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Ok Girls,

What was YOUR week Like?

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Preparing Hearts For His Glory Unit 3

This week went by so fast! I can hardly believe it's time to do WIR again.

We were still in Life in the Great Ice Age this week. The kids really like it. When I asked, "What if you lived during this time, what would you see or do?" My son said, "I would see the cave art and the all the wild animals and I would be hunting." My dd said, "I would be sewing the skins together for the lady who was getting married."

I figured out how to streamline R&S English. It was taking 30 minutes with each kid. Now I set the timer for 15 minutes. If there are a lot of sentences to work with, we start with 3 of them. Then if we have time before the timer goes off we go back and do the rest. I also have them do things orally wherever possible. I really like R&S English! It is way better than the other English books we were doing.

The kids liked drawing their Tower of Babel for their timeline today. They had fun speculating what it might have looked like and each designing their own version of it.

Hope you all had a great week too!
Leah

We started Beyond on July 6th and finished unit 1 and started unit 2 this week. WOW! What a great two weeks this has been. I really thought that dd would have to go at a slower speed, but boy was I wrong, she is just plowing through EVERYTHING! Her copywork was a little choppy and slow at the beginning of last week but now she has found her rhythm and is dong terrific work.

We are reading Helen Keller, it such a short book that in order to stretch it over 20 days I only read 4 pages a day and I can assure that my dd begs me everyday to read more. I never actually read a biography of Helen Keller's childhood before so we are both enjoying the book.

I love the fact that there is much physical activity in this curriculum, my dd has a hard time sitting still for very long periods so the physical activity breaks are just what the doctor ordered. Pairing our own movements with the memory verses is GENIUS! We both are haveing a blast with the memory verse work, it is a LOT of fun.

DD is also blasting through spelling, what a great confidence builder! We are going through the emerging readers, dd is having the hardest time with that, the readings are quite long and at first she balked at the length but she trying really hard to keep up with the pace. Her comprehension skills are lagging, but I'm sure that by the time we are done with Beyond she will be breezing through this, too.

The timeline has been fun, we have it on a large sheet of paper so that the squares are big and easy to draw in. As for science, dd always wants more so we are actually going through the science text as it is written and reading additional library books that go with the subjects in the books. I really like hooking the science up with the history, but it is difficult match up library books to the material when in a 3-6 week period we are covering several different things. This is the only tweak I'm making to the curriculum, it's definitely more work, but for my dd it is what is needed. Last year I tried to add in extra science with additional unit studies, but I couldn't keep up with the work load. Hopefullu when my ds comes along he will be satisfied with just doing the science as it is written.

All in all we had a great two weeks and I'm looking forward to the rest of the year.

Nancy- your post about this week with Beyond is very encouraging.Every now and again I get nervous about starting Beyond in a few weeks- my thoughts are - is he ready - will it be a big jump.....So reading about how well you are settling into beyond is very reassuring I think the emerging readers will give us the greatest challenge .Its nice getting to know the people using the same guides as us.
Leah- I loved the cave drawings - they are awesome

We actually took a break this week, but we have just finished One Small Square:Seashore and bought some friends this weekend. My oldest became fascinated with crabs from the book. So we bought 3 hermit crabs and converted our old fish aquarium into a hermit crab sanctuary. It is really neat to watch them. They can live for 10+ years. We have got to see them burrow into the mulch to go to sleep and they climb a lot. It is going to be really neat to read back through One Small Square and watch the crabs.

Their new habitat

This is the biggest one and you can really see the pecking order in the tank.

This neat cylinder shelled one almost hidden by the black one is the littlest and can really climb and move fast.
We have 3 but I couldn't get a pic of one b/c it was in the cave.
It is really a neat way to make the book come to life so to speak.

Val - I didnt know you could buy crabs- they look fascinating and I bet that it really helps bring the book to life

Yeah, you can buy hermit crabs all up and down the shore towns in New Jersey. I never had any as pets growing, they kinda grossed me out.