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Ok Girls,

What was YOUR week Like?

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a- A picture
b- A blog Link
c- A written synopsis
d- Your favorite memory
e- Anything you want that shares your HOD excitement!

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Ladies,

What a blessing to come to our HOD studies each day with a feeling of joy that we are going to learn a lot and have fun doing it. I also love that I can open my guide and it is all there for me.

This week in Bigger:
We have enjoyed learning about Daniel Boone. Both dss made a fantastic picture of Daniel on his vine swing. Which they totally connected to there poem "Under the Trees". I have spent some time modeling drawing for them (thank you Julie) and I was excited to see the improvement (especially the one ds that struggles). We heard about Jemima Boone and how she was captured with her friends by Indians. I placed 3 of their favorite stuffed animals at the end of our cloth (paper towel) trail to be the girls. I dressed the animals up in a frilly hat, bow, and scarf. The boys followed the trail, just like Daniel Boone to rescue the girls. Not knowing what was at the end of the trail, they found the dressed up animals. They laughed. But then when they noticed their boy stuffed animals had on girl accessories they were horrified. Oh no no no, Mom! They did a great narration of Daniel Boone to add to the Frontier Facts and copied our Rural/Urban T graph for their notebook.

One Small Square Woods- We still have a rotting banana and a piece of bread in my file cabinet drawer. I think that must be what I am smelling Yes I just checked it. Very Ripe and moldy...time to draw our 3rd and final picture. The boys also loved doing our pollination exploration. My youngest even joined in. We used cotton balls to be the flowers, glitter to be the pollen, and q-tips the bees taken pollen from one flower to the next.

Bible: Does HOD cause you to find yourself in a place of repentance before the Lord? I was reading Little Pillows in tears one day this week realizing there were some things I need to ask for the Lord's forgiveness. Hebrews 4:12 says that the "Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edge sword." How thankful I am for HOD, that is saturated with His Word! Yesterday, we had a wonderful discussion about optimism, and how knowing that God's plans over-rule man's can change our attitude on so much.

LHTH: Loved the song "Pharaoh told him No." All of us have been singing that one. I promised ds this weekend we will play in the water to turn it red. He is too excited about that activity. We ran out of time the day we were supposed to do it. My mother was here one day so we lined up the stuffed animals and asked ds, "Which one is first to see Grammy? Second? Third?" and so on. He did great with his ordinal numbers. But of course when it was time to tell Grammy what letter we were working on, he would smile his mischievous smile and say "B" bbbb. O.k. it's G. I am excited to see his improvement in cutting as he cut out shoes for our #7 page. He also made F's and doors by using Julie's dot recommendation that I've seen on her posts. He recalls so many of his Bible stories. I am so glad he enjoys God's Word.

I will be looking forward to seeing and hearing about your weeks.

Another fun week using Preparing. You can read about it here. http://graceandfur.blogspot.com/2010/02 ... 15-10.html

This is my first time trying to post on Week in Review -I finally got my camera out & everyone was excited to get their picture taken throughout the week!
We did Unit 19 of LHTH & had so much fun with the story of Jonah...
Here we are making our whale pictures...

We made our own "blowing storms" to see what would move when we blew on it...

Here are some of our "Hide & Seek P pages" & "Count on Me" page...

We always have fun with the Fingerplay - here the girls are being swallowed by a fish & then feeling fine after they were spit on dry land...

Probably our favorite activity was pretending to be fish spitting out Jonah (a pair of socks) onto dry land (laundry basket)... - they did eventually move further away from the basket ...

And we did some "yummy" activities- gluing popcorn (we didn't have raisins or macaroni ) on the letter P & making the letter "P" with chocolate sauce

Sorry that got to be a lot of pictures- but we were just having so much fun! We enjoy using HOD every day- what a wonderful, God honoring curriculum!

Creation to Christ
Wyatt had a super week with CTC! I'm thrilled with his progress in so many areas. He is doing so well overall with CTC. He's always been a responsible, hard-working, "let's get it done" child, which I know is a huge blessing. He has not always been as creative of a child though, and that is why my favorite areas of growth have been in his creative writing and drawing/painting abilities. All of these areas have always been of little interest to Wyatt, as he is a very logical child. I'll have to share his latest Write with the Best fable when he finishes it. I think it is wonderful, and though it began with average interest on his part, by the end of writing his rough draft today, he was grinning from ear to ear as he could hardly write fast enough to get his words on the paper at the end of his fable. His watercolor painting has also improved so much. His drawings for his "Draw and Write" projects are so beautiful now, that it honestly can just about bring tears to my eyes when I see them. As I was pulling out my Bigger Hearts things for my middle ds to begin the other day, I decided to reuse the recipe box and tabs for vocabulary that Wyatt had used. I took all of his old vocabulary cards out and was shocked to see some index cards with scribbling for pictures, or tiny itty-bitty stick people. These were his first attempts at vocabulary for Bigger Hearts, but I'd forgotten how far he really has come in this area. Anyway, it's just a blessing to see growth in these areas, and I know it's due to HOD and its progression of teaching skills. Here's a picture of him drawing for his DITHOR project - I'll have to try to snap another picture of it when he finishes. I'm so proud of him!


In Christ,
Julie

Bigger Hearts for His Glory:
Riley cannot wait for his science experiments. Here he is discovering how wind creates waves in ocean waters:


This week, Riley copied his poem on lined index cards. He is going to cut off the extra unused parts of the cards and glue them to a blank piece of paper so he has some extra room to illustrate his poetry. Riley's writing has grown by leaps and bounds this past few months. He is writing much smaller and neater than before.


It is very exciting to see Riley's notebooking in history in science. He is a very creative boy and loves to draw and color. He just has a knack for making beautiful notebooking pages:


We could go full-speed already, but I want to give him some more time to grow into Bigger Hearts. I'm loving half-speed right now. It's really giving me time to teach him what I expect for each box to be done well. Each week gets better and better! We are loving BHFHG!

In Christ,
Julie

Little Hands to Heaven
Emmett can't wait to do school each day. He asks for his brothers to go get his Bible used in LHTH each morning (it's in a higher cupboard). He sits on the couch and pats next to him saying, "Come on, Mama! I've got my Bible. Emmett's ready for school!" It just melts my heart. He loved playing follow the leader as the Israelites followed Moses, gluing is always a favorite of his, and his new "G-G-G" sound he makes while holding his nose and waving his hand down is too cute. He cuddles with me when I sing the corresponding music to him, and more and more I hear him humming the tune of the songs, or saying the main line of lyrics over and over, like "Pharaoh told him NO!". At night when we are reading the Bible as a family, he gets a book and pretends to be reading the story in it out loud to us. The characters are always whomever he's learning about in school. He is learning so much more than I thought he could as young as he is - it's just a joy to teach him!


In Christ,
Julie

I loved reading everyone's updates! Jessica, I'm so glad that you posted some pictures of your fun with LHTH. I love seeing your exuberant little learners!!!

We are still having a wonderful time with HOD.

LHFHG

In the last couple of weeks we've done Unit 7 and some of Unit 8. We loved the Rhyme, "Strength to Lead" where we sing to the tune of Farmer in the Dell and get to do "spin jumps" at the beginning. We're really good at those now.

When we read about Hannah and Samuel, Allison pointed out that she's just like Hannah because she's been praying that we'd have another baby in our family and God answered yes. I just love being able to share with my kids during "school" things like I could on this day. How she and her brothers and this new little baby we're going to have are all such wonderful answers to prayer. Grant came right away after we got married, but then we prayed and waited for Allison for almost 3 years. Much like we have for this new little blessing that's coming. Allison thinks that Hannah would be a good name for this baby so we can remember this Bible story. (Garret voted for Samson, though. Cause he was really strong! )

They had a lot of fun making their tapestries for the temple. Garret is getting so much better with fine motor skills! He's growing up!



The activities to enforce the Bible stories are so much fun! Here they are knocking down "idols" (while we were at Grandma's house) like Gideon...and there's
a shot of our "idol" that kept falling on his face when the enemy stole the ark of the covenant.


We read about David and Goliath on a pretty nice day, so we talked Dad into putting "Goliath" 9 feet up on a tree for us. They had a lot of fun trying to hit him with rocks...but we weren't too successful. He was tall!!


We're really enjoying Singapore math. I love the way it's getting Allison thinking, and she just thinks it's great fun! Carrie's activities are super-fun!


Kathleen

PHFHG

Grant has completed Units 23 & 24 in the past 2 weeks. His favorite thing these last couple weeks has been reading Raiders from the Sea, which we finished this morning. I totally agree that it was a book I couldn't wait to read the next chapter of. And it ends...Lynn, don't read this part ...with Bree and Lil hoping to escape and the line "Somewhere a dog barks." Grant said, "What??? That's the end?! No way! That's a HUGE cliffhanger." He's already asking for the sequel(s) for his birthday in April and he wants me to read them out loud so I don't miss anything either. I know you said you're going to use the 2nd one in RTR...but I don't think we can wait that long, Carrie!

Here is our growing timeline for history. We had to transplant it in December because it was outgrowing our little school cabinet door. The bathroom door is working well.


Grant also chose to memorize "The Hayloft" for poetry, too. He has a great time playing on the hay bales at the farm, but he thinks it would be even better if Dad pitched it in a hayloft like they used to. (Much softer, I'm sure!)

Last week's coral polyp's were a hit in science! Anything edible is!

He also really liked getting to act out different fish mouths (tweezers, pliers, & clothespin) feeding on the coral reef.

He loves the experiments in science! And I can see how going through the thought process to do them is affecting how he figures other things out. We love HOD science!

And, last but not least, I want to share Grant's DITHOR project about Buffalo Bill. He chose to act out a scene with the help of his brother and sister. Garret was an Indian. Allison was injured Bill. And, Grant was...Bill's friend & partner...can't remember his name now! Dad narrated, and I videotaped. It was a fun family event - that we actually did a day earlier than we planned. Grant asked me one evening if he could go upstairs and work on his reading project a little. I said sure! And he and Garret emerged for supper like THIS...

Not wanting to repeat THAT (or clean it up more than once), we decided to get 'er done right then and there (after supper).

The kids put on a stellar performance!


The only downside was that Garret's face......was not washable! Thankfully not permanent - just the non-washable Crayola's. Ooops! Since we had a family wedding in 2 days, I was very thankful that repeated eye-makeup remover over a couple days did the trick. Whew!! How would you explain why your child looks like an Indian to relatives that have never met him before?!?

Grant is super-excited for our Midieval Feast this week. The trenchers are curing...
Kathleen

I love reading about everyone's weeks!

I'm a little late getting this up, but here's our week in review
http://cherish-each-moment.blogspot.com ... ek-22.html