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BHFHG - Unit 31

This week Grant and I got to talk about being hard-working. Grant has an excellent example of being hard-working in his dad and grandpa. Being on the dairy farm...when there's work to be done, we do it. (And they're both so good about not complaining and patiently taking the daily "surprises", and working cheerfully.) Grant is growing into quite the hard-worker himself. We enjoyed this character study.

The Wright Brothers were flying their planes in the pasture with the cows this week. We got a churckle out of the "astonished cows". And, I was right there with Sterchens, feeling the need for someone to recognize her brothers' hard work and brilliance, instead of thinking they were lazy, overgrown boys. We experimented more with...
...Air pressure and lift. (Garret and Allison loved being helpers!)


...Wind direction, (We're reporting with a light SW breeze. )


...Plane design.


This week in science, we've been taking a glipse at Thomas Edison's childhood. Thomas decided to sit on his pet goose, Lulu's, eggs to see if they'd hatch faster because he was warmer and bigger than she was. (It didn't work. ) We experiemented with eggs to see how tough they are. Grant was really surprised that he could not break the egg by squeezing it!


We also read about Tom's fall through the ice, and experimented with ice as it was freezing to see why some parts freeze faster than others, and how ice looks when it's frozen solid vs. partially frozen.


It seems like history and science are all I take pictures of, but we're thoroughly enjoying all our leanring in Bigger. We LOVE poetry! (Which I know I mentioned I planned to skip before we started Bigger. So glad we didn't!) In DITHOR we're in the midst of the humor genre. Grant read Who's That Stepping on Plymouth Rock and is now on Capyboppy. We're still cruising through Cheerful Cursive & English, and are oh so close to the end. We've started Singapore 3A and will be about 6 weeks into it when we end the year. I've decided that we'll take a break for the summer and pick back up in the fall. I had debated continuing through 3A to finish it, but we're ready for a break. (So, any of you much more experienced that me...will stopping mid-book in Singapore be harmful to our trip through it?)

Kathleen

LHTH - Unit 27

We loved the fingerplay this week!
If you believe in Jesus, Spin around...
If Jesus hears your voice, Get on your knees...
If God cares for you, Jump up high...

Allison has taught Garret to be the "spin-master" in the last few weeks with our fingerplays. He's quite proud of himself, and loved the chance to put it into action again this week.

Our Bible stories this week have been more of Jesus' teachings. We practiced respectful ways to act in church.
Quietly and carefully handling our Bibles, praying with eyes closed, shaking hands to greet others...and more...


We had fun with the game where we tossed hearts in the air and then put them under the correct heading based on whether "Jesus" was in them. We must trust Jesus with our hearts to go to heaven!


Today we read about God caring for us so we don't need to worry. (Just like God cares for the flowers of the fields.) Here are our many flowers on our fields.


We focused on the letter "V" this week. We painted it...




We found it... (I've noticed a HUGE change in Garret in the past few months. He's really picking up on fine motor skills and wanting to try the pencil/marker/paint brush/scissor things. He's turned in to a full-fledged participant of LHTH as we've gone along! He's great at finding letters...and now he's able to actually color on top of the one he's aiming for. His painting and coloring tend to be inside lines now, too.)


We wrote it on our little pad of concrete outside in the wonderfully warm sunshine!


And, last but not least...we covered it with blocks on Tape Day ...


Well, that about wraps it up!
Happy Mother's Day to some of my favorite moms here at HOD! You're all wonderful! And I know that I'm blessed to be able to learn from all of you as we're on the journey together teaching and raising our boys and girls to love and follow God whole-heartedly.
Kathleen

oh wow Kathleen! These pictures are so darling! It all looks like so much fun. And I will be using both those programs next year! Hooray! What do you do with all these photos that you take?

We have been working through Week 29 of LHFHG
This week we finished Buster Bear -We are waiting for Jerry Muskrat to arrive.We learnt about Chicago starting as little village.Here is a log cabin Nathan built with Fort Dear born in the background

We also learnt about the star spangled banner.Now as we are british I added to our lesson a bit.We painted the american flag but also added painting the union jack.We listened to star spangled banner on youtube and also to God save the queen .You can see that Stanley was in on the painting.


We went panning for Gold this week to in our LHFHG .Except in our re enactment it was more of a treasure hunt .We used physalis and gum drops.I hid some gumdrops in the physalis leaves.If he found a physalis[real or not] he brought it to our panning basket in the middle of the room to unwrap it and test if it was real 'gold' [physalis] or not.Excuse the grumpy looking photo

We also learnt about Davy Crockett,which was really intresting because we stayed at the Davy Crockket Ranch in disneyland paris
We are on week 20 of the reading lesson and I have started checking out early readers from the Library for Nathan to read.This week he read Percy the postmann and Cat up in the tree.

Here are some more blog links
http://stanleysmagicgarden.blogspot.com ... e-day.html
http://stanleysmagicgarden.blogspot.com ... mming.html
http://stanleysmagicgarden.blogspot.com ... k-day.html

BEYOND
Our first week with Beyond!!! We had a great time. The kids were asking for more. My oldest said each morning, "What fun thing do we get to do today?". They really enjoyed making the shields. It seems like Singapore is a good fit for us. I'm so excited about that! The only thing I had to change was the copy work for my son. He did it the first day, but I can see how he'd benefit from more practice in a just a writing book first. We're really enjoying Benjamin West. Can't wait for next week!

LHTH
My 3 year old just loves this program. We were on letter E this week. She's mastered A, B and C, sight and sound already. My dad's girlfriend is deaf. They watch a lot of signing time, so I'm also teaching her the sign for each letter too.

Patience - I'm planning on putting together a book on Shutterfly with our pictures of this year. We have had so much fun! And the kids all LOVE to look at pictures of themselves and remember it. (One of my many summer projects to look forward to. )

Mumkins - It sounds like you're getting a great start! I want to read the Benjamin West story. We liked reading about him in Bigger briefly...and the project we did painting with juice kicked off our "potty party" and potty training Garret. He has a special place in my heart. I'm sure you wanted to know that. I think it's great that you can add sign language to LHTH, too. Sign language is something I wish I'd learned...maybe someday.

Sam - I loved Nathan's cabin and painting! And, I've gotta tell you that I can't wait to start reading the Burgess books in the fall. (I'm sure my kids will like them, too. ) I'm so happy to hear how much success you've seen homeschooling this year as you've stuck it out and persevered with your routine building. Praise the Lord!

Kathleen