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Ok Girls,

What was YOUR week Like?

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It is 5:30am and obviously we haven't even had school today, but if I don't do this now it won't get done. My pictures represent more than one week because I never seem to get time to report in.

LHTH
Little J making his walls of Jericho. Looks more like a peanut butter cracker sandwich to me.


DH schools little J so I don't have a lot to report on right now.

This photo of Big J scrubbing like they did in Holland is from awhile ago, but we discovered it was a good thing Big J was not Dutch. He (and the dog) scrubbed 30 seconds and declared he was done. I reminded him how they cleaned in Holland and he completed the job.


Here is Big J's clean and dirty heart art project. He thought that was pretty cool!


Big J is making improvements with his handwriting. He is slowly putting more space between the words. Here is a sample from this week's poem.


I have been trying to encourage Big J to listen to the poem and form a picture in his mind before he draws, but he just can't seem to do that yet. He has to draw while I read and includes everything. I got a real kick out of this weeks drawing. It is the Jewels poem. The far left shows a diamond in Aunt Eleanor's hair , the large blue circle is a bony face, complete with all of the bones drawn in, the middle person is the mom and the blue eyes are beside her , then the jewels and jewelry box, and the jewels imprisoned in gold.


This week the pilgrims are about to leave Holland and when the name of the ship was mentioned Big J immediately said, "But mommy, that wasn't the name of the ship in our history before." I assured him we would hear about the Mayflower shortly and told him how it tied together. I am always amazed at how much he remembers and this is one of the many reasons I love HOD, you aren't just cramming facts into their brain, you are giving them living stories and hands on experiences, and they remember. Well, if I get up at 5:30 every Friday I might be able to report in weekly. We'll see

Another awesome week with Beyond:

We completed Unit 13 this week. We will be taking next week off for the Thansgiving Holidays and we are all very excited about our break! We have been so blessed to study about the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving this week as we prepare to have our own Thanksgiving celebration. ds7 loves History so much!

Here is a clam we made during Science this week. We were supposed to make the stripes with paint made from corn syrup, but I didn't have any. To improvise, we used some of brother's water colors (without water), then mixed Elmer's glue with glitter and painted over the whole shell. This gave it the shine. We also didn't have a popcorn kernel, so we used a bean. Ds was very proud of his shell!





Here is his copywork for the week:



This was a cute Math lesson in Singapore. He was supposed to make something out of the shapes. Am I surprised that they BOTH ended up being dinosaurs? Nope! LOL



This was a cool tie-dye thing we did. It was actually for the end of lesson 12, but I didn't get to post it last week.




My older ds is still playing "Catch-up" in CTC, but now that co-op is over, he should be able to catch up with is brother by Christmas break with no more Saturday schools. YAY!

We finished Jashab's Journal and my poor son was so sad! He wanted to keep reading and learning about the old testament laws. However, from the second we picked up God Kind, he forgot all about Jashub. What an exciting book! God King is so interesting. There are a lot of pages assigned each day, but they go by so fast because we are both so into the book! What a great pick!!

Ds also finished his last day of level 2 dictation this week. He will move on to level 3 after Thanksgiving. He is very excited about that. Spelling has been tough for him, but he is really doing better since starting the dictation.

Here is his Unit 12 student notebook pages. He did all of the work on the pockets by himself and was so proud that he didn't have to ask me for any help at all. His summaries are also getting really good. In the beginning, I had to make lots of edits and really help him. Now, his summaries are done 99% on his own - I may change a few words around and help with spelling for the final copy into his student notebook, but I am very pleased at how much effort and care he is putting into his writing. This is a HUGE change from years past!



Here is his painting for the week. The poem was really cute too!



And finally, a Science notebooking page. I thought he did a cute job with the spiders.



ETA: I just noticed that he wrote, "The Blown recluse"...*sigh*...as I said, Spelling is not his strong point.

Since I will not have a post to make next week due to the Holiday, I want to wish everyone a very blessed, happy, and safe Thanksgiving. May the spirit of the Lord dwell in your heart during this time of Thanks for His many bountiful blessings! I am very thankful for each and every one of you here at the HOD board. You are encouraging, positive voices for Christ and I am proud to be part of this "family!"

Countrymom: I had to laugh when you said that he cleaned 10 seconds and declared he was done! Sounds a lot like my kiddoes! I still remember when my ds did that cleaning in Beyond. He was so cute spraying down those windows. Oh, if only he pretended to live in Holland every day! LOL

Countrymom-Big J is doing a nice job with his handwriting. Rebecca-I love the clam! The CTC notebooking pages look really nice. Good for your ds in doing all those pockets by himself.
Here is the link to our week (with a little of the previous week thrown in since I didn't blog that week) http://graceandfur.blogspot.com/2010/11 ... 52010.html.

We had a short 3 day week of school, as my dh and 2 of my sons were finishing out their deer hunt. I missed doing school with them, and I missed having them home! A little time apart sometimes is good, as it reminds me to be oh so thankful for the "normal" days we are blessed to have.

Resurrection to Reformation:
Wyatt is super excited to have passed NINE dictation passages in a row! They are getting H-A-R-D-E-R, so he decided to keep track and challenge himself. He told me his goal is 20 in a row - YIKES! This reminds me of Emmett's LHTH letter sound for "I"... I-Impossible - but I hope he can do it!


Mapping - WOW! There is a lot of awesome mapping in RTR, and I have to say my ds does it all independently. HOD does such an awesome job of tying specially relevant mapping and geography into what we are studying. It all just ties together, and it must really be sticking because my ds does it all on his own and does it well.


Draw and Write in history has done such a good job of helping my ds become more of an artist. He works so hard on it! I am proud of his efforts:


In Science, Wyatt made a device that measures the brightness of stars. I put it with my husband's things, I thought it was his!


Storytime follow-ups are a great way to quickly review story elements. They are short, to the point, and fun!


What a great week!
In Christ,
Julie

Bigger Hearts for His Glory:
Vocabulary cards are something Riley has come soooooo far with! He makes each one look like a piece of artwork these days, and he's pretty adept at finding the words in our B-I-G college dictionary -that used to be a very daunting task. I still section it off after he finds it with some sticky notes, but otherwise, he does it all by himself:


I like that even though my dc are in separate HOD guides, there is still ample together time for work. They are so happy with their separate work they do, for they are confident in what they do and can succeed in their work - but, they can still work alongside one another and enjoy each other's company:


Science notebooking is something Riley learns much from and enjoys. HOD ties it directly to the living books the dc are reading, and that makes it extra special to notebook on. Riley can hardly wait to read more about John Audubon, and this book is sparking a love for birds!


Oral narration is a skill that Riley has grown so much in! I have had to learn to be patient with him, but it's worth the results. He chooses his words carefully, sometimes pausing for quite a good deal of time between sentences. He likes to the think carefully what he is saying, and I have to remind myself to have confidence in him that more words will be forthcoming. When I am on a day we type his oral narrations for HOD, I make sure to only have him narrate on a few pages, as he likes to add a lot of detail. Here is a copy of his oral narration on Understood Betsy:


In Christ,
Julie

Little Hands to Heaven:
Emmett wanted to do LHTH even when the big boys were deer hunting, so we did and had such fun doing it! One of Emmett's favorite things to do is math activities with snacks. Here he got to sort his snacks, count them, and then eat them!


Painting is something Emmett asks to do every day. I'm so glad it's often part of the plans, or I'm afraid I may not get it done!


We are on letter "M", and Emmett proudly likes to run through his sounds for each letter. It is coming so easily to him thanks to HOD. I love the flashcards that have the action and sound for each letter. It makes teaching phonics afterwards so much easier (as I know from having done it with my 2 older dc when they were younger). Marching in time to the song "Elijah" has also been such fun this week, as well as acting out the Bible stories. LHTH makes preschool such fun. It did my heart good the other day to see Emmett acting out his Bible story again during his play time - and that was 2 days after we'd done it. It really seems to stick with him - but it feels like we're just hanging out have some good mommy-son time. What a joy!

In Christ,
Julie

Bigger 1/2 pace, unit 21

Elijah is loving his science and his handwriting is improving well, so is the amount of handwriting he can do. So is his ability to draw and color his drawings with science, vocab and other times when it is required.


We studied the life of Andrew Jackson our 7th President. Elijah calls him Rough 'n Ready Andrew Jackson. We made a hat like he wore in the war of 1812. It did not fit Elijah so we put it on one little sis her dolls.


Elijah is doing great with dictation. We are moving right along. His favorites still remain science and story time. This week we started on our new genre with story time and DITHOR, Non-Fiction. We are ready :"Balto and the Great Race" for storytime and "Live where Jesus Grow up" for DITHOR.

Little Hearts for His Glory 3 times a week, unit 4

We really like "101 Favorite Stories from the Bible" by Ura Miller. The questions at the end really help to see if Luke understood what was read to him. This week we learned about Joseph in Egypt and we made beautiful bright Egyptian collars. All 3 kids were interested!!!

Luke also had to do a dramatic play with teddy bears showing activities that those in the family do... We labeled all the bears to match our fam.
Here is what he picked for himself and his siblings. Older brother reading!!!

We also learned about baby Moses being saved by God, through pharaoh's daughter finding him. So we got our collar we made, since in the picture in our bible Pharoah's daughter was wearing her collar. I hid the basket and Luke and I went for a walk along the river and he found the basket and decided to keep the Hebrew baby. He was not too happy at first to have to pretend to be the Princess


Little Hands to Heaven Bible and Letter activity only

Little Sis is having so much fun doing her school! We are on the letter C...She has always been a fan of cupcakes.She first colors the letters.Than she put on her cupcake stickers and she gets to cut one of the sides of the paper off. We also do just the motion that goes with the letter and sing the alphabet song for now...

CTC Unit 10

CTC Unit 10

When I look over last week, I think "I can do better" and then I realize children learn even with distractions. We schooled for 3 days, taking off tues for SUN day (the last here in WA untill feb) and dh was home on thur, so schooling was off and on. And yet...
unit7 Little Hearts
Abbey (LHFHG) really improved in her attituded towards reading. We talked how hard it is and that she needs to be happy and will be rewarded. Thus, she read with gusto. Praise God ! She loved making her tapestry (day 4) and really thought about obeying God and parents as discussed in our" Children's Hour" devotions.
Isaiah really got into making barley science discovery (day 3). He even ate the grains and samples of barley products (he only eats a few foods) he loved looking at all the different foods made from barley. He is loving "Tornado" and began reading so seriously when Tornado is given away. Careful reading and encouraging him to read expressively is really paying off. His db Colin (2) even stopped playing and said "all sad. Doggy all gone." We enjoyed our three days and I am going to more consistant, God willing.