Preparing Hearts for His Glory
Unit 2
The Learning Through History focus of this unit was “Life After the Flood”.
Reading about History… I didn’t get any pics snapped of this, but I especially enjoyed Emmett’s oral narration of the reading on Day 3. I’ve learned to follow the ‘helps’ in the Appendix, and he is learning to narrate well. He has always had a natural affinity for memorizing certain phrases with new vocabulary. He adds this easily to his narration with no prompting, so it makes listening fun for me! Though he still needs to work on not starting each sentence with “And then…” sometimes.
Storytime… Emmett continues to pour over the beautiful illustrations of the book “The True Story of Noah’s Ark.” It is making this well-known Bible story come to life for him in new ways…
History Project… Contrasting Warm and Cool Colors…
Rotating History… For Geography we have been discussing how the Earth rotates on an axis, why the equator is so hot, why the North and South Poles are so cold, and reviewing what the 7 continents are…
Independent History Study… Drawing and coloring Adam and Eve to show people are created in God’s image – we have intelligence and the ability to reason…
Poetry… Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Bed in Summer” was our poem this week. Emmett did a writing activity using his sense of sight and sound, mimicking the way Stevenson wrote his poem. The prewriting activity helped him gather his thoughts, and he did a super job of writing his stanza…
Language Arts…
DITHOR was such fun as Emmett digs into his Bible with Scripture Sleuth as his guide to solve mysteries! I love seeing him cuddled up in the chair with a blanket reading – and LOVING reading. This is how reading is meant to be! Much more memorable than short, meaningless stories written solely for the purpose of creating a worksheet. I’m so thankful for DITHOR! It teaches my children all they need to know about genres, story elements, all levels of reading comprehension, Godly character traits, vocabulary, prereading, projects, etc. BUT, it does so in such a way that it keeps the LOVE of reading thriving! Having taught DITHOR for 14 years (tutoring students the first handful with it; and then using it with my own children), the results are well-proven to me…
Bible Study… No pics this week, but I just wanted to mention that I love that Emmett is learning to have his own Bible Quiet Time 2 days each week! I know this is a training year for this, but next year he will take this over. Reading from his own Bible each morning, praying using the ACTS model, memorizing Scripture, and singing praise music that is Scripture set to music – high on my priority list for him to do.
Math Exploration… No pics this week, but I will say Emmett did a super job with his large number multiplication! I think it is due to Singapore’s excellent teaching, but also to his diligently doing his Bible Heroes Skip Counting CD! He knows his facts quite well, and the ones he doesn’t have memorized, he can quite quickly skip count to using his fingers. I don’t mind the use of his fingers, as long as he arrives at the correct answer fairly quickly. I know from our older sons, he’ll drop the crutch of using his fingers on his own eventually.
Science Exploration… What causes ice to melt? Emmett found out by experimenting with different ways to get ice cubes to melt. He chose to run hot water over an ice cube in the sink as one method, and put an ice cube in a small saucepan on the oven burner. He predicted the one on the burner would melt more quickly, but alas, his hypothesis was incorrect. The running water melted it more quickly! He had such fun trying out each of his methods and timing them to compare his results to write his conclusion! The lab sheet is something I want to help Emmett improve upon. It is our last subject of the day, and I can see it could be rushed (by the both of us). So, it will be a goal to help him improve in this area gradually, by taking time to think through his ‘guess’ better, by having him draw a better rendition of his ‘procedure’, and by having him use more scientific terms in his ‘conclusion’. But, overall, a good week in science!
In Christ,
Julie
