heartofdakota.com

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!

As we get into the colder weather, get our routine down with the guides, etc. I am noticing that less and less of us are posting weekly updates. I want to encourage everyone to take the time to post even just the tiniest thing, if you can. It encourages other so much to see the progress with the guides. I know it encouraged me when I was having a hard time last year. This year, we are so happy and well placed in HOD that I want to encourage others in the same way.

Our week was busy, but wonderful. My older son has started telling me things like, "I am so glad I am homeschooled" and "I love my school...it is so much fun" and "mom, can we do this exact same guide next year?" It has been so amazing to me to see his growth and, for the first time since we started homeschooling 3 years ago, for him to tell me that he is loving school! He wakes up each morning and starts school on his own, before I am even up for breakfast. He prefers to work when it is quiet and he is very much a "morning person" whereas my younger son and I are not. It works so well for all of us. Most of the time, when I get upstairs, he has already done Bible, Math, and any and all ART for the day! He loves his art and history projects so very much. He just really loves HOD.

Here is a glimpse into our week. We are behind on the guide by one day, so day 4 is going to be on Monday.

CTC

His Student Notebook (paragraph will be written Monday)



His awesome breast plate!



Genesis Study: Adam's descendants



His latest Animal Tracks



Science questions...done correctly!



Unit 7 Poetry Artwork. The one on the left is mine, the one on the right is his. We are enjoying doing this together so very much. Neither of us is an artist, but we really enjoy trying!




BEYOND

Beyond Little Hearts is a blessing to my younger son and I each day that we pick it up. We are having a precious year, thanks to this guide. I can't tell you how much I love it nor how thankful I am for it. We are having a great year!

Spelling words on the whiteboard. He is writing it from memory and then flipping the card over to see if he got it right.



His finished product!



Poetry copywork and artwork



Singapore Math. He loves the days when he gets to color.



More spelling. This was a review lesson and he had to take a test on 2 units. I think he did pretty good, only missing two.




And here is Blue Kitty...any time we get up out of our school chairs...even for a SECOND, he hops in. It is so funny to watch. Older ds got up to go to the kitchen and he came back to this. Blue just wants to do HOD too!

This past week was instructional for me. The memory verses were Philippians 4:6-8. Exactly the Word I needed this week Making a Bible bookmark to help with learning the "layout" of the Bible was genius! I appreciate the thought put into every aspect of HOD. We've come around to DITHOR Biography, and my daughter is enjoying And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? She has become much more independent with her written work in book 4/5, so I know she will soon be ready for level 6/7/8. I am so blessed to see the slow steady growth through all she does in HOD. Our whirlpool for science didn't work out so well. I think the beads were too heavy, and the bottle was too small, but my daughter just smiled and said, "That's ok, I know what was supposed to happen," and then proceeded to make a great lab page We switched out of Singapore, and for us, it was the right thing to do, but when my next one comes along one day, I am sure I can start with Singapore from the beginning, and stay the course, using HOD's activities and ideas. My daughter asked to switch out of Rod and Staff English, but I said, "Don't push it." Rod and staff is hands down the best I have ever used in many years of homeschooling, especially following Carrie's recommendations for use. Again, I see the steady progress over time in my daughter's work. History has been interesting-when we read from Hero Tales, my daughter says, "Aw, it's finished already?" I think she is very inspired by the stories of missionaries who stood on their faith in God no matter what the circumstances. Perhaps she will want to read some biographies of a few of the people we've read about. Love, love, love the book choices and pacing.

I'm getting frustrated! It isn't because of HOD at all. I want to do HOD. I love HOD. It is just that life keeps getting in the way. I'm completely exhausted in first trimester of pregnancy. DH's schedule has been wacky. We've had to take some time off to harvest food. So we got very little done the last two weeks. End of whine. Sorry. I want to do all the great things everyone else is doing! oh, wait a bit more whine.....I feel myself slipping back into the same old trap w/ my 9 yr. old. He took more than 2 hrs. yesterday to do 2 pages of math and 1 pg. of cursive. We set up our schedule this year to stop this struggle and it works; however, we haven't been following the schedule of 9-11 a.m. and 2-4 p.m. are school hours unless you are finished. Praying we get back on track on Monday!!! Thanks for letting me vent.

Okay, so I have never posted here...but we finally had four days in a row where Mama did not have a migraine ...until today DS said that it was good to have his Mama back. We had a great time listening to The Cat of Bubastes (part of the CTC extensions package). It really captured ds's attention. He was begging to listen to extra chapters. DS was playing catch up on all the work we let slide while I was suffering, as well as completing his regular work. He did a great job...but we missed the poetry painting. He is sooo far behind in Math and I am ready to quit. Grammar, same thing. This week we tried to catch up, but it just frustrated all involved...ummm..okay, it just frustrated ds because he felt like it was unfair that I was making him do double. We are so enjoying Genesis: Finding our Roots. We had extra discussions about it this week as we met a Christian who is not of the young earth mind and my son used what he was learning to have an intelligent, respectful discussion! WHEW! God is so good to bring us to HOD so we can grow in our faith!

Oh, and I printed the first week of LHTH to see how my 2yo ds would do with it before I decided to purchase. FUNNY. He is just starting to take off with speech after being diagnosed with a significant delay. He puts his little hands on his face and says "AAAdam." Dad came home and couldn't figure out what ds was doing. DS1 and I were cracking up. I am thinking we are going to have to purchase this as soon as we get the $$! The next day, we were doing the little poem again when ds2 put his hands on his lips and cried, " Mama, shhh!" When I did not, and continued with the poem, he did it again. When he still got no response from me, he came over to me, put his hand over my mouth, then added, "SHHHH." DS1 was cracking up, pointing out the obvious, "Mom, I don't think he likes your poem. Even though you are crawling around the floor like an ant!" Quite fun...and then, 11yo began saying the poem and crawling around; now that captured 2yo's attention. It was so fun to watch the 11yo teach the 2yo. So much love here! Looking back at the week, I could just cry to think how much my boys enjoyed the LHTH program (yes, even the 11 yo...wish I had had it for him).

On a side note: Really, considering ps, with my migraines lasting for weeks at a time, teaching Spanish one day a week and working another job 16-20 hours a week...we all LOVE HOD, but I am on a sinking ship!!
I despise the thought of ps, but am at a loss with my headaches

Rebecca- I love how you decided to do the painting right along side your son!! What a wonderful idea- & special time for the 2 of you! And your little boy looks so proud of his spelling words!

Lourdes- Isn't amazing how God works through our school lessons to our children to teach US!! I LOVE when that happens! What a great God to know you needed those verses this past week!

Bramble- I'm so sorry to hear how difficult things are! The first trimester can be so difficult! I pray that you will be able to get back on schedule & that joy will fill your home!

4Hispraise- I could see how challenging homeschooling would be with migraines- I just said a prayer for you!! How fun for your children to enjoy the first week of LHTH- I know we love it here!

Jessica

BHFHG Unit 18 1/2 pace.

We are supposed to be on fall break so we are taking it very easy, my kiddo craves structure so I am continuing with math, dictation, English, story time.
Our fall school policy is that I drop my schedule if something comes up. This can cause some minor anxiety So Monday we had the day off from school.
I did have two activities to catch up on from unit 18, before we went on vacation so we did the history notebooking page on the invention of the steamboat.
Since we are working on Elijah's manuscript I had him dictate the facts and I wrote them in the foot prints.

Elijah is loving math at the moment. I am so blessed that he is so diligent with his school work. Now realizing how young he is and how much he has done in the last couple of years, before I found out he could have been going half pace He had much more work with the seat work for math this week and I heard not one complaint!

For English we are learning to use more adjectives and I love the way R&S brings the lessons, because you can easily build upon or continue the lessons as you are driving around. So in our family we are practicing using more than 1 adjective in our sentences and our stories. This is actually a stretch for us. Even though I am long winded (as you notice in my posts ), I am not very detailed when I speak
Dictation is going super. Elijah gets very excited when he catches any mistakes before he gets the card to check. This week was especially a blessing. We are on lesson 72 and the day before he had asked me how to spell a word and it was in his lesson the next day! The Lord truly cares about the little things in life.

A great thank you to Julie for her help in writing the post on helping her son with his handwriting, because I notice the improvement in his handwriting.

moedertje- Hurray for Luke starting LHFHG!! And Elijah continues to do so well in Bigger (we like structure at our house too)!!

I finally posted about our weeks with LHFHG on our blog!! Here's the link...
http://ourfamilyforhisglory.blogspot.co ... glory.html

Blessings,
Jessica

I so enjoy looking at everyone's week. I have had a wild last couple of weeks and will be gone this week so we are taking a week off. I hope to get back to posting real soon. I continue to pray for those struggling. Congratulations Luke for starting LHFHG. It is a wonderful program. I can't wait for my oldest to get to CTC. He would love those activities right now, but we are loving Beyond! Every guide is a blessing.

We were out of town last week and thus had no school, so nothing to report this week. I did just want to say I loved reading about everyone's week. You're doing such a fantastic job teaching your dc and no one else would do as good of a job. Hugs to you all.

LHTH: Unit 10/11

Another great week with LHTH. I love my school time with Garret every day. He is just pure little boy energy ready to EXPLODE - with a big dimpled smile. And every day right after I get Grant & Allison going on their math, he bounds to the bookshelf for his Bible and says, "Mom! Is it time to do school with me??"

This week we made walls of different shapes, marched around them, SHOUTED, and then destroyed them. (Garret got a big kick out of how loud I shouted after our 7 laps. Probably because I'm usually asking everyone to quiet down a little. ) We had FUN!


We moved on to the judges. After reading about Gideon and how God chose the army, he followed directions to complete this drawing. He did very well...and was so proud to show Daddy the page he did by listening to Mommy's directions.


We finished our week with Samson. Here is a picture of our activity where we lined the food up heaviest to lightest.


Quote of the week from Garret: "Mom, I know what school is. It's where you teach me about God." Thank you HOD that when my little guy thinks about school, he thinks about God and His Word!!
Kathleen

LHFHG: Unit 19/20

We have one more day to read about Grandfather Frog's adventures - and find out how his unwise trip to see the Great World ends. Allison LOVES the days that she gets to narrate (just like Grant). Here's a picture of the day that she narrated without saying a single word, but acted out the story for me. Grandfather Frog was stuck in the spring...


We're also enjoying our history readings. We've finished the Family Time Bible and have moved on to reading about spread of Christianity. This science activity was our FAVORITE for the week! We read about St. Augustine. In his younger days, he learned that sin seems sweet at first, but that the consequences are bitter. This was a taste testing activity. We used sugar & salt, cocoa powder & hot cocoa mix, and lemon juice & lemonade to examine and test. Allison taught her brother's this lesson when she was done, too.


The next day we learned with Augustine that we are to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ". Jesus is just like this coat. He covers our sins with His forgiveness.


Then we moved on to reading about Patrick, who was enslaved in Ireland and later did a great work in starting churches there. Allison is milking a cow here during our activity time. She was given 2 or 3 commands (like a slave) which she had to remember for 1-3 minutes before doing them. GREAT training! (I think I may need to practice this with my 10 yo. )


Kathleen

CTC: Unit 8

This week Grant is memorizing the poem Fireflies in the Garden, doing great with fractions in math, walking, trotting, cantering, & galloping with horses in science, and writing a description of Rocky Bottoms (local, remote fishing place he went with Dad & Uncle Matt this summer).

He was also VERY inspired in reasearching shofars this week. In fact, he's planning to buy one online because it would be really useful when we get together with our homeschool group for playdays. He can go to the top of the hill and call the boys together.

Here is his history project for the week reinacting the crossing of the Jordan River.



Kathleen

Kathleen...How fun! You are a week ahead of us in CTC, so I always look forward to your updates with Grant to see what we are going to get to do next!

Oh...and your boys are so stinkin' cute! They could be TWINS if they weren't obviously several years apart!