heartofdakota.com

Hi Everyone,
I just had to write in and let you all know that our school week is going GREAT so far!!! My 8 yr old and 6 yr old are really enjoying Beyond. We are also doing DITHOR with both of them and Cheerful Cursive with both as well. We also use the Bigger guide for my 8 yr old's English , and math and cheerful cursive for both:-) I love HOD!!! It is truly user friendly and such a blessing to our family. My highschooler is doing the BJU DVD's and that is going great as well as it frees me up to do the HOD with my younger ones. I think this will be one of if not 'THE Best' school year yet and this is our 11th year!
Thank you Carrie for such a wonderful curriculum!!
God bless you all and hope everyone is loving doing school like me this year!! (and believe me, i didn't think I'd be saying this a few weeks ago!)
In Christ,
Angie

Angie,

I'm so glad that you have hit your stride and are enjoying your year! What a blessing that is!

It sounds like you have worked hard to find the right fit, so I'll celebrate with you!

Way to go, mom!!

I'll move this thread to join with the weekly check-in.

Blessings,
Carrie

Well this week has been a little different. I have been on the couch or bed doing school with the kids. My back has been hurting badly ever since Monday. I felt so terrible, a couple of times I had to send them away to play, I just couldn't even sit up to read. My 8 year old has helped out with that some, so that has been good. Besides that all has gone well. I cannot believe how much my 5 year old loves Rod & Staff's Do it Carefully and Finding the Answers. He is flying through those. I really like the cursive book for my 8 year old. We did a different one last year before we started with HOD, and I truly did not like it. I am happy we have one that works for us now. Both kids are enjoying the History, Geography, and Science lessons. I love the tie in with the bible verse. Well, that's really it for now.



Marie

I'm glad that school went well with you....but sorry about your back, back pain is horrible. I'll be praying for you. Is this a chronic ailment or did you recently do something?

Well, we've had another super week! We've enjoyed reading Pedro's Journal...and finished that up today. We've also had fun learning about Phillis Wheatley, and can't wait to read more on Monday. Pocahontas and the Strangers is next on our list, and the kids are excited to learn more about her and the 'Indians'. We are reading the extension pack books aloud together and it has really added a new dimension to our learning in History...we may try having them read them on their own next year, but then I won't get to hear what happens. The kids continue to plug along in their English and Math; still enjoying it. I am learning(again) along with my son how to work with kg,g, liters, ml, etc. It's been a very long time since I've done that! It's a good thing... My daughter is doing great with her spelling, and my son has done well with the dictation. We did decide to advance him a bit; since he's in 5th grade the passages in Bigger... are a bit too easy. Today, I took a passage from A First Book in American History (just two sentences) and he got it perfectly right. I may try some Bible verses or some poetry too. Once he is ready to move into R&S English 4 and Singapore Math 4A( should be by January), we will order those along with the Preparing...guide. Then he'll just use one of the dictation levels from that guide. We continue to enjoy and learn from the Science experiments. The kids really had a blast using their 'beaks' this week to try to find food on our 'shore'.

As for LHTH, we are moving slowly with it. We had fun learning about Noah and the Ark, how things float or sink, and singing the song "Noah Build a Boat". My son was excited to do the "b" fingerplay, and always enjoys the Bible story. He did a great job circling the b's on the Hide and Seek sheet, as well as drawing and counting the raindrops on his number sheet. He easily remembers the letter sounds..which I'm excited about. I love to see the progress he's making, and I feel confident we'll be able to begin using RME by January.

That's about it for our week. We have tomorrow off, and we'll start back up on Monday. I'm looking forward to learning more about the seashore (just wish we were close enough to go there) and explorers of our world.

Our week went much better than last... and I have hope for next week being even more successful!
I appreciate the organization, time consciousness and CM approach so much!

We only schooled three days this week due to Labor Day... and have Fridays for chores... so we finished Unit One of Bigger and most of Unit Two of Little Hearts...

Special highlights from our week:
Making the etched heart in LHFHG touched all of our hearts for the Lord.

Working on the map with Journeys of Time in BHFHG: my son worked really hard and I am so proud of his work!

I really enjoy the Christ-centeredness so much... it is just what DH and I have always longed for with our school. I enjoy having my Bible by my side as I work through the plans and developing this "biblical grid" for my children.

Because of the ease of HOD plans, I have time to schedule other dear to my heart things with my children- and also can still accomplish school when I am crazily sleep-deprived- which I still am!
Blessings,
Rebecca

Here is a link to my blog with our week in review. Enjoy!!

Gina

http://beandipblog.blogspot.com/2008/09 ... eview.html

We had a good week too! (as always! )

Here is Evelyn knocking down the idols after reading about Gideon.


Doing her "do it carefully" book.


We used a hop-scotch to help us learn our memory verse this week (psalm 121:2 "my help comes from the LORD, maker of heaven and earth")



Evelyn made this while learning about Ruth and how she picked up grains (barley) left behind from the harvesters. We also made a barley bread that day.






Read more about it on my blog.http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/holyhart/585914/

We didn't get as much done this week with Labor Day & a busy Friday. We finished the week on Thursday with Unit 2, Day 3 in Preparing. Luke had a lot of fun mixing colors on the Rainbow picture. On Thursday, I was busy doing other things while he did his DITHOR reading. When I checked on him, he said "I forgot to stop on the right page & finished the book." I guess next week we'll just catch up on the workbook pages one a day & then start our 2nd book.

You can see the rest of our week & photos on our blog:
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/wdworkman/

We got back into the swing of things this week with school after a week off for my organizing spree. It was so easy to pick back up and go!!

I had Grant review his verses as we started this week, and they are there in his memory. I LOVE the suggestion to have him add his own actions to the verses. He loves it that he gets to make them up by himself, and they really stick...without a lot of effort!!

He loves our science experiment days! Here we are answering "What causes a seashore to change over time?"
Wind...


Rain...


And waves...


We haven't done the "What happens to seawater when the sun shines on it?" experiment yet. We were getting low on time Friday, and we haven't had any sun. I think it'll be back on Monday.

I am loving the balance in our days with Bigger. It's all covered. It's fun. It's easy. AHHH!

The highlight of Grant's week...in my opinion...has been our DITHOR project. We started with the fantasy genre. The character quality that was highlighted was brotherly love/compassion. I let Grant choose his project - which was a little difficult. There were such great options!! Anyway, he chose to do the "Family Spirit" project which had him set specific goals to show brotherly love and compassion for 5 days. It has been wonderful for our family spirit! (We were struggling for a few weeks as it seemed like someone was always arguing with someone... ) He chose to spend 10 min a day doing something of Allison's choosing, and Garret's choosing. They all loved this...and the arguing that we'd been working on stopped! He also chose to look every day for something he could do to lighten my load or dad's load. (He wanted the whole family to be part of his goals. ) Tonight was supposed to be our family celebration...but we had to take a "rain" check - literally. He wanted the whole family to go dove hunting. BUT, it was raining...and the dove don't fly into the pond to drink at twilight when it's raining. So, early next week, we'll have to get to that. I was waiting to post about our week until I had a shot of our celebration...but I'll have to include it next week.

Here is a picture of TRUE brotherly love, though. Allison had Grant playing the game "Pretty, Pretty Princess" with her. (Notice all the jewlery he's wearing!)


Allison and Garret LOVE their school time with LHTH! They were asking to do school last week when I was organizing. In Garret's words..."Mommy, can we do A-A-Adam?" We still do the 1st stanza of every rhyme to start the day. We're part way through unit 3 this week. "Tape" is a highlight of very week! Here they are driving on our giant "C".

We left it on the floor, and Garret shocked Mike today. They were going upstairs to get him some socks, and he said "Daddy, there's an 'A'." Mike said, "I think that's a 'C', buddy." Garret..."It says, c-c-c." I can't believe he's picking this up! Allison is just a sponge for letters and their sounds, too. She's always telling me sounds she hears in words and what letter makes them. It's so fun to see them learning!!

Allison loved spelling her name and learning her phone #. (Garret sat this one out. ) We only have cell phones as our land line was out at least one entire week a month for the 2 years we had it. (How's that for reliable service? There weren't enough customers affected for the company to care.) Anyway, we got a cell phone for home and my husband already had one for work on the farm. Allison knows how to use it...and said she knew our phone number already. It's "2 send". Yep, on our phones, that will call either Mommy or Daddy. She learned her phone #, and was so proud of herself. She happened to be dressed as a cheerleader that day, so we practiced spelling her name "Cheerleader style"! Give me an "A"!!


They loved acting our Abraham's story with robes in the tent. Here they are sad because they don't have a baby...and then happy to trust in God's promise.

Allison even reminded me that night that we had to go outside and look up at the real sky to try to count all the stars/babies that would be born to Abraham and his children, grandchildren, etc.
They love the special art projects that they get to do, too. They always rush to swarm Daddy at the door when he comes home for lunch to tell him what they've made. Here they are starting on Abraham's tent.


Wishing all of you many more "Happy HOD Days" like we're enjoying!!
Kathleen

We finished Unit 6 in LHFHG this week and once again my daughter loved every minute! We discussed how silly it was for Peter Rabbit change his name and she loved walking around imitating being "puffed up" . She is also moving along very well with her reading and writing. Building the wall for Jerico was a big hit, as was knocking it down! The morter for Rahab's wall never really dried so I'm trying to figure out how to preserve it for her portfolio; if anyone has any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated.

This week we're going to begin art lessons with the "How Great Thou Art" program. She really loves to draw and is always asking me how to draw certain things and I am NO artist so I figured that a art course of some sort was in order. She has started to add a lot more detail to her drawings so I'm really excited to see how a "formal" art currciculum will help her progress. I really love that this curriculum is so easy and short that I can add extras without overloading either me or my daughter.

We had a great week with LHFHG.We love the action rhymes and art/science activities.
here are my boys making a slightly different Rahab wall with a red cord.



He really loves all these stories about bible heroes.We have made block walls and re enacted the marching around like Joshua .Im a bit concerned about his math.we are working 1a/b and although he can manage easily adding and taking away with real objects the transition to sums on paper is a bit too abstract for him.

I'm a little behind with my posting, but here is our updates from the past two weeks. We played some catch-up, reorganized a bit and went on a field trip. I've decided to blend Little Hearts and Beyond together; I think we are going to much happier with this.

Here is the link to our field trip:
http://theavilas.blogspot.com/2008/09/field-trip.html

And the link to our school updates:
http://theavilas.blogspot.com/2008/09/s ... s-4-5.html

slavila,

We LOVE The Strong National Museum of Play! We haven't been since last fall, so it's definitely time for another visit. I think the kids would all (even the olders) enjoy the Berenstain Bears exhibit, as we've read lots of those books over the years...and we missed the race cars when we were there before. Anyway, I enjoyed your post. I'm glad things are evening out for you.

Ladies,

It was wonderful to read your check-in threads and see how each of your weeks have been. We are still on vacation but will head home tomorrow, so I'm just popping in on the board to see if there are questions needing answering!

I'm so glad that you are all moving forward and finding your groove. It takes time to get that rhythm going, but when it does it is golden!

Blessings,
Carrie