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What was YOUR week Like?

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Our week in review actually covers from 7/11 - 8/4. I've been a slacker, but I'll blame it on HoD We're spending so much time having fun with school that it's hard to find the time to blog about it! WE LOVE HOD!!!

ds wrapped up PHFHG Units 5 - 8
dd wrapped up BLHFHG Units 5 - half of 8
http://theboobooandluluchronicles.wordp ... up-711-84/

Hello ladies,

We started school this week. How exciting to partner with such a fantastic curriculum as HOD. I have been blessed with every guide and first want to say a special thanks to Carrie, Julie and their families. Thank you for your labor of love.

Preparing 1/2 pace (Math and English 4x/week). Unit 1

Ds was very excited to start with history again, neat less to say Grandpa's Box has quickly become a favorite book for him. He enjoyed the reading times and was disappointed that we did not get to read it every day this week. I noticed a big difference in his answers, at how he is thinking them through during Bible study and during History.

He was very excited to learn what a "Coat of Arms" is. We are using World-book encyclopedia and Wikipedia for the ones we don't have on World Book, so I walked him through how to do the search and find out the part that goes with the text. He was eager to tell Daddy when he came home.
He was all excited to draw his symbols on his shield and did not want to cut them out on day 2. He asked if he could put a handle his shield and as I read ahead I could tell him that he would end up putting a handle on it later. He was excited that his shield was not ruined, he colored his symbols and cut them out.

He was excited to get his new math book even though it was pink (he really did not mind)! It's always nice to start a fresh with Singapore and I read lots of good posts with Carrie and Julie's wisdom about teaching from the textbook, so we had a great start as we used a the textbook for the first time.

English (I keep calling it Grammar ) is going well, he picked up pretty good on what a subject and predicate is. I love how Julie described how to do English as to not overwhelm your child with large amounts of writing. He enjoys writing some of the answers on the white board himself.


Than came Independent History: Well, let's just say my family is challenged in the subject of drawing. We have other means of creativity! However we are willing to learn. (This includes Dad, who joined us in the evening to draw another dinosaur). The first one according to ds looked like a huge bird. I told him that we will learn and not to get frustrated. So he asked if he could re-do his dinosaur, I talked him through being more detail oriented and this was the result. He liked drawing the plant better than doing the tree. Since it took a little longer we scooted drawing the tree to the afternoon that day.


Independent Science went pretty good, but took a long time. Ds is working on learning his upper case cursive letters, but wanted to write the verse in cursive, so he ended up writing a regular S. He took a long time, but his writing came out great. I'm so blessed with his progress in handwriting.


For vocabulary we only did one word this week. The goal is to do 3 by the end of Preparing. His handwriting has improved so much and I do not want to overload him, with writing activities as he tends to go a bit slow on writing assignments to make them as neat as he can.


We are in list 3 for dictation and he has been doing very well with it. We did have to go over the study method this week after or big summer break. I told him that it would be very difficult to study while playing with a pocket knife and lying on your bed for 10 minutes. Than he sat up, took 5 minutes and got it right the first time. This year I copy the page for dictation and place it in a page protector. I cover the rest of the passages and he can write difficult words on the sticky notes for practice. If he had made a mistake, he would have circled it with a dry erase marker for the next time. He was very happy that he got it right.


Overall it was a good start of Preparing and we are both very excited to see what else Carrie has in store for us this coming year. I have to remind myself that there is a learning curve and when projects take longer than anticipated to just finish them off on Friday, instead of getting the whole schedule thrown off, which brings major frustration to me. So, my goal is to listen to the prompting of the Holy Spirit as the day goes on and walk in the spirit to be a living example of God's grace to my children. When times of failure come, I can be an example of humility to them by apologizing for my acts of frustration. Praise the Lord for grace

Thank you again Carrie for making school a blessing and weaving the Word of God all through the curriculum

Little Hearts for His Glory with 1st grade options, unit 18 (finishing Earlybird K, we have 2 units left , than we will do 1A with the hands-on activities in Beyond )

We picked up where we left off before summer and it works! I was so nervous, but it did not matter at all. It was a great unit to start with since we had a review of all our bible verses and he remembered them really well! That was the best thing he could have remembered!

So far ds has done great with his math and this week was just a bit of a stretch. Counting by 10's and 5's is where we started and I am glad that mastery is not required at this level, because this concept threw ds a bit for a loop. Next week we are off the money and skip counting will return and hopefully his brain will have matured more and it too will click!

Of course ds was thrilled that we could do story time again. We love the TB books at our house and all the kids sit in on the LHFHG story time. We schedule it at snack time. Here is what ds wants to be careful with, because we have chickens in the back yard. I guess since the TB books are about animals he related the question to his chickens in the backyard so that they do not get eaten by predators. What a neat connection I thought. Ds likes the Thinking Skills book and wants to read and do the work on his own. While he can read the directions pretty good I help him with understanding what part of the activity the instructions go with.

The first day of using his new handwriting book, he insisted on doing the whole page, even though I told him he had 2 pages of work to do. I think he gets it from me Well, that wore off quickly. Live lessons are the best in a situation like this.
He decided that he would do only one row from now on and if it wasn't good he would do another. I agreed and everyone is happy. He is the one who decides if the row was good enough, than I mark his best letter of the row.

The other thing that ds asked all summer about was when we could read out of his bible again. He was thrilled when I pulled it out the first day. In him I noticed the progress of listening and being able to answer the questions more precisely. I have very much enjoyed the "101 Favorite Stories from t he Bible" with him and am sad that we are all most at the end. This week we learned about the Apostles preaching the Good News regardless of persecutions. What great lessons for a 6 year old to learn!
How Paul and Silas worshiped and the prison doors opened and the prison guard and his household got saved. How Stephen prayed for forgiveness for the people while he was being stoned by them.

The vision Peter had that showed him that the gospel was for Jews and Gentiles (the Lord let a sheet of unclean animals drop down and told Peter to eat) and how he was freed by the angel of the Lord, after being put in prison for preaching the gospel. I loved the activities that Carrie wrote to make the stories come alive.

FYI: After ds was done with school and playing with little sis, they wanted to build more with the blocks and spend about 1/2 hour building in the bedroom while I did school with my older ds.

For science we learned how Jesus is the Light of the world and how he created light! This was after reading about Saul his conversion on the road to Damascus. It was really neat, because that same evening after doing that in school, my friends husband shared at church from Galatians 1:11-16. He explained how it is God who revealed His son in Paul and set Paul apart even from his mothers womb. Anyway, that was exciting how the Lord will high light things that we do in school during Children's Church or any other meeting of the believers.
Our science activity was that we could see that even though the stars still shine during the day that we don't see them, because of the brightness of the sun being closest to earth. He was very excited to learn that the stars are not just gone during the day. When Daddy came home, he showed him the papers and explained it all to him.

A special thank you to Carrie for being such an incredible giver of the talents that the Lord has blessed her with. We are enjoying our journey with HOD and the icing on the cake is that we have this wonderful messaged board to uplift and encourage one another.

We started our year this week with CTC. I LOVE it! And I think dd loves it too! She's reading everything on her own and I know she's getting it, since I hear laughter here and there and a few, "Mom! Guess what?" The timing of Ken Ham speaking at our convention just two weeks ago was so helpful! His book the Dinosaurs of Eden is extremely good and I'm so glad it's being used in this program! The student pages are awesome, although we forgot to do box 5, but we'll add that Monday.

As usual it took us a bit to get going and it is chalked full of activities and projects and reading in a really good way. We did not get to "reading" though, but I was waiting for the DITHOR student book, which I just received, plus DD is on the 3rd book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy . So instead of adding to that, I thought I'd use it for the fantasy genre.

This was our first week of Preparing. Full of ups and downs as everything is so different for both myself and my 2 dss. We did not do any DITHOR as their reading books aren't in yet, and we're following a different math program, but the rest is according to the guide. I was pleasantly surprised to see both boys enjoy dictation and poetry. On the fourth day, my oldest ds chose to be videotaped while he read "The Swing" while my other ds chose to draw and color a page about it. They are so different, yet HOD seems to suit each in different ways. We had our frustrating moments, but overall, it went smoothly considering it was transition from summer break and into a new type of learning for all of us. My oldest summed it up on the third day by saying, "Mom, I think I'm going to like doing school this way!".

We did Unit 1 of BLHFHG this week. First we with a new cirriculum and first week homeschooling! Well, I did a pre-school program with ds but he went to a Christian school last year for K. Bottom line: LOVE IT. The flexibility of the program was perfect, since my 3 ds has special needs, with therapists coming to the house 5 times a week, and me dropping him off at the therapy center 2 times a week. And the gymnastics class they do together. And the 4 hrs a week I have 2 college age girls in to work with him. And yes, it is that exhausting! So older ds and I did school during naptime on Monday, at 3 different times on Tues, Weds and Thurs, and in one straigh block of time on Fri, when younger DS has no therapy.

My favorite part of the week was when ds and I were in the Dr's office, waiting for his yearly checkup. A great time to go over the spelling words he was stuggling with, right? I told him to use the word 'ask' in a sentance, then spell it. He thought for quite a while, the said "Ask before you take a cookie. A-S-K." One down, one to go. Next was the word 'as'. Without ANY hesitation, he stood up and said "As I am a preacher, I talk about the story of Jesus Christ. A-S," and sat back down.

Not sure what the other people in the waiting room thought, but I thought it was precious!!!!

We had a very slow week this week. We arrived home from a weekend away at my sisters on monday arvo, so monday was out ! The tuesday we took it slow due to a busy weekend playing with cousins!! The rest of the week, we paced ourselves and really enjoyed each of te boxes we achieved in Preparing. We were looking at the people spreading out and will continue on that this week!

The kids started their cave painting projects, which we will paint this week coming. We tried dipping the paper in tea water to turn bown. I must have done something wrong as we had torn paper and only a tinge of brown . But the kids enjoyed the process so it was worth it.

The kids researched cave art and decided they wanted to create a powerpoint presntation on it, so they did with animation. They also researched a place we could visit to view some cave art and it turns out there are some caves within 2 hours of here.

When we started to homeschool this year my 7 year old told me that she didn't like chapter books! We have been using DITHOR and I chose the books from Carries list. My 7 year old loves the antics of Amelia Earhart!! I am so pleased!! My son also is enjoying his book about Alexander Hamilton. I am so thankful for such great book choices. Thankyou

Dithor has been great. We were looking at Responsiblity and diligence. My son exclaimed that he can learn something from this, as these are the areas he has been struggling with! Very timely! I love seeing a light bulb moment

All of our photos can be viewed at http://anne-homeschooladventures.blogspot.com

This is our first year using Heart of Dakota! We are using Little Hearts for His Glory. My girls are 6 and 4. Our first week went great! The girls really enjoyed Reddy Fox. We added some books on animals in for our science. We are also using the coloring book that goes with History for Little Pilgrims. This keeps the girls busy and my youngest loves to color. I will try to put some pictures on next week. I think we are going to LOVE Heart of Dakota!
Misty

We did Week 3 of BLHFHG this week, with my 4 YO doing "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" and my 2 YO... just getting into stuff like always.

I am amazed that my 6 YO can do List 2 spelling words and she is doing great with them! The harder words this week were "which" and "little." I knew she wouldn't have a problem with "little" because that is a word she has been reading well for a very long time, but by day 4 she knew "which" without any hesitation! How is it that she's such a naturally good speller?

Her attitude about copywork has improved a lot from week 1. I'm so thankful for this, as I knew this would be our biggest challenge. I just pray that the practice, and my desire to focus on forming letters well and correctly, would help her do well in handwriting too.

My children both loved the story of the Pilgrims and the Scrooby Inn. I myself learned something, as I had never really read or thought about the persecution the Pilgrims experienced that caused them to emigrate. On day 5 when we played the game, where they roll a die and either walk toward prison because they've followed God in spite of King James's command, or walk toward King James's court because they've attended the church or something, my DD6 was very frustrated she ended up in prison but we had a good talk about the fact that its most important to do what God wants us to do.

And oh yes, I don't remember if it was day 3 or day 4, but Carrie had us laying on our backs bicycling in the air during scripture memory and I really wish I had a picture of that because all 4 of us (me and my 3 DDs) were on the floor cycling and laughing. After DD6 and DD4 had repeated the verse several times we cycled up a hill, to the store, and several other places. And 1 John 4:15-16 is a wonderful verse, I was blessed by going over it with the girls this week!

We also finished up the Helen Keller biography because it was Inter Library Loan and I had to return it by Saturday. I remember being deeply impacted by the story of Helen Keller as a child, and I think my children were too. They were completely fascinated and couldn't wait to hear what happened next. We had many good discussions about "what is it like to be blind?" "Did Helen have to work hard at everything she did?" It went very well along with the week 2 verse and message about laboring hard for the Lord (and was a great lesson to go along with some of the new chores I am asking them to do, and DD6's copywork that she feels is such a tough thing to do). I am just so amazed and I think we are all being blessed by the richness of what we are learning!

And, we're...OFF!

We dove back into school here on Monday! We like to start off the year with presents (school supplies and maybe a little something fun or educational thrown in). Allison got a new dress (that I found in my drawer and had forgotten to wrap up for her birthday - gotta love my back-to-school cleaning burst!). Grant got a game (found in the closet during the same cleaning burst - guess I've had a forgetful year! ). And Garret got some dry erase crayons. These were a HIT!! My kids LOVE them, and have spent many smiling moments drawing during the times they're not with me doing school this week.


I've been so pleased to see that even though we're adding older guides, it has still been very doable time-wise for our family. We've got a schedule in place, and soon everyone will know what they're supposed to do when. I've used a lot of Julie's ideas for scheduling, and it really works for our family. I'm starting with a block of time with Grant, moving on to Allison, then a little time to read to Asa and lay him down for his morning nap , next is Garret, then back to Allison, and back to Grant.

RTR - Unit 1
Grant has enjoyed starting his new guide! He is sorely unphotographed this week. Ooops! I can already say that we're going to have some great discussions during our devotional time together. We liked the book Boyhood and Beyond. He loves to listen to me read the storytime books, and we're enjoying Forbidden Gates. He really doesn't want to read these on his own, so I told him I would as much as I could. (If our next little guy isn't as easy-going as Asa, he may have to for a while later this year.)
He told me that his favorite parts of this week were reading about the martyrs in Peril and Peace, using colored pencils to color his background for the clay arch during his history project, and reading about the planets in his astronomy book and doing his science experiment. Here he is with his "planets". You'll have to look closely for Mercury and Pluto. Pluto is a little paper punch.


I'll have to continue this in another post - this one is long enough to "bounce" while I type...and it's making me a little crazy!
Kathleen

Beyond - Unit 9
This week Allison and I read about the Pilgrims arriving in America. They're searching for a good place to go ashore and settle, as we're keeping up with their journey in Stories of the Pilgrims. We talked about why they ended up further north than they anticipated, and here is our science experiment. Allison is "sailing" her "boat" across the table towards the red "x" on the masking tape. We did this experiment a couple fo times with and without a strong wind blowing from the south to throw them off course.

She also enjoyed our geography activity where she followed directions to find corn. The Pilgrims found corn that the Indians had buried in our story.

This week she learned Colossians 3:23, "And whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord, and not for men." We enjoyed doing the exercises together as we practiced the verse. Here Allison is hopping on 1 leg until I say "Freeze!"

Allison is further along in math, so we started back up in the middle of 1B (where we left off). This week she was working with adding single digit numbers onto double digit numbers.

Allison said that her favorite parts of school are learning new poems, doing experiments, and listening to storytime. We're reading Sarah Whitcher's Story for our historical fiction book, adn she thinks it is VERY exciting!
All the kids get to have a playtime with Asa during our morning. Allison decided she would act out the Baby Moses story with him. So...here is Baby Moses in the basket coming to see me. "Moses" was soon done with this fun though - he can crawl out of that basket!

LHFHG - Unit 1
Garret was excited to begin LHFHG on Monday. He is my mover, bouncer, and hugger - so our school time is nice and active! We loved doing the "leap, leap" rhyme this week. Usually we held hands as we lept, too.
He is doing well listening to the history readings and Reddy Fox, but he told me it's quite a bit of work to be a good listener. We usually bring a snack along for when we get to Reddy Fox, so that makes listening again more appealing. This week in history, we learned that Jesus is the center of history. We also learned that the beginning of history was creation. God created both land and sea animals, and here are some pictures of him either stomping like a land animal or swimming like a sea animal as I named off examples.

This week Garret memorized Matthew 19:14, "But Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.'" The physical activities we do while working on memorizing are perfect for this little mover! Here he is making a basket while shooting his socks. After a basket, we say the verse.

Garret picked back up in The Reading Lesson in unit 6. In math, he is learning to write numbers 1-5. So besides practicing writing them in his math book, we also did several other activities like tracing them on construction paper and then putting the correct number of stamps on the page, writing them in liquid soap in a baggie, walking along big masking tape numbers and hopping over the correct number of blocks. Fun stuff!


The fine motor skills have been just perfect for him, too, and it's so fun for me to see him enjoying doing his work carefully! Here he is proudly displaying one of his pages.


What a FUN week we've had! And, as I've been typing our reviews, Asa just took his 1st steps as we all watched! Now that was a fun family moment! I predict this coming week will be even more exciting in our house.
Kathleen

Hello,
I started using HOD last year, but this is my first time checking in on the weekly review. This report is for our first week of school. I am using BHFHG for my 7 almost 8 yo and LHTH for my 3 almost 4 yo (and my 1 almost 2 yo joins in for a lot of it!!) I must say that we had a LOT of fun this week, but I also found the writing very tedious and difficult for my DD to handle in BHFHG, but when I read how some were doing some of the writing for their younger children in BHFHG, I decided that I will give that a try next week! We'll see how that goes. But my DD does LOVE the stories and begs for more when I tell her that is all the allotted reading for the day! My 3 yo is a VERY ACTIVE (to say the least!) guy, but he really enjoyed the activities, and almost every time (we are doing this 3 days a week right now) he gave good attention- I love how LHTH is broken up into such tiny segments, if my son is having trouble sitting still, we can break it up with lots of exercises, running, or craft time! I am excited to see how the year unfolds and watch my DD grow to be able to complete all writing assignments.
~Karen

I am a few weeks behind in updating about what we've been doing school-wise on my blog, so I've just started to catch up. This is our week a few weeks back, but the most recent post about it on my blog:

http://reachtothemoonandback.blogspot.c ... ks-26.html