heartofdakota.com

Hello HOD Homeschoolers,

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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My oldest just finished her guide for CTC! It was a wonderful year. I was amazed at the strides she made two years ago doing Preparing but even more amazed at how independent she became throughout this guide. We enjoyed looking through her binder all the things she completed over the year. I keep everything she does in a binder - all the history, maps, science pages, math quizzes, geography, Bible study stuff from the Genesis book, even some of the art history projects, basically - as much as I can keep in there. I remember at the beginning of the year we were struggling to get 4 days done in 5 days. I remember we were doing poetry paintings on Saturday mornings. I remember my dd always saying, I don't understand what they want me to do here. The research box was a challenge when we started and I used to have to sit with her every time. But by the end of the year, she was doing all of these things alone with little to no trouble. In addition, her writing has significantly improved already. I would venture to say she even loves doing it.

Below are a few of my favorite memories of things we did:



I will close with her final writing piece (the rhythm is a bit off but she did fully alone and I am really proud of her):

My Doggy Radar
Radar the Shepherd
Sleeps like a baby.
His nose is his cane.
He loves my mommy.

He is so cute.
He doesn't really bark.
He sleeps at the end of my mom's bed
While the time of day is dark.

My doggy Radar is tall
And mostly blind.
Even though he is blind,
He doesn't really mind.

Sorry my pictures are so huge. I must have uploaded them into photobucket with a high resolution.

PS....just pretend like my house is clean LOL. You can really what it looks like with these large photos LOL

We got only 2 days of HOD in this week due to Labor Day, my hubby being home on Wed and Co-op on Friday (we had lots of fun doing art and gym). We did complete our goal of 2 full days of LHFHG & Bigger for the boys; and 2 half days of RtR this week.

My oldest (16) – started her schoolwork this week (not HOD). She is taking a college in High School on-line Art History course and is enjoying it thus far even though it has been a bit stressful.

RtR – Melody is going ½ speed yet. We completed 1 full day this week (second ½ of day 1 and first half of day 2 in Unit 2)….including the history project. She really enjoyed making it. We also go the gel pens suggested and they work SO much better than pencil in the history notebook.

Bigger – We are in Unit 3, Steven worked on his Science notebook this week and also a compass. He has a hard time with the directions for the compass. He liked it so much that he made a small compass all on his own.

LHFHG - We are in Unit 5 and Clarence made a 'quail'. He had fun with it....we even added some feathers.

Next week should be a better week as my husband does not have to work on Sat. We do not have any appointment/activities planned at all in the mornings next week. We do start dance classes so will be gone Mon & Tue afternoons/evening and we hope to attend a roller skating event on Friday afternoon. Our goal for next week is a full week of LHFHG & Bigger; and 5 days of half speed RtR. Maybe after next week we can start to go a little faster in RtR (6-7 boxes instead of 5? Each day).

Emily’s sewing project from the past few weeks. I helped her hem the sleeves and the bottom, she did everything else.



HOD photos

Daneale - great photos of your daughter's CTC year!! I love seeing what others are doing. My son will not get to that one for another 2 years yet....and I know he will enjoy it. He likes being a little more independent, but Bigger does not allow much of that yet (he is 9.5 years old so age wise he is ready for it, grade wise he is not!).

I too love everyone's pictures of their week, and Daneale, of your daughter's year in CTC. What a blessing and look at all the things she did and progress she made!

We got 3 days of school done - we were supposed to do M-Th and school ended up cancelled on Thursday due to a Mommy migrane. I feel better because now I remember we did school on Sunday/Monday even though it was Labor Day and my parents did come for a visit. Friday is our co op day so we don't do school that day.

My oldest did CTC unit 18, my 2nd did Bigger unit 27, and my 3rd born did LHFHG part of unit 33 (almost done!). CTC we are now talking about the Greeks and I am really enjoying the Archimedes and the Door of Science book (Storytime). My DD is also doing a DITHOR project where she is supposed to be creating a play with one of the stories in her book. That I must say has been a little intense. I kind of hope to be done with it soon so we can go back to normal stuff that doesn't take up so much time or energy. She seems to be losing steam on it too and it's not even done yet (she wanted to do scenery and everything but I think just the costumes we have made are all it's going to end up being - and she's having a hard time corralling her siblings to practice!)

Bigger is about the Civil War. My DD is really taking to heart the situations happening there, and again we are enjoying the book Journeys in Time, with the story of Harriet Tubman and then there was one about some of the battles in the Civil War (I know I've done Bigger before but for some reason it was just more striking this time). We are talking about slavery, and about the fact that things weren't THAT much better for African Americans even after slavery was abolished.

LHFHG we are obviously very near the end. I am trying to finish up strong, and have been looking at how we will start with Beyond here in a couple of weeks. She has actually been done with the handwriting book for a few weeks now so she has been doing copywork with her verse each week. She's doing really well with that, I think the fact that I write it on the paper and she copies what I wrote really helps. I never did that with my older girls when they were doing poetry copywork and I think I might do that for her. The Peter Rabbit stories are kind of strange to me. It often seems to me that those, even more so than the Burgess stories, really have these mischevious and disobedient characters that don't really learn a lesson.

Overall, again, a pretty good week and I am just trying to not beat myself up over skipping a day of school "already." I can only do what I can do and sometimes have to give myself a break. Next week, hopefully we can fit in all 4 days of school!

MelInKansas wrote:My DD is also doing a DITHOR project where she is supposed to be creating a play with one of the stories in her book. That I must say has been a little intense. I kind of hope to be done with it soon so we can go back to normal stuff that doesn't take up so much time or energy. She seems to be losing steam on it too and it's not even done yet (she wanted to do scenery and everything but I think just the costumes we have made are all it's going to end up being - and she's having a hard time corralling her siblings to practice!)

I always feel like I am at a loss when my kids dd does something like this too. She has all these "plans" and a year or so ago, she would lose steam quickly! She is getting better. But there are still times that it just doesn't work out. With the Archimedes book though my dd put together a play that I recorded when she retold the event of the farmers using a screw. Her siblings did practice a bit. We lost about 2 hours in our school day that day. That nearly killed me LOL. But they had fun.

And I am the same way when it comes to missing a day. It nearly kills me. Wednesday Sam (my middle child) was sick. So we had the TV on for most of the day. The girls did school upstairs in their rooms and did a good job of it. By 2:30 in the afternoon, I made my son do the reading from DITHOR because he was looking better and I am teaching DITHOR together - this helped him to stay at the same spot as his sisters. Then on Thursday, I knew I would lose most of my day because I was helping with a luncheon that my ministry serves to carnival workers at a fair that we are a part of every year. I had a board meeting on that day too at 7:30 AM to 9:00 AM and I asked my hubby to teach the kids math and DITHOR that day. Thankfully he did. I came home from my meeting, packed my kids backpacks with some independent items, and we left for the fair. I was hoping that my kids could work on school stuff for an hour or so just to get a half of day in. FAIL!!! There is a play ground there and other people in the ministry brought their kids with them too. My kids pretty much played most of the time. After the fair, we dropped some stuff off at another homeschooling family's house and I wasn't going to stay but then we did LOL. I didn't get home until 4:30. By then, I was spent and mentally finished. On Friday I had to take my dog to the vet and have stitches removed from a minor surgery, go to the bank for work and then stop by the fair again for a short stint. That threw a wrench in my schedule. Because my oldest is so independent, she finished her school work Friday with the exception of the final storytime reading in her book but unfortunately my other two kids still had quite a bit left as they had bad attitudes on Friday at times causing me to not be able to work with them very well. So then yesterday we ended up finishing up after soccer. It was a crazy week! I also get stressed out when we miss school but it is getting better. I honestly keep a schedule in excel where I write down how much I want to do and by when. This helps me feel sane if we miss a day or two. I also schedule slack in my schedule so that if we miss a day or two, I don't fret. I add in 2 weeks of slack for now until Christmas and then 2 weeks of slack from January through May. This way, if we end up missing school for a day or two due to sickness or a field trip, then I don't worry about it. I can still see that I am "on time" if that makes sense.

I love seeing everyone's pictures. It reminds me of all the fun things we have done through the years with HOD. Here is our week with the World History guide http://graceandfur.blogspot.com/2015/09 ... 12015.html

You know, I know stressing over one day off is ridiculous. Things like playing on the playground and many other activities are learning too, and just because we didn't check off a page in our HOD guide doesn't mean we didn't learn what we were supposed to that day. I just took a kind of relaxed approach this summer and was hoping we could get serious and stay on track. We've already had one cold this fall, it's looking like it will maybe be more of a "sick" year for us. Last year we hardly got sick at all.

Great to see and hear how everyone else's week went!

We are going to finish up the DITHOR play this week and call it good. I was asking my DD what she wanted to do, who she wanted to do it for. We are going to try to persevere through this!

Melissa & Daneale - I used to stress over a missed day also, but I do not as much anymore....maybe it is because I have been homeschooling for 10 years now (going on 11 years this year) or maybe because I have kids with learning issues. I have learned to take things as they come. If we do not complete everything, that is OK! As long as my kids are learning, that is what counts. This is also the reason we start school in Aug instead of the same time as the schools here (and we would rather not have full days in June like them!!). Last week we had only 2 HOD days....but we also had a co-op day and the boys had 2 days to spend with daddy. Our kids are constantly learning....not just on HOD days, so I still count many days for school where we do not do 'official' school work. Even many of our vacations days count as school days we go to educational places (we need 180 days here in NY).

http://myfullhandsandheart.blogspot.com ... -2015.html

unit 7 in bigger and little hearts