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What was YOUR week Like?

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Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory
As the colder winter weather sets in, it sure is a nice benefit that HOD plans for physical activity within the homeschool day! Emmett LOVES all of the fun ways HOD plans for him to practice his Bible Memory Work. This kind of combining multiple skills into one lesson is the reason that we cover many bases with HOD in a nice manageable amount of time. Emmett is memorizing the verse, "Encourage one another, and build each other up..." What a timely verse as we are more housebound and needing to show each other a little more patience and grace these days! Emmett always hops up and sits on the kitchen counter and hugs me as we sing along with his Hide 'Em in Your Heart CD - he truly is the best cuddler ever! Then, we discuss the verse, or do whatever plans there are for it, and last he gets to do the large gross motor skills activity to practice his verse. Each time I said freeze for his 'gallop' in this picture, he recited his verse. He wanted to recite it ALL day, and big brother Riley joined in the gallop too!


One thing that has helped Emmett transition into the skill of writing on wide-lined notebook paper for his poetry copywork, is to section off the portion he is to copy with sticky notes. It has also helped for me to write the first word of each line, indenting as the poem shows it should be done for each line. Drawing small pictures along its edge has been a growing skill for Emmett too. He isn't a natural drawer, so it stretches him. I am glad HOD's guides are like that - about 1/3 of the skills being new and challenge skills, about 1/3 of the skills being in the practice phase, and about 1/3 of the skills being new and teacher-led. Of course, this becomes more and more evident in the upper guides. Anyway, here is Emmett with his copywork...


Emmett is nuts about Beanie Balz, as well as his other stuffed buddies. I don't always let the buddies come to school with him , as they are distracting and quite a noisy bunch (Emmett has difference voices for each of them ). Well, when I told him he could get 10 buddies and line them up for his math activity for the day, I think the neighbors may have heard the whoop of delight! He loved making his third buddy twirl, his eighth buddy roll over, his tenth buddy hop, etc. He could have done this all day! HOD makes school such fun. WHen he went to do his math workbook page, it was a cinch. Love those hands-on activities!


Do you recognize this handsome guy in the picture? Why, it's Emmett, of course! This is Emmett's self-portrait for one of his activities this week. He felt like big stuff perched up on the bathroom counter in front of the mirror studiously drawing himself. I helped him, and it was a real learning experience. The poor guy almost had eyes on his chin, a dot for a nose, and no ears. This is always a good activity to teach dc how to draw a person's face. We did miss the eyebrows. OOPS!


What a great week with Emmett in Beyond!
In Christ ,
Julie

Creation to Christ:
Riley is really learning to enjoy painting, and he has come a long way from the start of CTC! This week, he got to do 2 paintings, one for his history project, and one for his poetry watercolor project. His swirling sea and rollicking boat (which he folded following origami directions in the CTC notebook) really look quite convincing! At least I think they do, but then I am probably biased.


Poetry reading is something I myself did not enjoy all that much until embracing it with my dc in HOD. That Charlotte Mason was really onto something when she included poetry study in her school plans. All of our dc enjoy poetry, and I see that sometimes whimsical, sometimes soul-searching, sometimes lovely picture creating type way of writing creeping into my ds's own writing and even into their way of conversing. It's definitely a higher level skill to study poetry. Riley has thoroughly enjoyed his poetry study of Robert Frost this year. He loves the days he gets to read his poem for all of us, describe his thoughts and reactions to the poem, ask for us the audience to share our thoughts and reactions, and then share the interesting biographical info shared about Robert Frost in his CTC guide. We all feel like we have gotten to know Robert Frost this year. It has been fun!


The travel logs that Riley makes for his trip through "Geography of the Holy Lands" book and activity have improved vastly since the start of the guide. He jazzes them up with bright colors and with a variety of sentences, like questions and exclamatory sentences. They are fun to read and a good showing of what he took from the readings.


For DITHOR, Riley wrote clues about a picture of a setting from "Song of the Trumpet." Then, Wyatt had to follow his directions to draw the picture. It was a good descriptive spatial activity for Riley, and a good following directions/drawing activity for Wyatt.


What a good week!
In Christ,
Julie

World Geography:
A common welcome sight for me as a homeschool teacher this year in World Geography is to see Wyatt curled up reading a good book. The books chosen for the WG guide have been real page turners! I had to laugh... Wyatt had read and we'd discussed a portion of "Treasure Island" in HOD's BJU plans for Lit., and I had said, "Wyatt, you love that so much, I'll have to buy the whole book for you to read!"

He said, "Mom, you already did! It's in the Lit. box coming up, remember? I can't wait!"

"Good point, son."

Have you ever noticed unplanned neat carryovers between dc doing different guides in HOD? It happens ALL the time here, and I love it. While Wyatt was reading "Treasure Island" for Lit in WG, Riley was reading a letter from "Treasure Island" in WWTB Vol. 1 in CTC. I had to laugh, Riley BEGGED to hear Wyatt's oral narrations for "Treasure Island." He said, "Mom, I just HAVE to know what happens next, and all I have is the letter!"


Wyatt's science has been going so well! The lab manual and box of needed supplies are both so thorough. I've not needed to get anything extra - it's all there. I know that is so important for science experiments to happen at our house, and I am so thankful! Wyatt has been doing this completely independently, and he is learning so much.


I've been having Wyatt practice his Spanish for a bit either with my asking him his words, or with him listening to them online and saying them. As the audio on line has someone speaking Spanish who speaks Spanish as a first language, I often opt for that route. What an easy way to study Spanish! Wyatt is really enjoying it. He is not overwhelmed, and he is able to stay on top of the amount of words he is learning each day. The other day he told me he was going out to feed the perros and the gatos (dogs and cats)!


Thanksgiving and Christmas are around the corner, so we snapped family pictures for Christmas. Here is one of the boys! These years are so precious - it feels like they are growing up too fast! As Abbie would say from "Lantern in Her Hand" (I'm paraphrasing)... the winds are blowing too fast, if only they'd stop so I could think a moment... the hands of time are moving too fast... oh time please slow down!!!' My hope for all of us homeschool moms is that we could smell the roses along the way and really try to enjoy this time with our dc, as it truly is more fleeting than it seems. HOD helps me do that.

Julie, I loved hearing about your sons' week!

This was my son's first week in Beyond. I had planned to start him half-speed, but no! He ran full steam ahead with the entire unit!!
Several times he commented on how much he loved it. He ended up being in his element with the spelling list, and even did great with the poetry copywork. I started it off by doing the entire first paragraph for him since this was his first time. He loves to write small, so we used the smaller lined notebook paper- Perfect.
This week was wonderful with him.

In LHTH we did Unit 22, I think. It was about Jesus beginning his earthly ministry. She liked most of this. She kept talking about Jesus getting baptized all week. Also enjoyed the letter "Rr".

This week was rather difficult in Preparing. We did Unit 10, and my son didn't like it - other than the Dinosaur Mystery for science. I had a really hard time keeping his attention. He likes the fact that next week we go back to Grandpa's Box. He enjoys that book! He did better than ever on copying the paragraphs from Draw and Write through history. Drawing is certainly his "thing". I am thankful for these skills written into the guide. Otherwise I would never get to some of them!
I want to take the time to say that my son not liking the last 2 weeks of history has nothing to do with the guides, and everything to do with his not liking that part of history. We pressed on, because school is not always things you want to do! We have really been working on that with him.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

I'm a bit behind sharing our HOD journey! Here's a peak at Week 9 ( I don't remember if I shared this yet!!) http://schooltimesnippets.blogspot.com/ ... nit-9.html

http://gracefilledhomeschooling.blogspo ... 11-15.html

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 28


Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 10


Preparing Hearts for His Glory: Unit 6