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What was YOUR week Like?

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Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory:
Emmett's history art project was a blast this week - literally! Check out his "BOOM!" picture here, where Frances wanted to make firecrackers on the Mayflower, and he used the musket he found in the ship to do that. There was a loud BOOM, and everyone heard it, but blessedly know one was hurt. WHEW!


The pilgrims were starving, and winter was fast approaching. How did God provide? He led them to an abandoned Indian encampment. They noticed strange mounds of fresh dirt. Thinking at first they were burials, they were going to leave them untouched, but then someone pointed out the small, round shape of each mound of fresh dirt, and how they could not possibly be burials. So, they dug in, and what did they find? Baskets of corn, all beautiful colors of corn, that they could eat. They took just enough corn to make it through the winter and tried to find the Indians to pay them. When they couldn't find them, they made a pact to look again for them in the spring and pay them then. Here is our 'find the corn' maze we did together. What fun this was, and it taught a solid skill of using the compass rose to delineate directions of north, south, east, and west. I gave the directions first, saying 'go one step west,' 'go two steps north,' etc., and he colored in the footprints until I directed him to the basket of corn. It was then Emmett's turn to be the direction giver. He loved it so much that he never wanted me to get to the basket of corn. I felt like I was in one of those corn mazes. I finally told him it was time mom got to the corn, and he obliged.


For math, we played a game of greater and smaller with a grid of numbers 1 - 20 and some bears. Emmett got to pick 2 numbers, choose a card from a pile where some said 'greater' and some said 'smaller,' and put a bear on the appropriate number of the 2 he'd chosen that matched his card (either 'greater' or 'smaller'). Math is just plain fun with HOD's hands-on plans - we love that time together, and Emmett thinks he's super at math.


In Christ,
Julie

Creation to Christ:
Riley adores math - he cannot WAIT to do it! Honestly, it's not really his natural gifting - LA is more a natural bent of his. So, I've been surprised that Riley begs to do math first for our teaching block time together. He has done all of HOD's plans through the years for Singapore Math, and I think the neat hands-on plans early on through 2B have a lot to do with his confidence being high and his attitude being cheerful about math. We've been working on subtraction with borrowing. It helps for me to say the steps out loud as he does them at first, just to remind him of the way Singapore taught him the steps. For example, for 11.76 - 4.38, I say...
6 - 8, can't do it
borrow from the 7, change the 7 to a 6
16 minus 8 = 8
6 minus 3 = 3
11 - 4 = 7

He is doing well with borrowing and often says the steps out loud himself (when he isn't using a Singapore shortcut he loves and just doing it mentally, that is ).
The only problem we have is that he has become a bit of a perfectionist. He doesn't want to miss an answer... ever. He finds it pretty emotional to deal with (we have the same thing with dictation BTW, which blessedly he rarely misses as it IS part of his natural bent). So, to battle the sadness over missing an occasional math problem, I've gone to sitting by his side and starring each one he gets right, right after he does it. He LOVES seeing all those stars! Then, if he misses one, I help him correct it and move on. He's happy again when he gets his next star! It's nice for his paper to be lots of stars and not many checks.


The steps of each week's watercolor painting in CTC have been a growing experience for Riley. I'm not talking about following the steps to do the painting though! I'm talking about NOT losing the thing he did the day before (i.e. the stanza he copied or the background he painted). This has been frustrating for me and for him. I shudder to think what his locker at ps might have looked like. If he loses a part of it, he has to do it again. This has helped him be a little more careful with where he puts his things. Riley's room is somewhat scary as well and takes quite a bit of constant monitoring by me. However, I do very much LOVE and appreciate his carefree, cheerful, loving little heart. He is the one who brings me a cup of coffee, gives me a hug if I'm sad, sings a praise song at the top of his lungs in the morning, and be-bops his way through the house light as air. He is a joy. So, we keep working on putting things away in their proper place and on keeping things a little bit neater. Anyway, here is his latest watercolor painting...


What a good week!
In Christ,
Julie

World Geography:
To show the Antilles Islands that Columbus discovered, Wyatt painted underwater mountains with just the tops showing at the surface, looking like islands. He enjoyed getting out his watercolor paints from CTC to do this. I like that Wyatt can enjoy these art projects without being too hard on himself if they don't look stellar. Doing art is not something Wyatt enjoyed early on. It is not his natural bent and caused him some angst. However, he still has learned to enjoy it overall, to just do his best, and most of all - to fully appreciate a talented artist's work and gifting. These are just as important lessons as being good at doing art itself.


In science, Wyatt is moving along and doing well with the lab portion too. It is challenging, but he is enjoying it. Science is NOT my natural bent, so I am incredibly thankful that this science/lab has been appropriately challenging for him for being a high school student without being overly challenging for me as a homeschool mom. He is able to do this completely independently, and he really likes what he is doing. I find the answer key for the workbook to be very helpful as well. I am so glad I know I don't need to stress out about science in high school, as it was a big stress to me I felt was looming ahead until I knew HOD was writing high school guides including the science and labs. I honestly think the whole science/lab teaching responsibility is the reason many homeschool families feel they cannot continue homeschooling their dc through high school. Well, no worries with HOD. It truly is doable, with everything in the kit for supplies for the lab, and with directions that students can follow largely independently. WHEW!

Wyatt swashbuckled his way through "Treasure Island" and laughed his way through "Ragged Dick" for lit. I knew Wyatt would love "Treasure Island," but his loving "Ragged Dick" was somewhat a surprise. Of all the books he has read so far this year, "Ragged Dick" is the one he repeated the most quotes from. I admit, it's pretty quotable. He also spontaneously gave oral narrations on "Ragged Dick" to all of us sitting together in the living room (not assigned oral narrations, but more like just for fun spur of the moment). He was always laughing his way through them, and we were laughing by the end too once we understood the Ragged Dick's' wit and way of getting out of various predicaments.

Now, Wyatt is back to reading BJU Lit, which he is really enjoying as well. This ebb and flow between BJU lit and reading classics has been genius. He likes the variety. I have learned NOT to overdo the going over the answers together in the BJU guide though. The teacher's guide has some pretty long, whopping, awesome answers that Wyatt just was not giving fully, and I was sort of getting on him for not giving them. One day I didn't have out my answer key and listened to his answers and thought they were right on track, very insightful, and showed he understood the reading well. Then I got out the answer key and thought, 'Man! He didn't say the half of that, but I wouldn't have either!' So, now, I have him give the best answers he can, and then give him the teacher's guide to read their answers. It has helped him enjoy our discussions more as well as answer more fully each time, thanks to the good modeling of the TG.

I had to laugh taking this picture below. I was giving Wyatt a hard time that I only had 1 picture of him and wanted to have at least one more for this week (he's a typical teen and sometimes dodges the camera ). He told me he'd grab a book he's enjoying reading, so I could snap a picture. He grabbed BJU, and I took the picture below. I thought it was interesting he chose BJU as his favorite book for the picture, but what made me laugh out loud is after I had snapped the picture, he stayed there and read another 10 minutes. He had flipped to a story he hadn't read yet (which I didn't know), and he had started reading and didn't want to put it down. I said after awhile, "Hey, I'm done with the picture! Why do you still have your head buried in the book?" He sheepishly told me, "I haven't read this one, and it's REALLY good! I'd better not read ahead though, I'll put it aside... but MAN, it's tough to put down!" Nice to hear, huh?!? So, yes, I guess he does enjoy BJU LIT very much as well!


In Christ,
Julie

Here is a link to our past few weeks in MTMM http://graceandfur.blogspot.com/2013/12 ... 92013.html