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!

I always enjoy reading everyone else's week in review- even if I don't get to anything else- I love seeing the smiling faces & the hard, beautiful work that our kids do!
Here is a link to our last couple of weeks with our Preschooler using "Little Hands to Heaven"! Hope you had a great week as well!
http://ourfamilyforhisglory.blogspot.co ... ds-to.html
Jessica

As this is my first week check-in and I have no idea how to post pictures, our week will be in written format. Regardless, we had an aswome week in LHFHG in unit 6 -day 3 thru unit 7-day 1. (We school 4days and don't worry about splitting up units).
My ds Isaiah (6 1/2) hardest day was unit 6 day3 when he needed to spread shaving cream/glue on paper. He has mild sensory advertion and cried for 1/2hr when requested to" paint with his fingers". Usually I relent and say he can use a paint brush, but after prayer I knew he had to over come his fear with the Lord's help. We went over previous HOD verses, calmed down and he PAINTED. I still praise God, as This was a big step for Isaiah. Isaiah's best time was that he finished Christian Liberty Reader Book1 and began Tornado for ER. He loved CLRB1 but was glad to finish. He has greatly improved in answering the questions from BLHFHG and loves Tornado as it has many levels to the book.
My dd, Abbey age 5, is thriving on LHFHG and loved painting with the shaving cream/glue, which of course added to the difficult situation for brother. She is struggling with writing, but is makng slow and steady progress with occasional whining. We talked about proverbs 3:5-6 and how she can lean on God to help her with this and she seems to be trying harder. She is loving Peter Cottontail and enjoys writing letters to Peter (day4). Her major improvement was in reading where she went from sounding letter by letter to sounding out words. Finally that wonderful breakthru. Now she wants to read rather then weeping. (I went really slow durring that faze to encourage her). I look forward to every teaching and my children look forward learning. Good week!

Bigger Hearts 1/2 pace 4 times a week. Unit 20

This week was short, since we only had day 4 and 5 left. We had lots of other activities so it worked out just fine.

It was neat how we just happened to study how Francis Scott Key came about writing the Star-Spangled Banner and about the Pledge of Allegiance, in the same week as Veterans Day. Since Daddy served in the army as a Ranger Battalion we got to incorporate the beauty of having people who will sacrifice to serve for the Freedom of this country and any others!
Here is the result of diligent work on handwriting. I am so glad that it has improved so much in the last couple of months. PTL



Art will be added at a later date: we had co-op and pictures on my friends camera!

Ds is moving right along with multiplication and division. We covered multiplication table 4 and are working on 5. He goes around singing skip counting songs while he goes around on his Ripstik (through the house!!!!)

This week ds made a jump in narration. It is not his most favorite subject, but he now understands that there is not one right narration. I think it really helps him that I look at him with a smile and keep the after comments to a bare minimum. This week, I noticed especially how much more detail he shares and how he is doing his very best to make connections and use some of the same sentence structures.

We picked:"Footprints in the Barn" for story time and we were left with many 'cliff hangers' at the end of the last couple of chapters and I was sure to hear about it and was begged to keep on reading I kept the suspense going even for myself and this week we finished and got to the bottom of the biggest mystery that needed to be solved:!: Ds was so excited he wants to read the book on his own now from front to back without stopping We ended up making a bookmark with the character trait loyalty on it. We had many opportunities to discuss loyalty to God first, than to others during the weeks past. On the day that he made the bookmark, my dear friend came to visit after work and ds decided to give her the bookmark and it sincerely ministered to her. She had just been reading some verses that are similar about her job situation Proverbs 19:11


Science was a hit this week as it is usually..In building or trying to build a strong fence ds realized how tedious you must work so we discussed how difficult it must have been for those early pioneers to build a fence good enough to keep predators out and their own animals in. So ds decided to get some farm animals and just play for a while as dd was sitting waking up from her nap Pioneer Sampler is a favorite of ds.

Little Hearts for His Glory 1/2 pace 4 times a week. Unit 3 (unit 4 for 3 R's)

Can I say that Kindergarten is much fun when you are doing HOD curriculum. My ds is absolutely motivated and loves doing school Hurray for Carrie and all who helped her to make this program come into place so nicely

These 2 weeks we have been learning about Abraham and his obedience to the Lord. His great example has been used many times as a teaching lesson for all my kiddo's to learn to obey with a happy heart and without questioning this week, as it will be in the future

To start off the week we had our sense of smell tested and ds is very particular about smells... It was hilarious, he only liked the vanilla and cinnamon, not even the almond, the garlic did him in....After a few spices, I had to stop since he started gagging Little Sis joint in and did not appreciate the nutmeg, cardamon etc. either...Unfortunately we ran out of citrus, because that would have gone over well.


Math is going very well. We have started addition and subtraction and I totally love the way the hands on activities teach the kiddo's to do their math!


I love ds his creativity with coloring on the handwriting sheets. He made a brown and reddish dog and even drew a ball for the dog to play with. His letter formation is very well and he usually erases the ones he does not like and does them over on his own


Art had everyone in the house excited this week again! Older ds came to help dd and has requested to do his own as well. As Jacob ran away from Esau to hide himself, I had to write the kiddo's names lightly with white crayon so they could poke holes and have the light come through to reveal their hidden name! We hung these on the windows and it is beautiful when the sun shines through them.


To end the unit we make a little puzzle from the scripture verse to do together. This week ds decided to decorate the page and mail it to one of the elders at church!


Do it carefully went very well. Ds had another dot to dot and did very well this week. Writing his letters went very well and the puzzle he made on his own Starting that independence early with this one


I guess the second time around doing LHFHG and reading Reddy Fox and appreciate it more. Ds and the two other kids love to listen in. As long as they don't distract him they can sit in and he does not mind. This week it was Granny Fox who had us all laughing when "Ol Mistah Buzzard" scared her out of her skin as she was sneaking up on Peter Rabbit. For his sentence ds filled in that he was happy and made a happy and a mad face on the bottom of his paper. On Day 5, there was a little poem that Unc Billy Possum said that had words that hurt Reddy. Ds was not pleased with that and thought that Unc Billy Possum should have said: 'Reddy are you o.k. and can I help you' ? Instead of being glad about Reddy being hurt.

Little Hands to Heaven Unit 2 (bible story and letter activity only, next year we will do as written)


We are on the letter Bb and dd is so excited when I tell her that it is her school time. Even when she is playing outside in this wonderful Florida weather

When I show her the letter Bb sheet and ask what letter it is, she just smiles and says B, than when I ask her the sound she will put her hands over her chest and say bu,bu, bu rocking from side to side... She will say bu for baby or bu for boat or bu for bibles...
She gets a little upset when she colors and it goes out of the line, so it takes her much time to color, but she does such a great job! I printed and cut out bibles for her to paste on her Bb page and I am NOT allowed to help with that activity



We are using the A Child's First Bible and each lesson has a question at the end. This week we read about the Noah and the ark, and the rainbow. So upon asking her the question: "Why did God put a rainbow in the sky?" She answered with a very serious face, He is not going to let it rain anymore".So we talked about how it still rains and how our backyard can flood, but that God will not let the water cover all the earth again. We also read about the Tower of Babel. In the story it does not mention the name of the Tower, but dd remembered that it is called the tower of Babel, from last years reading For the answer to why the people wanted to build the tower she replied: 'They wanted to be better'. The story used the word greater

We had a 3 day school week as my older sons are deer hunting with my dh this weekend. We did school Monday through Wednesday, and then had fun cooking and baking together on Thursday. You would not believe how much growing boys and grown men eat within a 6 day hunt! I love to cook and bake, so it was a fun day. The boys are such a help in the kitchen now! My oldest can make cookies and many other things on his own, and I know its largely due to him doing HOD's History Projects through the years.

So for RTR...
Wyatt is enjoying reading about John Wycliffe. We really like the Storytime follow-up cards - they are short and sweet, but they are helping look for important elements as he reads. We have gone to him reading all but 2 pages of his Storytime, which he reserves for me to read aloud to him. This has been his choice, and it's worked well. I still know enough about what's going on to keep a handle on the follow-up activities, he is not waiting around for me to read, and it takes less time as I'm not reading it all aloud. I like this option HOD gave for the Storytime read-alouds in RTR.

Making homemade egg noodles for RTR's history project was a blast! Wyatt did very well with the directions, and once he's home, we'll have fun eating them. Noodles with butter and parmesan cheese are a favorite dish of Wyatt's. Here he is making the egg noodles:


To kickoff our DITHOR Biography genre, the boys each made a biographical page complete with pictures and captions. I have been going "all out" for DITHOR kickoffs and projects, and using them as a time to really teach my dc how to go about completing different projects. I taught them how to upload pictures, drag them into a Word document, resize them, choose a layout, choose fonts for captions, etc. Now they can do this on their own! I've been meaning to do this for awhile but had not gotten around to it. I love that HOD teaches many project based skills that naturally carry over into our dc's free time!



That brings me to Riley in Bigger Hearts this week... Here is Riley's DITHOR bio page:


Riley continues to LOVE "Understood Betsy"! We both read a bit ahead one day as we absolutely HAD to know if Betsy got to stay with the Putney's. I won't tell you, no spoilers here!

Riley has learned to identify the polar, temperate, and tropical zones in geography. Shining direct and indirect light on the globe with a flashlight made it easy to understand the different temperatures of the various zones:


For "Little Hands to Heaven"...
Well, we're going through the weekend with it! My little Emmett wanted to do school when the boys were gone, so we are - what fun! I didn't do a good job of snapping pics though. When I was hanging out with him today, he said, "Mom, let's have a talk and tell some stories." When I asked him what he wanted to talk about he tapped his temple with his finger and said, "Well, school, of course. I really like to make the letters in the dishsoap. And Solomon should not have bowed down to an idol - that was a BIG No-No, Mom!" Anyway, the talk continued for quite some time, and I just enjoyed it so much. It's a blessing to be home with my dc homeschooling them, for I get to know what's going on with them so well.

I hope you had a great week with HOD too!
In Christ,
Julie

Jessica...I love reading your weeks in review. Your kids always look like they are having so much fun!

Karen...sounds like both your kids made huge progress this week - Isaiah with his painting and Abbey with her reading. Congratulations! It's always exciting to see our kids figure out something new!

moedertje...your daughter looks so proud of her B paper. She did a great job! I love it that your son mailed his verse to an elder at church. What a great way to share what he's learning! I also liked the pics of your older son's fence. He did a great job!

Julie...your reviews are always so fun to read! Enjoy your time with Emmett while the big boys are gone. It sounds like you guys are going to have a lot of fun together!

We had another awesome week with LHFHG
http://cherish-each-moment.blogspot.com ... ek-15.html

Sorry to post so late to this. Our weekend was crazy...and it looks like we won't be slowing down until after Christmas! This time of year is always busy, busy!

We had so much fun this last week in Beyond and CTC. I wish I had a picture of everything we did and had time to post it all! I will give you some of the highlights from the week and include just a few pictures.


BEYOND - Unit 12

We continued learning about the Pilgrims this week. We were very sad to learn that so many pilgrims died during that first winter in Plymouth! It was such a good reason to have a Science lesson on germs and my sweet ds loved shaking the cut and watching all the "germs" fly over the room. When he held the cup's "mouth," almost all of the germs stayed inside. He loved this simple, yet very neat experiment!





This was the coolest little project we did! We talked about how Indians wrote in pictures and often drew them in a circle to tell a story. My little fella had so much fun with this one...and I wrote his story in the middle after he told it to me. Of course, it is about dinosaurs! LOL




CTC - Unit 11, days 2-4 and Unit 12, Day 1

We do so much in CTC each week that it is hard for me to capture even the best of the best each week! Here are some of the things my ds loved.

His painting for Poetry this week was SO neat. He had a hard time with it at first, but I helped and he really loved the technique once he got the hang of it.



By far, the family favorite of the week was the Phoenician game "Twenty Squares." Both of the boys loved playing this game over and over!





Another fun project was his chamelion skin in science. The experiment was to put layers of paper towel together, each with different colors in the middle and the top and bottom layers to just remain white. When you add a drop of water, here is what happens:



Cool, huh?

Rebecca: Your boys look like they are having much fun with there activities in school. Your sons painting is indeed neat, it gives a tranquil feeling. I can't wait to get to CTC to play the game and make the chameleon's skin. How very cool! I also love the Indian drawing, that your younger son did.

Jessica: I always love the see Kayla her smiling face. It puts a smile on my face. She is quite the artist with her letters, beautiful flowers for her G-garden! Also enjoyed seeing her parting of the Red Sea craft, it's a favorite at our house.

Julie: How wonderful to be able to teach the older boys to do their own computerized bio sheet! Wyatt looks so thrilled to be able to make pasta, what a great skill to learn in this day and age where everything is fast-food, loaded with things we have no clue! How wonderful that Emmett was asking to do his school work, I love the enthusiasm of those little ones.

Samuel's Mommy: Your little one is doing so well. I like his throwing distance and his creation with Lego's with the paralytic being put down through the roof. I also like the music on your blog

Karen: The Thornton Burgess books are also a favorite at our house.
Julie explained to me how to do the picture on photo bucket.
I will try to explain it to you...
Sign up with photobucket.
Upload your pictures and safe them into an album.
Click on the pictures you want to add and go to the bottom and click generate HTML and IMG code
Than copy and paste from the 3rd box that says :IMG clickable thumbnails for message boards - recommended and paste it in your post.

Hope to see all of you ladies again next week. Success this week and enjoy another great week with HOD.

We had a big weekend too. Here's our photos. We did the Philistine helmet last week. (CTC Unit 9) And DS copied and memorized a poem instead of painting this week. It is an AMAZING amount of writing for him (not his favorite activity!) but I am proud of his work.