Preparing Hearts for His Glory:
Riley' has been enjoying his reading about dinosaurs so much, and I can tell he is retaining much from his oral narrations. His expressions as he is reading his independent history are priceless - let's just say he's really "into it".
All of Riley's notebooking he did last year in Bigger Hearts has really helped him become skilled at putting together some neat notebooking pages. HOD's directions are clear and give enough guidance without being too specific. I feel like he is learning so much from these!
We've been reading about Belshazzer's feast in the Bible, and the Lord's hand writing on the wall. Riley adored his history project of writing in "invisible ink", the same message written on the wall in his Bible story. He especially enjoyed revealing the invisible message to his brothers...
Riley's science experiment had him submerging an egg in vinegar. The result was a leathery, rubbery egg. Everyone loved seeing the results of this experiment...
Riley's independent history is linked so well to the Bible. That is another thing I am thankful for with HOD - the Bible is a part of everything. He enjoyed this project so much...
I am glad HOD is teaching Riley how to write good written narrations. The guidelines help him understand what a good narration sounds like, while also letting him completely make it his own. It is good for him to have to try to limit himself to 5 sentences. It helps him try to choose what's most important to include, rather than going on and on (as young dc can tend to do) with no focus. It also makes editing easier, as we can focus on fixing whatever needs to be fixed for as much of an "error free" piece as possible. I allowed him to add 1 extra sentence in this narration, as he was upset he finished his 5 sentences without getting to the "end" of the story. Next lesson, he'll limit it to 5 and begin to have the skills to do that successfully. In this case, the skill of choosing what's important to share is the greater skill, rather than the length of the narration.
Here is what his written narration says, in case you can't read it:
When Esther was Queen of Persia, Haman, second ruler to the king, was plotting to kill every Jew on Earth. Mordecai heard his plan and sent a message to the queen Esther to go before the king, but Esther was afraid because the king had not invited her. But, Esther went anyway, and the king accepted her. The king said, "I will give you up to half of the kingdom, and she told the king I will have a banquet with you and Haman." Then the next day she invited Haman and the king again, and she told them a man in the kingdom is going to kill my people this wicked man is Haman. Then Esther saved the Jews.
He missed some punctuation marks, but I accepted it with a few mistakes, as it is an excellent effort overall, and I want to encourage him to improve in a few areas at a time rather than discourage him by expecting perfection in all areas at once.
Riley and I are really enjoying the creative writing he is doing in PHFHG with Robert Louis Stevenson's poetry. He likes to rhyme, even when he is just writing a descriptive paragraph. Here he took inspiration from RLS''s poem "My Kingdom" to write his description of North Shore, a place he goes fishing with dad...
Math - I just have to say - I LOVE Singapore! Having spent countless time trying to teach dc multiplication facts in ps and in tutoring prior to homeschooling, I cannot say how wonderful it is to have my dc just know their facts thanks to the Singapore way of teaching math. I usually have Riley skip count by the number the lesson is teaching prior to him doing his Workbook, but he knows them already anyway...
What a super week - hope you had one too!
In Christ,
Julie
. I have four using HOD but I also put up what my other children are using. I should put a separate one for HOD but to find the time to do more than one post is hard.
You and your dc really accomplished so much this week. I laughed out loud when I read about Josh hiding - that would freak me out too - and it has as my dc have done the hiding under a blanket thing at the most unexpected times as well. 
We are doing PHFHG too - aren't the pictures in "The True Story of Noah's Ark" beautiful? Riley was surprised by the research of the flood story too. He couldn't believe other cultures had their own flood story, and that they were different and yet in some ways the same. I liked your pictures of your kiddos at the top of your blog - what a neat family you have! 
I am enjoying many discussions with my four younger boys that I use to have with my two older children.