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What was YOUR week Like?

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Bigger Hearts Unit 29

Sorry for the humongous pictures! Don't know how to fix it, they changed something on Photobucket. It has been a while.. Well those of us with fading eyes can appreciate it

We were a little ahead in our math book, because of doing Bigger half pace and finished Singapore 2B this week! My ds wrote me a note on the back cover of his book and drew a picture of us going out on a date night for ice cream! The note says: I love you Mommy!

His handwriting has been improving and we are soon going to start cursive again, so we can be about halfway done when we start Preparing! The memory verses and Godly character trait have been a blessing in our family and in training the children up. Most of them have been timely and the scriptures have been able to be used even with the younger children. My ds started using these character traits in prayer time as he prays over others!

In history we learned that Will Wright had a patchwork quilt on his bed. He was recovering from an injury in his hockey game. For art we made a patchwork quilt on paper, finding different structures to rub on with a crayon. His favorite was the imprint of the "Lego".

Ds is loving the story of the Wright Brothers and has already made comparisons of their godly upbringing and how kind they are to their sister. My kids have been playing the Wrights in their playtime! He is having fun being creative with the history note-booking pages using different color markers and coloring pictures. I had picked up a Wrights Brothers Coloring book that is reproduce-able. What I am most excited about is that he has been doing his Time-line independently for a while now and he is for the most part independent on the History note-booking.

The other thing that he is doing Independent is his science note-booking sheet for day 2, finding the scripture passage, copying it on on lined paper and doing the assignment and he is doing so well!

With vocabulary he has come a long way. We have stuck with doing only 1 word each week since it takes him a while, but this week, he did it all on his own!!

I am so excited at the progress ds has made in the last 2 years and the growth I see in him. He definitely has a more kinesthetic bend, but I am so impressed at the skills he has learned through doing HOD. So blessed I did not have to paste "all" the kinesthetic curriculum in the world together. I love the blend of activities in HOD that bring the best out in children of all the different learning styles! This makes them more well-rounded!

LHFHG unit 11-12 (Yes, we survive ending one unit on Monday and starting the next on Tuesday)!

Ds is having a blast with LHFHG and all the fun activities he gets to do. His favorite Rhyme in Motion by far was in unit 11. "Celebrate Christ's Birthday", doing somersaults on your birthday. All my kiddo's had a blast especially when Mom did a somersault on the bed as well and got a bit dizzy and out of place. I had 3 volunteers instantly ready to take my birthday month and Daddy's!!!

He loves ARFH and has fun doing his pages and learning about the different animals and objects! His handwriting is coming along rather nicely and since we are doing LHFHG about 3-4 times a week, we will do the first grade options before we get to Beyond. He loves adding things to his pictures he colors such as glitter to the Quartz and oranges in his Tree. The Eagle happens to be his very favorite bird he said!

Science was a hit this week with the fish we had to cut and draw scales on. He learned how fish breathe through their gills, we had so much fun fishing (rolled up painters tape on back of the fish) with our nets (towel over top)! The little ones did it over and over!
Ds being a perfectionist, likes a model to work from, but I am careful not to make it too perfect (in his eyes, I am not an artist by any means). He did great cutting the fish out and making the scales. It was his idea to put a mouth, eye and tooth on his fish!

Math is going pretty good as we are learning tens and ones and to read and write the number words from 11-20. A new concept with plenty of fun activities such as making flowers and gluing petals on, corresponding with the number in the flower. First we did some with mini marshmallows and than with chocolate chips and almonds which became our snack! What kid would not like edible math, way to go Carrie!!! He also had great fun reading the cards, telling the numbers and finding that number of objects, or doing that number of hops, etc.

We have a little excited fellow on our hands, who gladly tells Daddy all that we read about "Danny Meadow Mouse" with detail and he uses sentences from the book! This is great activity for our non-detail oriented story telling family. He is now able to copy words onto his weekly, written sheet.

With fine motor he is able to read some of the instructions now and today, before I got there he was matching up rhymes for the page already

For art we experienced the fact that turning water into wine was a real miracle. I have to say that we absolutely enjoy the "101 Favorite Stories from the Bible". The questions are great and I have noticed how ds has improved in his listening skills, because of them!

Kindergarten is so much fun and we are having a blast. My dd is tagging along heavily, no matter how much other stuff I have planned for her by herself and my ds actually loves having his little sister join in. She won't go into LHFHG blindly

I love seeing what everyone else is doing! We're doing Kindergarten too (started in January). The bottom half of this post is our weekly review:

http://homeschoolingmomtographer.blogsp ... tured.html

Blessings,
Catherine

I love looking at these updates. It lets me know what I have to look forward to in a way that reading a summary or sample lesson on the product description can never do.

Catherine, I love your blog!

This is what we did this week in LHTH Unit 9. I was too lazy to blog about our week, like I usually do (because of being sick and up with wakeful children) but here are some pictures. They're huge, sorry.

We walked the letter H (some of us without pants, oops!)




My 4 year old glued white beans on a letter H. She wanted to use ALL the beans I gave her so they are a little wavy at the bottom where she tried to make them all fit


And we finger painted a bunch of grapes hanging from a grapevine. The Israelites saw that the land of Canaan was full of good fruit to eat.
A nice day for some outdoor painting:


4 year old grapevine


2 year old grapevine

Here is the highlights of the past 2 weeks in CTC http://graceandfur.blogspot.com/2011/03 ... 82011.html

We had a joyful week with HOD. Here are some of our highlights.

Creation to Christ

This is just such a wonderful, amazing guide. I sing its praises to everyone I know - to the point where I bet they are tired of hearing me. My ds11 has learned so much more this year than he ever has before. We were driving in the car the other day, listening to Christian music, and a song came on with a verse in it that I did not know. My 11 y/o says, "Oh, mom, that was when Paul was talking to Jesus..." and he went on to tell me the entire story and how the verse came in...and what it meant!!!! He had learned it in HOD!!!!! God blesses my heart and the hearts of my kids through this curriculum. I can't ever be thankful enough!

Ds loved history this week. Here are his notebook page and poetry painting - he loves the creativity that comes with CTC...and so do I!





Galen is his new favorite person on earth! He absolutely looks forward to each day in Science and telling me all about Galen and the things he thought vs what we know today. I look forward to hearing about it too - mostly because he gets so excited to tell it.

Here is his notebooking page from this week. The only complaint I had is that he didn't color it!



Ds11 is doing an excellent job in Singapore Math too. I took him back to 4 because there were concepts that he didn't quite "get" from our last program. He placed solidly in 4A, so we started there. He is doing math 5 days a week, so he is ahead and we should finish 4B within the next few weeks and be able to move on to 5A before school is out for the summer. We are hoping to finish 6B by the end of 7th grade so he can have a year of pre-algebra before highschool.

He loves the fun stuff in Singapore:



DITHR is my favorite reading program hands down! He does such a nice job now and he does this all on his own. He no longer has to ask a lot of questions. He knows what is expected of him and he enjoys being so independent in both the CTC guide and the DITHR.

Beyond Little Hearts

ds7 is thoroughly enjoying our history right now. This week, we were continuing to study about the battle for independence and we learned a lot about soliders. We followed the story of a brave little boy, only 10 years old, who was willing to fight for the colonies when he had to! And, we learned of another young man who went to battle and later found himself being the watch-keeper for General George Washington himself! This was not the job the boy had chosen for himself, but he was content with what he had and he made the best of it. That was a great lesson for my 7 year old who quickly forgets how he should be thankful to the Lord for what he has and not always want "more."

Our favorite, favorite, favorite project this week was dressing up his leopard in the armor of God.



He did a nice job on his copywork this week. I have finally started cursive writing with him because he is just dying to do it...even though he is not really ready, in my opinion. See his little cursive flare down near the bottom? LOL



Singapore math is going so well for him. He really "gets" adding and subtracting now and I see huge improvements over last year when we were using CLE and he was in tears every day due to the length of the lessons alone...not to mention, he wasn't even understanding the work! This week, he finished learning the concepts of multiplication and division!! They were a breeze for him and he really enjoyed putting his little things into groups during the activities listed in the guide.



He also finished his second DITHR project last week. He had finished reading the book, "The Littles" (which he LOVED) and chose to complete the project on Family Spirit. For 5 days, he chose to do an activity that showed brotherly love and also an activity that showed Compassion. His brotherly love task was to spend time with his dad every day when he gets home - just to devote that time to dad and not play nintendo, not watch a movie, not play with his brother or toys...but just hang out with dad. You just have no idea how much my dh loved that! ds7 went outside and helped him work, played games with him, snuggled on the couch with him...it was wonderful! For his compassion task, he helped me with the housework for 30 minutes each day. In his reflection, he really saw how much he needed to devote more time to dad when he comes home and help me around the house...especiall with picking up his own things. He was very proud of his chart full of stars at the end of the week.

Resurrection to Reformation:
Wyatt read about the "city on the hill" speech this week. Based on Matthew 5:14, John Winthrop told his listeners, "You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden." John Winthrop first gave this speech on the Arbella ship as it came upon Massachusett's Bay and they readied to settle there. Later, JFK gave his own "city on a hill" speech, and still later, Reagan did as well. Each day Wyatt read about this speech and its orators, and on the last day we listened to Reagan's speech online. It was powerful! We were going to just listen to it at the 18 minute mark as the plans suggested, but we were so engrossed in it when catching the beginning, we ended up listening to the entire 20+ minute speech. It was so uplifting, and it made us proud to be Americans!!! The perfect conclusion was to have Wyatt read a portion of this speech as well (which HOD had planned already for us ). The microphone added a touch of professionalism that was fun!


He also copied a portion of the speech in his history student notebook, another great CM style tie-in!


This week Wyatt said 19 of his verses by memory from his Phil. study. He is supposed to be on vs. 25, so this was a good checkpoint, and he endeavored to sing along with his CD until he had it down (with some encouragement from mom ). By the next day, he had it down. I told him I didn't care if he had to sing it to me, however you hide God's word in your heart is fine with me, and if it's set to music, all the better. He did it without the music, but the music is a needed memory aid for him when first memorizing, as passages require more practice. I was so proud of him!

I have been editing Wyatt's work in his student notebook with sticky notes these days, and he likes it so much better than me verbally telling him his errors. Being an editor myself - I so get that. I just jot down the words / punctuation he missed in the order they appear, and he has to go back and fix them. Then he hands in his work for a final check.


I have also started putting stickers on the work he's tried especially hard on, though not in his history student notebook, as he loves the look of it "sticker free" - and I do too. But the stickers are fun for grammar, math, writing, science, etc. I am reminded how important it is that I keep on checking his work and having him revise it each and every day. If I fall down on this, so does he. It's good to be diligent about this. So many things are this way - chores, character habits, free time use, etc. So much to do as a parent, yet with HOD I truly have time for the important stuff.

In science, Wyatt did so well with his quiz in "Exploring Planet Earth". We do not do much of this in school, and I am glad. Charlotte Mason's style of assessment requires higher level thinking on a daily basis, and the results - much more thinking is getting done. However, it's nice to know when one answer type questions come up, they are a breeze for CM style students. Turns out good comprehension = good retention. We've seen this on standardized testing too, but CM is still what we love, so thanks HOD for making that attainable for us!


In Singapore math this week, we did fractions of fractions. I remember just learning to multiply them when I saw the word "of". I had no idea why I was doing that, but it resulted in the right answer, so I did it. Now, with Singapore's pictorial examples, it is easy to see why fractions need to be multiplied in these problems. The word problems actually make it easier to mentally understand why we are doing something too - whereas when I was in school the word problems just made things harder (and often I still just figured I had to multiply the numbers as that's what I'd done on the rest of the page). There is no wasted graphics/pictures in Singapore math. They all have significance and are worth studying. Very different from the pictures in other math books I've used that are just "cute and colorful", as if that will help make math clearer. Anyway, I couldn't be more pleased with Singapore math. It is a strong program, and my ds is flourishing - I'm learning new ways to do math too, and though I was a good math student, these ways are better.

Finally, this was a treat. My non-artsy student is becoming a pretty good artist thanks to Draw and Write Through History and HOD. Here is his drawing a a microscope and an inset of its slide. Way to go, Wyatt!


What a wonderful week with RTR, and looking ahead to RevtoRev, we are going to be ready! Can't wait!
In Christ,
Julie

Bigger Hearts for His Glory:
My, my, my - do I have pictures of Bigger Hearts this week to share!!! I have pictures from a week ago that I didn't get to post, and they are too fun not to put here. But really, I went a little crazy with the camera this week. You'll see why as you keep reading.

Here is Riley's science notebooking. We have been talking about how to use a ruler to make straight lines for titles, and how to trace a ruler's sides to make quick neat even rows. We also have been working on making proportionate drawings to writing, as well as adding a splash of color to things. I am so thankful we are doing notebooking in science with HOD! I shudder to think how rarely I'd instruct my ds on these organizational type things otherwise.


We also did an experiment where Riley made his own cup to drink out of by folding a sturdy paper in a certain way, like Tobias did with his canvas to make a watertight container. Riley was shocked it worked (I was too )! He decided when we do our annual summer "fair", he should fold cups for everyone. Why not? Such fun.


This was a neat history notebooking assignment. We read of famous poets, and this poem was about hanging laundry on a line:


Cheerful Cursive - I will recommend this handwriting program to anyone and everyone! What a breeze! Riley's cursive is lovely, and he usually has it done before I "teach" him how to do it.


In history, we read about a man shooting an elk for supper, and then being attacked by 2 angry bears that also wanted that elk. The man climbed up a tree to get away. The bears followed him right up the tree! Yikes! That was a wild country. Smart man - he cut off a bough from the tree and hit the bears on their noses until they finally went away to rub their sore noses. Here is Riley's history project, where he made his bear mask with a special nose, and you can see Emmett's reaction to the bear too :


Now here is the history activity we had a BLAST with! We've been reading about the CA Gold Rush. The taped off squares in the pictures are land claims. They each have a towel covering the "gold" that can be found within that claim. When I shouted go, the CA Gold Rush was on, and it was each man for himself trying to stake his claim. Some claims had a lot of gold, and some next to none. For each gold piece found, the boys had to pound the floor 10 times to earn the piece of gold. My can those boys pound!


Then, they took their gold pieces to buy food, which had exorbitant prices. Riley had a lot, Emmett some, and poor Wyatt didn't have enough for even one piece of food...


Luckily, we played again, and this time Wyatt struck gold in a might way!


After school was over, they played this a good portion of the afternoon. What a wonderful week!
In Christ,
Julie

Little Hands to Heaven:
Emmett is on "S" now, and he can do most of his cutting and gluing well now. HOORAY!


I was gone at a book fair for a portion of last week, and my oldest ds Wyatt decided to try his hand at "Little Hands to Heaven". Emmett wants him for a teacher now instead of me! Where's the loyalty? I guess it's fair to say he did pretty well. My Dad also helped out and did a great job of subbing in for me for a day, as did my dh. Thanks HOD for making substitute teachers be able to handle the day!


Wyatt even did phonics with Emmett. Here he is doing his "oa" sound and action...


One of my favorite things is to see our dc be best friends and work happily alongside one another. When Riley is doing his independent school for Bigger Hearts, Emmett is often doing an art project alongside him. I can easily oversee them both and head to the dining room to check Wyatt's progress too.


What a good week - I hope you all had a good week too!

In Christ,
Julie

Here is a review of our week.
http://ourhoppinhomeontherange.blogspot ... ys_13.html

Here's a little sneak peak of our excitement...
Allison's LAST day of LHFHG!


LHTH...


And our Roman soldier ready for battle...


Kathleen

Kathleen (or anyone else), If you figure out how to fix the pictures, please share!!!! I had trouble as well and mine are huge as well Thanks

Little Hands to Heaven-Week 21
The two little girls are having so much fun in Little Hands! I wish I was more diligent to get some pictures of what they did this week, but I failed miserably! This was a crazy week full of (out of the ordinary) activities and traveling. I know it's a sad excuse, but it's what I'm going with right now! They loved the activity where they learned about Jesus birth and made a cute picture of the stable where Jesus was born. They love their dollies and have so much fun using them in their dramatic play. They loved the search for "baby Jesus"!

Beyond - Week 21

This week we learned how the early French settlers/fur traders used canoes the Indians made, for travel up and down rivers. The canoes made travel very easy because of their slender shape and light weight structure. They had a great time working their clay and forming their own canoes!




In science, one activity involved using items like tweezers, clothespins, straws, eye droppers and a slotted spoon to represent different kinds of beaks that birds use to eat their food. We used rice, seeds and colored water (nectar) to use for their "food". Another day's science activites taught us about the different kinds of clouds and what they look like. They had a lot of fun making these:


This week we focused on Phil. 4:8 and talked a lot about what kinds of influence we put into our minds and hearts. They learned that God's Word is the basis for knowing what is good, noble, excellent and praiseworthy.

Preparing-Week 21

My son continues to just love the constellation book in the science study box in the plans. He thoroughly enjoys doing the experiments and drawings as well as reading this great book! He is taking so much from it and loving learning in the process. Here is a picture of one of the activities he did this week. It's a drawing of the constellation of a whale along with some copywork of the verse in Job 26:13.


Throughout this week we've been discussing Paul's ministry after his conversion in Acts. It is just amazing how God worked all of those circumstances in such a perfect way to further His kingdom! On Thursday, we sadly finished Grandpa's Box. We read the story where Grandpa explained to his grandchildren all about Christ's Victory . . .a victory at last! It was all about Johns vision while exiled at Patmos island, the book of Revelation! What a wonderful and encouraging way to end our school week. . . .learning all about how we will be God's people for all eternity!

The history project for this week was to make a mosaic picture of the cross with a cloud and the sun's rays shining through. At first he wasn't sure how it would all look in the end, and learned a lot about this art form in the process. It did take a while, because he wanted it to be "just so"! I think it turned out beautifully!



Hope you all had a great week, too!