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We had a great week finishing Unit 6 and beginning Unit 7 in LHTH & LHFHG.

It amazes me how much the kids are learning and how often our talks outside of "school" turn to the Bible and God. We went a few places this week and so I've put The Singing Bible CDs in the car. I would recommend this resource to anyone with kids - it's not for the LHTH curriculum. My ds6 and dd3 "fight" over what CD 1-4 they're going to listen to...not a bad thing to fight over, right?!

I feel like they're really understanding God's Word because we're in the Bible everyday with the HOD curriculum. Just today in the car I had my ds6 telling me dd3 how she can know if she's going to go to heaven someday. I LOVE IT! This is why I'm doing what I'm doing...staying home with my kids, homeschooling them and praying that they'll grow to LOVE God and serve Him with their lives.

My ds6 always chooses to do the Bible story & activity first every day. This week our cardboard blocks were used quite a bit with building the walls of Jericho...


...and for bowling down idols (which he really enjoyed).


My dd3 loves to cut with scissors and was delighted she could cut the grass out for Baby Moses and then the oval for the "basket" and Moses.


She drew bricks for each box and then ds6 helped write the numbers 1-5 for each brick. I love to see them working together like this...


One of the academic highlights of our week was ds6 reading the ENTIRE book of Nate the Great on Thursday with just minimal help from me. I had planned to have him read only half of it (30 pages) but he kept wanting to read to find out what happened & solve the mystery.

(He finished Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons a few weeks ago and we've been working through the list of 20 books in the back of that book that are suggested books to read once the 100 lessons are finished.) I'm amazed at his reading!

Hope everyone else had a great week!

We had four days of school this week since we had family come for a visit. We got through most of Unit 8 in LHTH. I have to say I was rather leery of covering the Passover. Death is an uncomfortable topic for me to explain, but I think I've gotten better about being matter-of-fact about it. My oldest and I have had several conversations lately about how people get to Heaven and what kind of a place Hell is. I'm glad we're talking about these things and she is asking me good questions.

I changed the fingerplay because the provided one seemed too depressing to say all week. This was ours:

Moses told Pharaoh (cup hands to mouth)
Let my people go (brush hands away)
G... G...
Let my people go (brush hands away)
G... G...

But Pharaoh didn't listen! (shrug shoulders)
Pharaoh said No (shake finger)
So God sent the plagues (arms up and down)
Because Pharaoh said no (shake finger)

Moses told Pharaoh (cup hands to mouth)
Let my people go (brush hands away)
G... G...
Let my people go (brush hands away)
G... G...

They had fun picking out props to act out crossing the Red Sea. They tooks turns being Moses and holding up a block "staff". They used their baby doll "Egyptians" in their stroller "chariots" ready to chase us.

I had them make gingerbread cookies and make G's out of the cookie dough one day. I think we might have to do that again next week when we finish letter G up. They were tasty.

We had a beautiful week with Little Hearts. We finished Unit 5 and began Unit 6. My ds is reading so very well with the emerging readers in Beyond too! He started Frog and Toad All Year this week and has really enjoyed seeing how silly toad can be. The first story about the sleigh ride had him cracking up the whole time!

We also finished up Reddy Fox. We started Petter Cottontail today and it was too funny...as I was reading, he stopped me and had this total ephipany moment..."MOM....the characters in this book are the same as the ones in Reddy Fox...it is just telling us about Peter Cottontail's life now instead of Reddy's!!!" He was so excited to have figured that out on his own, he could hardly explain it to me! So funny.

The Rhymes in Little Hearts are, by far, his favorite thing to do during the day. This week, there was a lot of movement involved and he love to get up and jump around. Being a fidgety little boy, he NEEDS that!

By far, though, his uttmost favorite part of the whole week was this:



What is THAT, you ask? That...is soil. Edible soil. LOL Chocolate chips make up the rocky layer underneath, crumbled graham crackers make up the soil, and frosted flakes make up the hummus layer. The boy say, "Soil is YUMMY." We don't typically eat chocolate chips, graham cracker, AND Frosted flakes at 10am, so this was a real treat.



Just a little more...PLEASE.

Well, I feel pretty late posting here for last week, but it seems too early to start the new week's review. So, here goes my last week's review post...

Little Hands to Heaven:
My little guy is doing LHTH half-speed and is loving it so much!!! I need to get better about snapping more pictures of him, but here he is gluing his cheerios on his letter A for his letter activity:


He gets more and more of the words right in the Fingerplay each day. I have him repeat each line after me and do the action as best he can. His favorite thing to do is jump on my back when I am the ant crawling around, or to hop on top of me when I'm the anaconda snake slithering on the floor. He is one busy boy - this is really filling a need for him. He knows his "A-A-A" sound well, and just started singing his ABC's fairly well. I need to get a different scisssors for him for his cutting activities, but he sure loves to try. During the song "Two Trees", he kept saying, "Oh, so sad. Adam and Eve so sad with that tree." That was sad - the beginning of sin in the world - very sad. He loved jumping over the snake I was wiggling (a long black belt). He begged to do it over and over again. He also cuddles up so nicely for his Bible time each day on the couch. It has been another wonderful week with LHTH for my little one.

In Christ,
Julie

Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory:
We finished The Bears on Hemlock Mountain this week for his Emerging Reader's Set, and we both loved it. He did a good job of reading it with excitement... There are NO bears on Hemlock Mountain.. There are NO bears on Hemlock Mountain...It's neat to see him be able to focus on expression and comprehension instead of just focusing on trying to read the words right. We read some stories from Boys and Girls from Colonial Times this week, and his favorite project was making the caterpillar, just like the copper one the coppersmith made in history, and with the body parts just like he read about in science. I like how it all ties together like that. My other sons enjoyed eating the caterpillar (don't worry, it was a yummy peanut butter playdough recipe we made from the guide ). Here are some pictures of that:

This was another favorite history project this week. He made a miniature Faneuil Hall, complete with the copper grasshopper at the top. This has sparked a lot of building and creating in his free time too:


The hands-on HOD math activities continue to be a favorite as well. Here he is learning multiplication for the first time, as repeated addition. He has his own "donut shop". Each white box is a doughnut box, and the fruit cheerios represent the donuts. He had no trouble counting them and understanding repeated addition. He even surprised me by counting by 5's as a short cut when we did 5 donuts to a box. Whoever thought a first grader could get the concept of multiplication - but I'm happy to say, he gets the concept already!


Those were the highlights of the week - though there were more, I'll stop there and hope you had a good week too!
In Christ,
Julie

Creation to Christ:
We had a blast this week. It just seemed to be one neat thing after another. I can always tell when we've done school a month and get to about week 4-5. It just always seems to be when we hit our groove and really get to enjoying our days. (Other than potty training the little guy, that is. ). My ds enjoyed reading about natural selection and habituation in science. Here he is acting out natural selection with cougars and deer. This really explained the concept well. Each cougar needs 3 deer to survive. If the cougar lands on 3 deer, it survives and has a baby, resulting in 2 cougars hunting in that territory. If it does not survive, only 1 cougar hunts again next year. Each deer that survives has 1 baby. My ds could see how the deer population rose, then the cougar population rose, then the deer population decreased, causing the cougar population to decrease, etc. It was a wonderful way to teach this:


My ds loved making his simple "Hebrew" meal. He chopped the lettuce for it himself. We ate on a picnic blanket and enjoyed grapes, raisins, lettuce, bread dipped in honey, yogurt, and almonds. The other boys thought it was pretty neat to have an indoor picnic. I also bought chocolate covered raisins - they've never had them and I couldn't resist. What fun!


He couldn't find his shepherd's headdress to wear to the picnic, and he was pretty bummed. He found it a day later in his closet. This was a good lesson actually - his closet's looking better these days.

He is on to one of his favorite parts of DITHOR now - the final project. He chose to set goals for the Godly character traits of responsibility, diligence, and initiative. He picked to rake the yard - a daunting project. But, he's been faithful about it every day, and he's making headway. He also chose to help his little brother with potty-training, try to "see work on his own" and do it without being told, and try to put things away completely. We're only on Day 2, but he's been doing well. I'm proud of him. The first day of potty training was horrible, but he was a big helper anyway.


Finally, he was really proud of his descriptive paragraph about his three-wheeler. He chose to type his final draft today. I'm so excited he is getting inspired to write. This has been a slow interest for him, so we are both really celebrating this week!

I hope you had a good week too!
In Christ,
Julie