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Ok Girls,

What was YOUR week Like?

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a- A picture
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c- A written synopsis
d- Your favorite memory
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Bigger Hearts for His Glory:
We finished OSS Seashore this week. Riley has loved all of that book and the experiments as well. This week he did an experiment to see how sea creatures often have "air bladders" they can fill up with air to help them float, or deplete the air when they are wanting to sink down. Riley loved experimenting further with the dropper to see what happened as more or less air/water were in the dropper. His work on his lab sheets is getting so much better. He is really starting to understand the scientific process. When I used to teach ps, I noticed when the experiment was finished - usually I did it as a presentation with just a few students helping, as we lacked supplies for 30 students - no one ever thought to do more with the experiment, to try something more on their own or ask additional questions about "what if's", etc. Riley and Wyatt always want to try something else to see if their guesses about what may happen would be correct. I love that. I think that is the true nature of science. I also don't mind it if things go awry in the experiment, as that provides an excellent opportunity to discuss what could have gone wrong and why we think it did. This parallels real science so well! It's not like real scientists have all the answers before they begin to experiment - that is the purpose of the experiment. It's nice to see my dc are inquisitive about trying experiments, where my students in ps were often just wanting to know what the exact answer was, or what they were supposed to write down to get an "A". Anyway, I just had to share that I think my dc are showing much more of propensity to think scientifically, and enjoying actually DOING the experiments themselves as well. A nice change from my old teaching days in ps. Here's Riley with his dropper experiment:


We also finished reading "George Rogers Clark" for Storytime this week. Wow, was that a good book! This is kind of funny. I saw Riley making a beeline up the steps after we finished school yesterday. He had "OSS Seashore" and "George Rogers Clark" in his hands, and I asked what he was doing. He said, "I just have to reread these mom - I LOVED them!" I told him, great, but just don't lose them as we have one more son that will need them in the future.

Another thing Riley enjoyed this week was the sand art he did. He drew a shark in the middle and did his sand art around it. He worked so hard on it, and I think it turned out well.


We've had some excellent talks about responsibility this week with Riley. That is the Godly character trait we've been studying. I've seen some real improvement in Riley's chores and behavior with his little brother Emmett. Today we talked about the final thing he could work on in regard to responsibility was "speed". His attention just wanders, and then it takes him twice as long to finish his chores. Drives me nuts. But, today I set the timer for him for his chores, and he finished in record time. I told him he had "Dale Jr." speed this morning, and he beamed! I hope it continues - I am so thankful for the character discussions HOD provides. I hope you all had a good week and can't wait to hear about it!

In Christ,
Julie

Julie, what fun Riley seemed to have this week. I am so thankful for the wonderful books that are selected in HOD- that our children cherish them & want to read them over & over!

We had a fun week in Unit 25 of Little Hands to Heaven! This was a review week. It's amazing for me to see how well my girls are remembering all of the letter sounds... & even little brother who sits in from time to time does too. This week we talked about some of the Parables of Jesus, & how the stories Jesus told apply to our lives today.

One of our favorite things this week was acting out the story of the good samaritan.

Here are the girls putting glitter on their letters... (oh, how we LOVE glitter at our house... well, the kids do! )

Here they are dancing to the music... they enjoy this so much every day!

(Can you tell my girls like to dress up!? They would wear wedding dresses, leotards, princess crowns, etc. all day every day if I let them!)
What a wonderful week it was to talk about Jesus... it seemed to prepare us for this Easter weekend!
Happy Easter!
Jessica

BIGGER HEARTS 2nd week for Unit 6.

We saved our art for co-op on Wednesday and we were all thrilled to do our painting with JUICE! Elijah so much loved the story of Benjamin West he told Daddy, Grandma and everyone who wanted to hear about it how Benny West used his cat's tail hair to make brushes and used the juice of the Poke-Berry tree to paint with.
When it came to actually doing the craft I did not even have to do modeling for him. I just told the kids to make a large plant or tree, that we would paint with juice. I was more than proud of him and beaming with excitement once he was done. At the end of the week Elijah decided that he would become an artist like Benjamin West! And this for a child that did not seem to have one artistic bone in his body and does not really see detail.


Without even asking for help he did his timeline drawings as well. For William Penn a Quaker hat and for Benjamin West a paint brush. It's amazing to see the improvement in such a short time. Only 6 units of being encouraged in different subjects to draw. His confidence in drawing has risen. Especially now that Mommy does not do all the drawings anymore. Thank you Carrie for allowing our kiddo's to excel even in the things that they (or Mom) seem to struggle with at first.


Here he just fell asleep right in the lazy boy after taking a shower to warm up.

We did have to slow down at the end of the week, because Elijah got a fever on Wednesday evening. He still did his cursive and was excited to do the letter d without ski-sloop. We absolutely enjoy the Cheerful Cursive and the way it teaches the kiddo's letter formation, reading of cursive and going from cursive to manuscript and vice versa.

These character studies are absolutely challenging for the kiddo's and today I heard him talking to his younger brother that they had to be responsible with their chores. I do notice that Elijah has taken on great responsibility in helping out the younger ones and in doing his chore pack in the morning. I did not have to remind him this week. Hallelujah! He also has enjoyed getting the books together in piles for me and I think next week we can start by doing it on our laminated chart.

Creation to Christ:
Each day Wyatt begins CTC, my heart just fills up because I see him snuggle in, with a pillow by the fireplace to begin his day with his Bible Quiet Time. He has loved "The Illustrated Family Bible" so much. It is just beautifully illustrated and full of interesting facts about what was going on during each Bible story. He also sings his Phil. 2 CD with gusto, albeit a tad off key. But, it sure sounds good to my ears. This is a habit I long to instill in my dc - a Bible Quiet Time each day. It is one I still try to do, but didn't grow up doing, though my parents were wonderfully strong Christians who had their own quiet times each day. I am so hoping my dc continue this important habit into adulthood.

Wyatt continues to love Tiner's "Exploring the History of Medicine". He likes the quizzes, and he enjoys sharing what he's learned with me. Actually, come to think of it, he pretty much orally narrates it to whomever will listen, even though it's not assigned. I guess that's a testimony in itself to narration.

We've enjoyed starting our new Storytime book "The Accidental Voyage". Wyatt can really relate to one of the characters named Drew, as he's always hungry, likes riding a scooter/moped, and is learning to love the Lord. We had a blast doing the short skit together to narrate on the reading for the day. He was Drew, and I was Annie. We had a pretend lunch by an ancient column, discussed how hymns began, pretended to catch some pet lizards, talked about the sacrifices Christians made in the name of the Lord, and discussed in awe how God's hand is in everything turning it all out for the good of His plan. Doing a skit like this is out of Wyatt's comfort zone, and I have to say that I'm SO GLAD he does things like this because he needs to overcome his insecurity of acting or standing up and talking in front of a group. He was awkward about the skits at the beginning of the year, and now that it's near the end he loves doing them. I think it helps that I get into it too, and I love seeing my sometimes too serious son laugh it up and get a little silly.


I've really noticed a change in Wyatt this year with "Write with the Best". For one of the first lessons, we read an excerpt of excellent literature, and had to identify descriptive adjectives, specific nouns, vivid verbs, and descriptive adverbs. It was a tough lesson for him at the start of the year. We are now in Unit 31, and he had the same lesson today for a new piece of literature. He kited right through it. He could easily identify what part of speech each were, and which words were descriptive or vivid. We've gone to copying the excerpt, so he can mark it up right on that. It was such a joy to realize the progress that has been made there, and I think it is due to the combination of "Write with the Best" and "R & S English 4". Here he is grinning over his marked up copy:


You know, I had to buy Wyatt new tennis shoes this week, as he has grown out of his old ones (and they have a large hole I was unaware of in the bottom - not ideal for muddy spring weather . Anyway, he needed a men's size 8 shoe!!! I couldn't believe it, and it was just one more reminder of how the clock is ticking on the time I have left to teach him so many things. It is overwhelming sometimes, to think all that I want to tell him, all that I want to do with him. I am very thankful HOD helps keep Christ in our talks together every day. I can see time flying by, and I will have surely failed as a parent if I did not teach him about our Lord and Savior, and about how amazing He is, and about His saving grace and love. I just am thankful for our days together. There are lots of days I don't get it all right, but I figure I have time on my hands, and armed with HOD I've got a better shot of hitting the mark. Hope you had a good Friday!

In Christ,
Julie

Little Hands to Heaven:
Well, it has been quite the week for my little Emmett. He is in the throes of potty training, and I do mean "the throes". I'm right there with him. You'd think by son #3 I'd have this potty training business down, but alas, I don't. However, I sometimes have the patience of a gnat, and so I should not complain, as just today, he seems to be making a turn in the right direction. I do believe the tiny package of M & M's is the ticket for him - though I must first give God His due thanks as I have certainly been praying about this, and He has certainly been listening.

So amidst the potty training, HOD has been a welcome reprieve. He especially loves the masking taped letters on the floor, and will often play on it long after we're done with the lesson.


Little Emmett is making surprising progress with holding markers and making smaller marks with them. He actually did his "Hide and Seek" paper pretty much on his own, as far as the writing goes, and it was pretty good. He has a will of iron though, and he could not get it out of his head halfway through the lesson that ALL letters should be marked (little guy didn't want to leave any out, I guess ). I figured, oh well. It was a review week, and he'd already found all of the capital and lowercase "E's". I was going to have him do the other letters in another color, but gave up as his desire to mark all the letters took over. I guess it just gave him some more fine motor skills practice, right?


This was a week where I felt like I didn't know what I was doing with the whole potty-training, switching rooms (we put Emmett in with Riley for a multitude of reasons), etc. It was nice to breathe a deep sigh of relief and do HOD with him. At least THAT went right.

Happy Easter to all of you special ladies here on the HOD Board!!!! He is risen. He is risen indeed. What hope and joy we have in Him! Life is good. Always. He's in the middle of it all.

Love in Christ,
Julie

LITTLE HANDS TO HEAVEN UNIT 9

The number nine page needed some cloths as in the linens used to make the curtains for the Tabernacle. Luke likes to be methodical and he decided to arrange his squares of cloth in groups of 3 on his paper. He did not recruit my help this time to cut out 9 squares, he cut them out and counted them to double check that he had enough. Asked for the glue (he does not like glue on his hands) and than recruited my help). We counted together to make sure he made nine number 9's on his sheet and he was proud as can be.


Since the catalog paper was too thin for Mae we gave her a piece of colored mail to cut and she was happy to make snip its and quiet for the boys to continue their lessons.


The gifts we took to our Tabernacle cost a little bit of trouble, because our unsteady building got knocked over a couple of times, so we just moved on to listen to our CD! Next time around with Mae next year we will find some real DUPLO blocks that are more steady.


We had so much fun making H with chocolate syrup that Luke on his own went to go get his magnetic Doodle writer and started making the letter H h. He also did fantastic finding all the H's on his Hide and seek page, counting them and tracing. H turned out to be a great success for him and he felt accomplished! He told Daddy all about it when he got home, especially his chocolate H that he kept to show off.


Here we are replaying the children of Israel following the cloud of fire by night and moving their tent as the Lord moved. This requires great obedience and we had to have a talk to follow where Mommy goes and not go set up your tent wherever. This lead us into a great teaching session on obedience to Daddy and Mommy being training to obey God as and adult. After our serious talk "the children of Israel" followed the fire by night and so we ended up having great fun and wanting to do it again later on at night. Than I found out they did this activity at co-op and it was done a little different since the pre-school co-op is in lanai at my friends house. While I teach the older kids inside.


Luke did his craft for the week also at co-op and we added it to our Picture Story Book and practiced making more A's.


This week Luke read his first 2 words. We started our official phonics program last week. As we were playing the Rhymes house game, he read mat and cat! Everyone rejoiced with him and we had a great celebration!

We had a super week in Unit 2 of Preparing and Beyond! Our days are packed full of enjoyable learning and it's great! I'd love to share more here but don't want to retype. I saw how to use photobucket somewhere but now I can't find it. I put some pics on there but they were huge when I tried to put them on here and I am so illiterate with those things it's frustrating! I shared a link to our blog last week but can't figure out how to direct it to show only this week. Any help would be appreciated!

Ok, I think I finally figured out how to post photos...maybe! Here are a few pics from our week.
Preparing Unit 2...
Things are going well for my oldest. He likes the independent bible time and it's been so easy for him to do his work and know when he's done and know what he can do on his own. I love how each assignment for the day has its own box!

They enjoyed listening to this week's storytime book on cd together.

Working on his background for a rainbow as he learned about Noah this week.

Learning about the Great Ice Age in History and the arctic tundra in science. He had fun trying different ways to get an ice cube to melt in his experiment.
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Beyond Unit 2...
We're enjoying learning about the pioneers and loved the story in Pioneers and Patriots again. She tried out the science exploration with the crumpled paper and flat piece to show why squirrels flatten their bodies and tails so they glide through the air.

She made a map related to her history reading.


Our last history reading of the week was from Ruth and the project was to make a field of grain. We had great discussions this week as we talked about not giving up...like the pioneers, like Ruth, and like she learned in her bible verse. I love how everything from history to bible is connected!

Finished week 29 of Preparing this week. Here is the link to my blog http://graceandfur.blogspot.com/2010/04 ... 32910.html

We managed 2 days of unit 17 of CTC this week. I turned my dd loose in the kitchen again this week. Kasey really enjoyed baking the cookies filled with perserves. I love the fact that she is gaining confidence in the kitchen. We took the cookies to church for Easter morning, and they were a hit!

We are going to pretty take a vaction this week and do some major house cleaning. Time to clean out closets and do some deep cleaning!

Hope everyone had a good Easter!

We are continuing to have a SUPER - HOD year here!! I have not posted here forever...and it's not because of morning sickness anymore. I've been feeling great, but haven't been able to get pics uploaded from my computer. I just couldn't bring myself to try to describe our fun without my children's smiling faces! They tell such a great story of our love for HOD!!! Anyway, I had success today...so here I am!

Preparing
I'm going to give you a little run-down of our recent highlights here....

The medieval feast is our favorite history activity so far. The kids had a blast getting ready for it! We invited Grandma & Grandpa to come join in the fun. Here is our food and entertainment. (Grant wrote some music for Allison to play on her violin, and he composed some for himself, too.) Allison's favorite contribution was playing the violin & harmonica at the same time. The boys had a rousing sword fight and juggled - both were slightly dangerous for the onlookers.



He also relly enjoyed reading about Columbus & DaVinci in science. They were some pretty inspiring thinkers. Here is his whirlpool...


Spice chart...


And experiment on the Earth's rotation...


We had a BIG week this week with 2 birthday's and a whole lot of far-away family visiting! First was my husband's b-day on Tuesday...

followed by Grant's on Sunday. He's now 10! We had a great time celebrating with my sister & family (especially COUSINS) who visited from Northern Wisconsin for the weekend. I'm with you Julie in seeing him grow up so fast. It just makes me think of what a blessing it is to have all the daily moments to spend with him, especially those spent doing school and pointing him to the Lord. Not to mention being able to share in all the fun things that he enjoys in the free time we have because of staying home! He's in size 6 shoes now...size 8, YIKES! I'll have to add a cousin picture later. I forgot to upload those.
Here it is...


Kathleen

LHFHG

Allison & Garret have continued to love the activities in LHFHG. I love that we're in the Word, seeing God's hand in everything! AND, then the wonderfully fun follow-up activities that are also teaching my little ones are our favorite part of every week!! Here are our highlights from our time with the prophets.
The birds feeding Elijah...

Naaman oh-so-sick with leprosy and dipping in the Jordan River 7 times like Elisha told him to...

A sink/float experiment after reading about Jonah sinking when he disobeyed God... (As you can see, Garret was very excited to see his prediction come true! )


Allison is just doing wonderfully with Singapore Math! I love the combo of the Early Bird workbooks & Carrie's hands-on activities. My husband has even been commenting on how Garret really seems to understand numbers & math so well - adding & subtracting without calling it that. Now, it may end up being a God-given gift of his, but I'm quite sure that tagging along for all the hands-on math in LHFHG hasn't hurt him either! Here we're adding with a number line on the kitchen floor.



Kathleen

One more post for our big change in the last week and a half...
I decided to split Garret & Allison. She is truly ready to cruise ahead, and I could see that he would really benefit from getting some one-on-one time with Mom in LHTH. They are still the best of friends and spend most of their day together, but are both thriving with this split for school.

So, Garret and I were talking about A-A-Adam, making our Tape Day "A", gluing some Cheerios on our "A's", and writing them with soap on the mirror...


Even though he did this when he was 2 1/2, it's fun to see him participating fully this time around and loving the age-perfect activities! One of his favorite from this first week was coloring circles on notecards and finding things in the room that they matched. He couldn't do this on his own the first time around, and it's so neat to see him be so proud & confident of everything that he can do so well all by himself!


Allison still helps us out with the activities that need it. We had great fun staying away from that snake!


Allison is now moving along full-speed with LHFHG which is perfect for her. We finished reading about Peter Cottontail, and she loves paying close attention to the stories and giving a narration on them - just like Grant does with his books! She most definitely feels grown-up about that! We're part way through Unit 11 right now. Here she is celebrating the birth of Jesus with the stable model we made.


Happy to be enjoyng our new "perfect fit"!
Kathleen

I have soooo enjoyed reading about everyone's weeks!! Thank-you, everyone, for posting... it is so encouraging & helpful to hear & "see" what goes on in your homes!!

seekhimfirst- I am so thankful you took the time to figure out how to post pictures- it is confusing/frustrating- isn't it!? - but such a blessing when it's done. I wish I could help you post your blog to the Week-In-Review... for I've enjoyed reading on it. Your family is so precious!

Kathleen- I'm so glad that you were finally able to post pictures- what fun your family has had! I've been wondering how you are/were doing. I'm glad you are feeling better! Thanks for sharing about splitting up Allison & Garret- as that is similar to what we are doing in our house come fall!

Have a blessed day!
Jessica