Week in Review 3-1-10 - 3-5-10

[Mom4Him]

Ok Girls,

What was YOUR week Like?

You can post:

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

Important Note: If you are linking us to your blog, please make sure it's not just a general link, but to your specific post of HOD. That way if someone reads through these a year from now they can find your share without needing to hunt!

[Mom4Him]

It has been another great week using LHTH! This week we talked about the birth of Jesus & how the shepherds came & adored him... & the wise men brought gifts for Jesus. It was wonderful to talk about what gifts we can bring to Jesus (obeying hearts was one of the answers my girls gave ).

It was great fun to dress up & to pretend to be the various nativity characters, coming to worship Jesus & to spread the good news that Jesus was born...
We had our own Mary, Joseph, shepherds & even our own little lamb... (We took the pictures at our church where we got all of the costumes, etc.)

The oldest girls were very excited to learn how to make a 5-pointed star for their "Count on Me" pages...

We are all about babies at our house! The girls really enjoyed pretending to be Simeon taking care of "baby Jesus". First they practiced with a baby doll- then they got to love on their baby sister...

What an enjoyable week it has been once again with LHTH. I love how we are learning so much & having so much fun- all to God's glory!
I look forward to hearing about everyone else's weeks!
Jessica

[LynnH]

Jessica those pictures are precious! We had a very fun week highlighted by our Medieval Feast. You can read about it on my blog. http://graceandfur.blogspot.com/2010/03 ... -3110.html

[3musketeers]

Jessica those pictures are precious!

I second that! Too Cute!!!!

[my3sons]

Jessica - Your dc look so precious acting out Jesus' birth! Someone in the family must have beautiful eyes, because all of your dc do. Your dd did so well with her other work too. Thanks for letting us see your week!

Lynn - Your Medieval Feast looks so fun! I love how your whole family got into it. Your menu looked so neat. I wish I'd had my ds do something more professional looking like that, but I'll tuck that thought away for my middle ds. Your ds is doing so well with PHFHG - you can be so pleased!

Creation to Christ:
Wyatt is really enjoying his "Streams of History: Ancient Rome" book. I see him engrossed in it so much that he doesn't even notice what I'm doing with my other dc. We also started "Traveling the Way" for Storytime and are loving it. It is so neat how it weaves in Paul from the Bible into the story, along with the daily struggles of that time of history between groups of people, slaves, times of war, etc. We can hardly wait to read the next day. Wyatt is memorizing his Robert Frost poem, and finding it quite easy to do. I'm enjoying him enjoying poetry.

I was pleasantly surprised when Wyatt got all of his answers to "Exploring the History of Medicine" right. CM style learning gets another gold star in my book. All of the questions were multiple choice and true/false, which we have done nothing with, so I was pleased when he did so well on the first 2 quizzes. I didn't even talk to him beforehand about it; he just handed in his paper to be corrected. I don't know why I let those little voices in my head get me wondering about things like 'how will my dc do with T/F, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank,testing type stuff' if they don't do it in their schooling. Silly me. Anyway, turns out CM is right again! If dc are taught to truly think about what they read and are shown how to retell it well, they comprehend it well. Not rocket science, but I've now put that worry to rest. Thanks HOD for having CM style plans in place for me.

Our use of DITHOR over the past handful of years has done so much for my ds's reading comprehension (and writing ability) as well. One of the big highlights this week was Wyatt making his marionette of the main character of the DITHOR book "More Tales from Dust River Gulch" (which was such a fun read, BTW). Meet J.D. here, and check out Wyatt's "Who Am I?" riddle for him (just click on the picture and hit "zoom in"):


What a great week!
In Christ,
Julie

[my3sons]

Bigger Hearts for His Glory (half-speed):
I can always tell when we're about a month into a new guide with our dc, because everything just clicks so nicely. We've been doing BHFHG half-speed for about a month now, and we are loving the groove we've found. Riley can't wait for me to read the history each day, and John Smith really piqued his interest. He had some incredible adventures before settling in Jamestown, and of course, the adventures will continue there.

Reading poems theatrically is a favorite of Riley's, and he often gets the microphone and does so with gusto (always wanting to do a second and third rendition ). This is so different from my oldest ds, as he loves poetry now, but is still not a fan of putting a bunch of emotion into his readings. We had a great talk this week about the character quality "boldness", and how being bold can be good, or it can be not so good. This was a nice talk for us to have, as Riley is incredibly bold about some things (usually daring things having to do with tools, his bike, or his 3-wheeler ). We talked about being bold and how the Lord weighs our motives. So, for example, if a person was being bold to be noticed as superior at something, that is not a good motive. If however, they have a natural talent they are boldly using without expecting special recognition, that is more than likely a good motive, as it is using the talents bestowed by the Lord.

Riley has taken off with his "Cheerful Cursive", and though he's only on p. 11, he can pretty much just do it on his own (though I insist on hovering for a portion of it ). He even wrote a few words in cursive during his note-taking of the sermon today at church. The words were "it" and "if", but he was so happy to show them to me, and they were very nicely done. He enjoyed making his science notebooking as well.


One skill I'd like for Riley to learn as I look ahead to next year (yes, I'm a born planner ) is for him to get out his things more on his own. So, I typed up a plan of our half-speed day for him to follow. It lists the blocks we do his schooling in. I have him make 3 piles of materials then (the last block has nothing to set out since his book on tape is always out for him already). This is what they look like:


He just makes his 3 little piles on the table, and then I grab pile 1 and we're off. I couldn't believe it, but after only a few days of doing this, he also set up his geography lesson. He got masking tape, and followed the directions in the guide to tape them correctly to the floor to make a giant compass rose with all the directions. He did come and ask me what "vertically" and "horizontally" meant, which I answered without thinking what he might be doing, as I was changing my little toddler. What a nice surprise to find my beaming little guy all set to go with the geography lesson set up as well! He does know he can't start without me. I love to teach, and I will not be left out of that - but the getting ready of the materials, THAT I don't mind having done already.

I'll end with the high-light of this week. For DITHOR, Riley became the main character Ida from "The Secret School", and we acted out first person point of view, and third person point of view. It was a blast! While Ida in the book rode to school in a car, Riley opted for the John Deere ride-on. He was a wonderful Ida, and we had so much fun discussing the book in character mode.


In Christ,
Julie

[my3sons]

Little Hands to Heaven (half-speed):
Emmett is learning his new Fingerplay "Two Helping Hands" and has his 'h' sound down pat. Every once in a while he breaks into one of his old fingerplays for fun, especially "Baby in the Basket" and "Let My People Go". Today at church, when looking through his Bible he saw a picture of baby Moses in a basket in the reeds, he broke into his "Baby in the Basket, float, float, float" fingerplay and had to be "shhhed", though it was pretty cute. He enjoyed gluing his yogurt raisins to his "H", but was eating them as fast as he was gluing them. In fact, the missing raisin on the "H" was eaten glue and all. He really likes holding on tight to me as I sing along with the "Ten Commandments" song too. He was able to find almost all of the "H's" on his "Hide and Seek H" page this week, and he marked them himself too.


He continues to love his Bible so much that he "reads" it in the morning with the older boys, and then insists on holding it while watching his video:


Though he flip-de-do's around a lot, he is really getting so much out of this already. He certainly remembers his Bible characters well - I think all books he "reads" to us have a Joseph, Abraham, Moses, or Sarah in them! I feel so good about our time together. I haven't decided yet what we'll do when we complete half-speed LHTH. I figure I'll either go through it one more time and have my oldest help out with some boxes (whichever inspire him the most), or we'll start LHFHG half-speed. We'll have to see what seems best at that time. For now, what fun we are having!

Hope you all had a wonderful week!
In Christ,
Julie

[moedertje]

Julie, it is so cool to watch your weeks in progress. How easy is it to upload to photobucket and post at the end of the week.

I am using Bigger at half speed and little hands at half speed as well. I took pictures and forgot to post them on the weekend! Now this week I have forgotten so far...ahhhh

[my3sons]

Julie, it is so cool to watch your weeks in progress. How easy is it to upload to photobucket and post at the end of the week.

I am using Bigger at half speed and little hands at half speed as well. I took pictures and forgot to post them on the weekend! Now this week I have forgotten so far...ahhhh

Thanks so much! I'm trying to make myself accountable for taking pictures, at least once a week. This check-in has been a huge help to me for doing that. It's not hard to post pics using Photobucket, and I'd love to see yours . Here is a link that explains how to do it:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3229&p=23993

Have a wonderful Wednesday!
In Christ,
Julie

[moedertje]

Bigger Hearts for His Glory

We started BHFHG at half pace in January and are on unit 4 here.

Dictation has been an absolute blessing. Elijah is loving it and it is one of his favorite things to do. It's short, quick and he does very well in it. We do dictation 3 times every week.


He is learning to draw and or copy the different sea animals in science. I model step by step drawing since this is something that will be a learned activity. Once we do it step by step he has beautiful pictures in his science note book and or time line.


We absolutely fell in love with R&S English, the Godly content simplicity and the are key.

This week we had a lot of fun learning about responsibility during Read-A-Loud time and ending unit 4 with a beautiful book mark! It was a great surprise. I did not notice that in my pre-reading of Bigger! I had to let go and let him decorate however he wanted and he stamped it with lots of different things.


The hit of the week was making the acrostic of Ponchahontas her name. It was fun brainstorming together and making phrases that make sense.


For poetry we copied all the poems into a booklet, we don't do copywork for the poems, we do it for the hymns instead. On day 4 we place a copy of the activity on the opposite side to remember as we go over the poems again. I just wish I could put the movie in that I made asking Elijah to recite his poem with gusto, motions and emotion as he read it. We taped it for Daddy and my little son turns out to be a great performer.


In history we had fun bartering with our friends at co-op and making the Indian blanket. We paste our art projects in a Picture story book and copy the key idea underneath for show and tell.

[moedertje]

Little Hands to Heaven

We started LHTH last year before Christmas break and are doing it half speed with my 4 year old. We have a co-op and the two other boys are a bit younger so we will just move on with the 3 R's when need arises.

Luke has great penmanship and is one for precision. He is also very much ready to write and is doing great on his lettering. Our goal is to have him do LHFHG in 1st grade so we can focus on his 3 R's while in Kindergarten. Now that I know the beauty of the activities (2nd time around with LHTH), I do everything. It is nice to see how the guides build on each other.

He loves to write his letters and is very proud to show off his art book with his written letters. We put the art in a picture story book and write letters below at the end of the 2 weeks.


He enjoys doing the finger-plays, but his favorite are the Bible stories, we love the Bible in pictures for little eyes (the older version, 1976), it still has all the pictures. Just have to figure out the story we are at.


One of his favorite things is to line up objects on his letter on the floor. He gets so excited when he sees a new letter being put on and tells little sis what it is. We usually put it down at the beginning of the week. We also had to build different types of towers for math, wide high and low.



For his number pages, I have him write that number down for practice. Therefore he wrote 7 sevens.


It's also neat to see how with the Copy Count on me pages he usually does a little narration of the bible story that goes with the thing he drew I did not do that with my oldest when we did LHTH

We had much fun making Baby Moses in the basket and cutting out strips of grass, than later in the week doing the dramatic play. Little sis joins in for Bible time and just tags along.


Hide and Seek F.


For F in co-op they (I do Bigger Hearts with the older ones) decorated the F's with frogs (one of the plagues) and feathers.

[my3sons]

moedertje - Your dc are precious! It is so neat to be able to put their faces with your posts now. Those smiles sure say a lot - they are obviously loving HOD! Both of your boys do such neat work. You can be so proud of them, especially for their writing, as this is not a natural skill for most boys. I agree with what you said about dictation and R & S English. We enjoy those too - they are both quite easy to do and pack a big punch for building LA skills. I liked your ds's Pocahontas' acrostic, and I see he has a love of wearing white t-shirts, as all of my boys do. Go figure boys would love white - when they also usually love to get dirty! Your ds's notebooking for science turned out so well too, and the modeling helps my young ds doing BHFHG as well. Your little guy doing LHTH has incredibly neat penmanship and a steady hand too. That is such a blessing! I'm glad I got to see a pic of your little gal too - what a cutie. Thanks for sharing!

In Christ,
Julie

[moedertje]

Thank you so much for the encouragement Julie! It put a smile on my face.