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What was YOUR week Like?

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World Geography:
This week-in-review is really several WEEKS-in-review, as I haven't been able to share for a bit! Wyatt has been continuing to thoroughly enjoy his World Geography readings. He has been reading about David Livingstone, who spent the majority of his life exploring Africa, and who among many hardships, lost his wife to malaria. Wyatt wrote a written narration about Livingstone, and his words show he was quite inspired by him! A few favorites of mine taken from Wyatt's written narration...
"The explorer spirt ran deep in David Livingstone when he began to tread into the unknown. With his wife and children, he began a treacherous journey across the desert of the Kalahari to try to reach the unknown water sources... Eventually he would discover so much new territory that it quite confounded Historians. David Livingstone had accomplished what he had set out to do. Assuredly, David Livingstone was Africa's greatest explorer ever."



Next, Wyatt read about explorers Speke and Burton, who were sent by the Royal Geographical Society to search for the lake in Africa. After Burton became ill, Speke went on to discover Lake Victoria Nyanza, which was the source of the Nile. Again, Wyatt's written narration shows he is loving reading about these amazing explorers! A few favorite lines of mine from his narration...
Although Captain Grant was quite ill with fever, they changed their path and delved deeper into the heart of Africa... Captain Grant and Speke had reached an important checkpoint. They had reached Uganda and its great King M'tesa. He greeted them as friends and gave them permission to travel through his land and eat his food at no cost to them... Finally, Speke left Grant to recover from his fever and found one of the Nile's exits. He followed it up and found that it was an exit for the Nile. His dream had been fulfilled...


Wyatt went on to read about how the breaking up of the wall of ice across the Polar regions encouraged further exploration for a passage around America's northern coast to the Pacific Ocean. His written narration is here...


Wyatt's history project had him baking "Africa" and painting its various lakes, rivers, and mountain ranges. Here is a picture of the first part of his project, the last stages didn't last long - it tasted too good, and I have 3 sons!


I am getting excited to see all of Wyatt's geography drawings come together at the close of the year...


"Rooted and Grounded" continues to be such a solid Bible Study! It continues to be a window into Wyatt's mind and heart for me...


I continue to be oh so grateful for the way science has been planned for high school. Wyatt gets his labs done each week, enjoys his readings immensely, and I have an easy way to see if he understood it all...


May the Lord bless each of you this Easter weekend, and may we remember that each day that we are given here on this Earth is a gift from the Lord to be cherished! God bless!

In Christ,
Julie

Resurrection to Reformation:
What a blast Riley has been having in RTR - literally - a BLAST! Riley had so much fun constructing his volcano and making it blast lava! He actually did this experiment about 5 times. He kept filling it and redoing it, and all the boys came each time to watch it erupt. He absolutely loved this experiment, and it was the perfect follow-up to reading about Olympus Mons on Mars.


Another home run was the radio show Riley did for his final Drawn into the Heart of Reading project this week. His brothers were assigned parts, and Riley put music and sounds to the reading of an energy-packed event from his "Invisible Friend" book. It was complete with the "Lone Ranger" intro music, play drums beating, moroccos shaking, boots thudding, ocean sounds (thanks to Emmett's tranquil turtle), and many more sounds. It was pure fun for me to watch this as a mom! I put my perfectionist side aside, and just enjoyed it. I am learning to do that more and more, and the results are so much better!


In history, Riley has been reading about Charlemagne. The maps he is doing in Resurrection to Reformation are the perfect complement to his readings...


Riley researched "Aix-la-Chapelle" and wrote an informative postcard with his findings. He added to his timeline, showing King Alfred building the Navy, King Chanute as King of England, and William the Conqueror defeating the Saxons. He finds Diana Waring's audio discs to be so exciting, and he often shares high-lights with me after he listens. I could see real progress in his written narrations this past few weeks. He is writing with more flow from sentence to sentence. He uses better transitions, and he is writing with more interesting details. We are still editing for punctuation, but he rarely misspells anything (I credit HOD's dictation for this success). HIs notebook for RTR is coming together so nicely...


For Medieval History Based Writing Lessons, Riley wrote about Mohammed fleeing to Mecca. We still have final editing changes to make, but he is beginning to incorporate all of the elements he's been taught more naturally. The rubric helps, and he is learning to add vocabulary words and dress-ups to his writing, as well as get rid of banned words and replace them with more exciting words from his Student Resource Book. He also got 100% on his vocabulary quiz - hooray!


In Christ,
Julie

Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory:
Emmett is a mystery lover - who knew?!? First, he loved me reading "Key to the Treasure," and when I finished he promptly took it to his room to reread on his own. Then, he was on the edge of his seat for me to read "Who Stole the Wizard of Oz?" He especially liked the follow-up of giving his oral narration using several important objects from around our house. He chose a mirror (very fitting as the clue in the book was hidden behind a mirror), a handwritten note (another good choice as this explained who the classic books were willed to), and a book (another good match as the priceless treasure was a rare book). I love this picture as it happens to show my little Emmett's face in the mirror - just fun!


In history, Emmett constructed his very own canoe, complete with support toothpicks. We read about French pioneers traveling by canoe to Fort Detroit. He hardly can wait for me to read the next story in our history books! They have been full of adventure and memorable history stories.


Emmett's copywork is improving, and he now has no trouble writing 4-5 lines at a time. It is fairly neat, but it is his drawing/coloring we need to keep improving. Either way, I am so thankful he enjoys poetry reading! He looks forward to this time each day.


In math, Emmett learned a great mental math trick for adding. Making "10" makes it so much easier to add bigger numbers! For example, here Emmett had to solve for 9 + 7. He simply borrowed "1" from the ones to make a "10" and then could clearly see there 6 ones left, making 16. He could even do this with problems like 22 + 9, taking 8 from the 9 and seeing the answer was 31. It took several days, but all of a sudden, it clicked!


Emmett also is learning the beginning basics of multiplication by thinking of it as repeated addition. He is doing quite well with this, especially with 2's, 3's, 4's, and 5's. The hands-on math activities HOD planned in the Beyond guide make it easy for me to know how to teach this. Here Emmett is with his blue "donut boxes" and his cheerio "donuts".


This week's grammar focus was on proper nouns, and Emmett learned to put all of the months in order and write them with capital letters...


For Storytime, we are reading "Pagoo," and Emmett cannot wait for me to read each day! We studied the story element of Main Idea this week, and Emmett came up with some solid supporting details for it - I was thrilled!


What a super week we had! I hope you did too!
In Christ,
Julie