity he loved doing was the packing for a trip, like Abraham did to move. Big brother Wyatt helped him with this activity, and they both had fun folding shirts, socks, and pants for the "trip" and packing them all neatly in luggage. This was timely activity as we will be packing several times in the next week to travel for Christmas! Once and awhile, I will have Wyatt do an activity from LHFHG with Emmett, if I think the 2 of them would really ham it up and enjoy it more that I would probably do. They have a 45 minute playtime together each day when I work alone with Riley, and it is sometimes fun to shake up their playtime with activities such as this. Plus, I like Wyatt being in the role of a teacher once and awhile - good practice for future fathering.


The math activities have been so good, and are really helping make math both fun and easy to understand for Emmett. I like how LHFHG fosters a love for math right from the beginning. All of our boys love math, and I know it's due to these great beginnings. Here Emmett dotted his numbers with the right number of dots to represent each numeral...


And here he put the right number of tractors on different taped on numbers to represent their numerical value as well...


Emmett cheerfully played with his taped on numbers and tractors FOREVER. That is another thing I am appreciating about LHFHG - many of the activities are so fun that he continues to enjoy them long after the school day is done. This naturally adds fun and variety to his day.

Fine motor skills are coming along for my sweet little Emmett, and R & S's "Do It Carefully" is bringing him along nicely in this area. I like how the activities often involve multiple skills - cutting, coloring, gluing, critical thinking skills like matching, etc. - all wrapped up in 1 activity; ya gotta love multi-tasking!


I hope you are enjoying your little ones this homeschooling year too, and have a great weekend!
In Christ,
Julie

Week 12 of Bigger and still having fun doing school. Here is our update!

http://nutbugs.com/heart-of-dakota-bigger-week-12/

Here is the link to our fun week http://graceandfur.blogspot.com/2011/12 ... 21211.html

I just love reading what everyone has been doing. It gets me so excited for next year for my girls. I know they are just going to love HOD.