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Little Hands to Heaven:
We've been reading about Noah and The Flood. Emmett especially loves listening along to the song Noah, Build a Boat. I hold him and sing it, and he keeps saying, "It's raining. It's so sad!" Today, we read about Noah getting out of the ark, seeing the rainbow, and thanking God. Before I even read, he pointed to the picture in the Bible and said, "There's Noah - well, he's OUT of the boat!" I was surprised he remembered Noah and realized he was out of the boat because he's pretty little. His loved the Float/Sink experiment we did, and his big brother had to help with it. He also loved lining up his tractors on his letter "B"! We are having such fun together. Here are a few pictures:






In Christ,
Julie

Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory:
We've been learning about the first American flag. One of Riley's favorite activities was making the edible American flag. He mixed the frostings and loved making his flag. We made it bigger since everyone wanted to help eat it.





For Storytime, we've been reading "If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon". To tell the theme of the book, Riley chose to make a map of it, using the picture in the book as a guide:


We talked about "first-time obedience" a lot this week with Riley, and I'm proud of the progress he's making with saying "yes, mom" and doing what I've asked him to do more quickly, more cheerfully, and more completely than before. This is NOT a struggle during school, which makes school a very happy thing for the two of us to do together, but it is a struggle other times during the day. So, we continue working on this and I know God is helping us do this together.

In Christ,
Julie

Creation to Christ:
Wyatt made Aaron's breastplate of gemstones representing each of the 12 tribes this week for his history project. He did such a nice job on it. I'm proud of his ability to follow directions independently - he's really become good at this and especially looks forward to each of his history projects each week.




For his science experiment, he compared his tongue to an anteater's tongue, and found his coming up short. He first tried to use his tongue to lick up raisins. It didn't work very well. Then he cut a piece of yarn the length of an anteater's tongue and put honey on the end, since an anteater's tongue is sticky. He had no problem licking up the raisins then! He was amazed at how short his tongue is compared to an anteater's tongue:



Wyatt told me that he thought he wouldn't like his Write with the Best as much as he liked his Grammar, but that now he looked forward to his Write with the Best even more than he did his Grammar. He said, "I guess it's because with Write with the Best I get to write with, well... simply the best!" And he had a little giggle. What a cutie! It's true though, he is writing with "the best", and it's showing as he tried to model them. I hope you all had a great week too.

In Christ,
Julie

I love all the pictures, Julie. Lydia really enjoyed making the stones for the breastplate!

Here's our week in review.

http://daisyhomeschoolblog.blogspot.com ... -1030.html

This week we were supposed to take a 'break'... yet with some dr. appts and life taking over lately... we slowed down the pace a bit the last couple of weeks, and finished up unit 10 this week. You can see our week in review at our homeschool blog here:

http://joshuatreeacademy.blogspot.com/2 ... it-10.html

I am enjoying seeing how HOD looks for everyone else too! Don'tcha just love it!?!?!!!!

We did week 10 this week of Preparing. Once again Noah really enjoyed it. He had 3 favorite things this week. He loved making the scytale message and suprised me by being able to tell his Dad what it was called and who used them and why. Those hands on activities definitely are a key to him remembering things. He also enjoyed making the animal cell for his science project. I am moving him towards being more independent with his science projects but those are just tough for him due to his fine motor issues. He does great with independent science on all the other days. The other thing he loved this week was the Poetry part. He decided he would perform the poem "My shadow" for his Dad. He dressed up to look like a shadow and acted it out. It was so funny. I love to see him learning to have fun with poetry and express himself in different ways. I continue to be pleased with his progress in all areas. Oral narration is still his most challenging area, but I think he is making slow, but steady progress in that area.

DITHOR has been a hit here as well. He started the adventure genre this week and is reading "Toliver's Secret". He is a slow reader and I knew that reading 11 pages a day in that book would be a challenge for him, but he is doing pretty well with it. In ps they used guided reading levels and they had him at around level R by the end of last year. Toliver's Secret is rated T so I was a little concerned about his ability to comprehend this book, but he is doing great so far. The other thing I saw for one of the first times this week was that he picked up a book for the first time and just started free reading it. He is a reluctant reader so this was huge for him.

I've loved reading all of your reviews! (Other weeks, too. I always have time to check them out, just not post. ) Lynn - I just love Noah's reenactment of the shadow! Brilliant! That had to be fun!

Grant has also just finished Unit 10 in Preparing. We are thoroughly enjoying Preparing! (I must admit that I LOVE the history! I am learning a lot this year! ) He really enjoyed reading the book about the Trojan War during his independent history time. He thought that looking at the life of the Spartans made his life look pretty good. His favorite thing to do this week was make the scytale message. He's planning to use this method of communication with his friends to send "secret" messages.


He has been reading Dragons of the Deep for DITHOR. He absolutely loves it! And I must admit that I'm finding it pretty fascinating to listen to...although I DON'T have the urge to go deep sea diving now. I love that he is able to learn now how fossils fit in with the Bible. He's been making connections between this book and the others that he's read for science this year, too. He is seeing so clearly how what you "assume" is true can affect the conclusions you make about information. He is seeing that scientists really should be careful when they're talking about things that have been discovered and not make up too much that the evidence doesn't support. We'll be finishing this book up this coming week.

Here is a picture of his animal cell model. He thought this was great fun to make!


Our days have been a joy recently! Grant worked in and out of a dawdling phase a couple of weeks ago, and I'm sure that giving focused attention to HIS job will always be something that we work on. But he has seen that for our family to operate well, he has to do his job when it's supposed to be done. (And life is a lot more fun that way, too!) Our free time recently has been occupied with these adorable puppies that will need to find homes in the next couple of weeks.


Kathleen

I'm also having a wonderful time doing LHFHG with Allison and Garret! We are going slowly and have finished Unit 2 this week. The rhymes in motion are a hit! They're also listening really well to the history stories. Garret is so funny...he wants to make sure that I ask him a question if Allison gets to answer one. He loves to show that he was listening, too. They loved trying to sink the boat they made after reading about the flood. That was a great activity! (And I let them play with the water for quite a while afterwards. And, yes, it was ALL over my kitchen floor! But these 2 really do well at cleaning up after themselves when they make a big mess. I had a whole lot of laundry to do, but they mopped up the water with towels and changed their clothes by themselves. )


They both love the Hide 'Em in Your Heart CD, and the memory verses, too! My husband is so impressed at the way Garret can rattle the verses off. And we both love that they're hiding God's Word in their hearts now while they're little. I wish I knew how to put a video on here...maybe this winter I can figure it out. To share their verses, I've videoed them so that they can watch themselves on TV. They love this, and we show Dad when he comes home. They always have fun with the activities suggested to use while practicing the verse. Here they're busy with the double-ball throw.


Allison told Dad all about how Reddy Fox was "boasting" and so now he's "lame". She loves to use the new words that we figured out while reading the chapters. She was very worried about him getting shot. Garret likes to act out that part, complete with gun and limping. Grant gets to listen in on the stories, too, if he's on task because he has a little break scheduled in. (If he hasn't finished his work though, he can't come listen in.)

Allison loves doing the handwriting pages. It was a little tricky for a few weeks right after she broke her arm, but she's doing much better now. She's really been putting a lot of effort into the coloring and making the pictures "beautiful"!


We've been moving along with math, too, and making patterns all week. The kids have loved this. (Of course the patterns that are edible were the biggest hit! ) They really thought being detectives to find the missing piece in the pattern was fun. And, I love that in HOD-style, all these fun activities that my kids are loving are quick and easy for me!


Looking forward to another great week of HOD!
Kathleen

We had a rougher week with the big girls getting croup/viral infections. Lots of high fevers and stress for Mom and Dad, but we're at the end now, I hope! We finished Unit 9 of LHTH in the times when the girls felt better. Susannah and I did a reading lesson at 6am one morning.

On Day 4, they used their baby doll strollers and a blanket for an Israelite tent to act out the Bible story. I used the flashlight as God's fire to show them where to move the tent. It worked real well with the strollers. Then the girls had to take turns being God's fire. They moved a lot faster than I did so there was much chasing and laughing in the house that morning. The Bible Activity that day was to talk about your church. We live across the street from ours so we took a field trip over there. They took their Vtech digital camera and took pictures of the stained glass windows and other things they thought were pretty.


I added in a stained glass art project that day inspired from http://kiddley.com/2006/06/21/make-a-st ... ss-window/ It was contact paper and tissue paper. Very easy and very effective! I loved how they turned out. I had left some sticky around the edges of the frame so they went right up on the window. The girls made quite a few and were excited to show them to Daddy when he got home.




On Day 5, they enjoyed making grapes as the art project. I had them do their fingerprints in ink for the grapes. They make lots of stamping pictures with the ink after the grapes were done. Susannah knew grapes grew on a vine and was asking which fruits grew on trees and which ones grow on vines.


I tried the Letter Activity where you practice writing the letter in pudding. They were happy doing that once or twice, then they just wanted a spoon so they could eat the pudding faster. lol...


We played Hi-Ho Cheerio one day since the Unit was on letter H. It was nice to be able to do some fun things together in the bits of time when they were up for it.

Kathleen, it's fun to peak ahead on what we'll do in LHFHG next year. Those puppies are so cute. LynnH, I cracked up at the shadow costume. It looks like he was enjoying that. Julie, Riley's frosting flag was making me hungry! Is it on graham crackers? I love seeing what your boys are doing. Love seeing everybody's week. The girls and I enjoy looking at all the kids doing school on the week reviews.

The pictures are showing up large in my preview although I made them small on photobucket. Sorry if you view it and they are still big!

Boy, I have been so behind on my reports! Our weeks got all messed up with some time off we took and we are just now getting back on track. We had a short week last week and finished Unit 7 of Little Hearts. This particular Unit did not have any music scheduled for the Bible Verse - however, it was "My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and earth," so my little 6 year old started singing the song "Praise You In This Storm." I was so shocked that he remembered and he kept asking me to sing that part over and over and over... "I lift my eyes unto the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth..." It was so sweet and we all just love that song!

We also did some leaf rubbings this week to add to art. With fall almost over in my part of the country, I thought we'd better do it while we can!

Hope everyone has a great week this week!

We have been doing DITHR for a while now. We have done the fantasy and mystery genres.

Here is my sweet 10 yo daughter's project for the end of the mystery genre. This is an activity out of the Book Projects to Send Home. It is a diorama for the mystery book A Dangerous Game by Jeri Massi.

Here is a summary by my dd:

"There are flaps that tell about the story. There is a flap that is on the door in the first picture."



We are enjoying DITHR and are looking forward to doing the historical fiction genre next !

Hopefully we will get started on the other guides soon!


Terri

Mommy to 6 beautiful blessings:

DD-10yo Beyond and right side of Preparing plus DITHR
DS-8yo Beyond
DD-6yo Beyond
DD-4yo Little Hands
DS-2yo Joining in where he can!
D?-New little love due at the beginning of 2010!