Week-In-Review Feb. 2-6, 2015

[crlacey]

Ok Fellow HOD Homeschoolers,

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!

[crlacey]

DD1 is in unit 14 of Res. to Ref. This week we learned about John Wycliff and John Hus. It was neat to find out that while both called for a reform on the church, they didn't always agree on the changes that needed to be made. DD1 is my artist, so she was happy to see her finished drawing of the knight turn out to be so much like that in the book. She's also enjoyed the beginning of the book "Ink on His Fingers." It's not a book I would have thought to pick, but it is surprisingly interesting so far.

DS is in unit 1 of Bigger. He has enjoyed learning about Christopher Columbus. In fact, one day he asked me to read more of the history (which is not normal for him to show any interest in school). Instead of labeling a ball or balloon for the geography lesson, we decided to label a blank world map so he could have it to keep in his folder. For the biography, we are reading a book at night as a family called "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World." My husband has been enjoying this book and is the first to ask if it's time to read each night. It's been fun to have him included!

[Nealewill]

Allie is in unit 20. This week she studied the Greeks. We had a really great time with the book Archimedes and the Door of science. I love how this book explains so many complicated topics so easily to her and that she can truly understand. This child of mine is so artistically and musically inclined that science and math are necessarily her thing. But she is now constantly point out things that are machines, levelers, screws, etc. I can see she really gets it. It has been neat to see. She finished her paper this week on her conversation assignment in WWTB. Her last paper was not my preference and while she did complete the assignment correctly, it significantly left me wanting. This assignment far exceeds my expectations. She used very diverse language in noting how the characters communicated with each other (ex. replied noisily, exclaimed loudly, asked questioningly, and sighed gloomily to name a few.) She also added an additional element of having one of her characters be an Australian. She added quite a bit Australian slang. It was so fun. I attached her tornado picture from the water color. This was the third attempt. I love that the CTC forum has the watercolor blog but we try our best to figure out the picture on our own first. At first I was a little bit intimidated to do this. But we have found it to be a little more fun to come up with our own creations. In my house, my dd tries it on her own entirely for attempt number 1. If all goes well, there are no more attempts. If not, then attempt number 2 is me doing it and then her mimicking me. If that is a fail, we go to the blog for attempt number 3. We rarely need to go to the blog But with this week's assignment, I was having a hard time. So we went to the blog. I don't think this is what the directions were telling us to do per se from the manual but that is okay. It turned out well. The poetry hasn't been added yet but it will be and then it will be filed in her art portfolio.

Sammy finished unit 19 and is into unit 20. We have been enjoying the book Concord Cunningham for Storytime. This book is fantastic! We usually do this book first when he start his school day with me. I love how each mystery ends with him looking up a verse to solve the riddle. What has been really neat is that at the beginning of the book, I found the mysteries a little easy. He couldn't figure them out but they were obvious to me. Now we are at a point in the book that I am looking forward to him check the verse because I can't figure out the answer either without it. Great book and it is lots of fun. I am a little bit sad though because this our last week with this book We started the Pioneer Sampler book. This book is wonderful. My son reads one page out of the science text to me each day. He had gotten to the point he could read the entire OSS assignment in science but these readings are much longer. This week he had to draw a picture of tree and label it. He has come a long way in being able to do his Science notebooking activities alone but this week I had to help him. He has a hard time drawing what he sees. He sees the world so differently from you and I. I am hoping that by the end of this year he will be able to complete these assignments alone and unassisted prior to starting Preparing if not, that is okay. We will just keep pushing forward and I will continue to help him. Besides, it is kind of fun to draw these things myself. In helping him, he mimics me. I start out by showing him the easiest points of reference. Then I start. I draw a circle, he draws a circle. I draw a line, he draws a line. It goes well. For his history notebooking activity he wrote about Lewis and Clark. He loved that they took their dog with them on the expedition. Math is going very well for him, he just started double digit multiplication. He isn't doing Singapore this year but it is extremely similar and is the equivalent of 3B. I attached his history activity where he got to move across a grid. Everyone loves battleship and chess at my house so he was very familiar with grids already. But it is always fun to be a life sized player with a grid.

Josie has a great week and finished unit 20 in Little Hearts. I did not attach any pictures for her because I forgot to take one. She loved Grandfather Frog and was sad the book ended. We started Chatterer the Red Squirrel and it started off in quite an intense way For history, I loved the activity we did where we talked about things make us happy. God makes us happy, not stuff. That was a very fun lesson to go through. Josie also had a birthday this week. She turned 7! It was great week and she got some time off of school to celebrate One last thing I am working on with Josie is her handwriting. It is large and inconsistent on lined paper. I know my son didn't really have good consistent handwriting until this year. With Josie, she is always writing so fast that her letters are typically messy. It is getting better but she has a ways to go. I am having her copy the poetry from Beyond again this year to practice writing. She loves getting the poem finished because she then proceeds to give me a formal poetry reading from her journal. I am hoping that her hand writing improves! I can tell her letters are forming more consistently already but they are still fairly large.

[my3sons]

Bigger Hearts for His Glory:
One of the things that I think deserves a good audience is the reading of the poetry in BHFHG. Emmett is quite theatrical, so he loves to call his brothers to come listen to the Day 5 BHFHG sharing of his poem. This takes only 5 minutes of their time, and they love to take a short break to hear their little brother really ham it up. "Sea Fever" was a poem that fit so well with our weekly history theme of Explorers and Adventurers. "I must go down to the seas again..." - that line alone seems to accurately describe the almost desperate need to explore unknown seas and lands that Captain John Smith and Henry Hudson.


Emmett's timeline for BHFHG is beginning to grow. To help him with his drawing and coloring, which is not something he takes much time to do carefully as he is a boy always on the move, I use a marker board to help. I write the timeline label for him to copy, and I draw a simple picture for him to draw with his pencil. I ordered some gel pens that he likes to use, so I have him trace over the outline part of the drawings in different colors that fit with the picture. He liked this so much he decided to use the black gel pen to trace over the pencil letter label too. Then, he colors the pictures with colored pencils or crayons. His timeline is looking much better than his last timeline did in Beyond because his writing/coloring skills are growing. I love to see growth such as this between guides! It is neat to see how one skill can be built and built upon until it shines like a fine diamond!!! It's nice to see that happy smile on his face when he knows he worked hard on something!


A fun activity this week was making a compass rose and following directions to move various ways. Emmett had to place the sticky note directions at the end of each of the compass spokes, and then I gave him directions about which way to step and how many steps to take. Take 2 steps to the North. Take 4 steps NW. etc. Emmett begged to do this activity again and again, and he was moving like he was a sailor saying "Hardy, har, har!" He is absolutely loving the readings from "A First Book in American History." He can hardly handle when we stop in the middle of a lengthier story to finish it the next day! What a good 'problem' to have!


In Christ,
Julie

[my3sons]

Nealewill - I loved seeing the pictures and reading about Allie, Sammie, and Josie! Allie's watercolor picture is lovely! Art is meant to be a creative outlet for personal expression, and it sounds like you are enjoying that process together. Just wait until you see your next child's watercolor paintings when that child gets to CTC! It was really interesting to me to see Riley's paintings alongside older brother Wyatt's paintings. I didn't show them each other's, but as a mom, it was interesting to see. Both enjoyed and took time on different parts, and the result was that you could kind of see they were the same, but they were also definitely different. A neat thing about art, for sure! Your taped grid to the floor is so neat. Sammie makes a good life-sized player on his grid! Our kids loved Concord Cunningham too. What a refreshing idea to have kids pull out their Bibles to solve a mystery! Happy b-day to Josie! Emmett's handwriting was HUGE when he was Josie's age. He is turning 8 yo next month, and he just now can write quite small and neatly, within a wide notebook type line. The fact that Josie can READ her own writing as she shares her poetry is a great sign! She is going to keep building and building those fine motor skills this year, and before you know it, that writing will begin to shrink. Thanks for sharing about your precious dc! It is always a joy to read about your week!!!

In Christ,
Julie

[my3sons]

crlacey - We are doing the same guides! Riley, our middle ds is nearing the end of RTR, and Emmett has just started BHFHG. (Our oldest is doing the WH guide for high school as well.) Your dd, being of the artistic bent, is going to love all of the neat Draw and Write figures she gets to draw in RTR! Riley is also my artist, and he loves to pull out this big case of art supplies my mom bought used on a rummage sale. That case sat unused for years because she gave it to my oldest ds originally, and he is not of the artistic bent! Wyatt finally passed the case on to Riley, and it was almost like a beam of light shone down on it when he opened it. He still runs his hands over it so carefully, as if it might go poof and be given back to Wyatt at any moment! "Ink on His Fingers" just gets more and more exciting - I won't give away the high points. My ds in BHFHG also is loving the readings about the explorers! It sounds like he is off to a super start, and that you are all enjoying your genre-based read aloud. We own "Shipwreck at the..." too. It is a fascinating book, and the photographs show the brutal conditions Ernest Shackleton and his crew endured. It is neat your dh is a part of the readings! I would love that too. Thank you so much for sharing about your week!!!

In Christ,
Julie

[my3sons]

Resurrection to Reformation Unit 26:
Riley has been reading about the struggle for power between Spain and England in history. The Spanish Inquisition made its way to the Netherlands, and the Dutch people fled. As Riley reads about all of these different places and their power struggles, he locates on various maps in the "World History Atlas" and Map Trek maps where each of these events took place. I like that he is using 2 different kinds of maps - the broader view given in the World History Atlas, and the zoomed in view in the Map Trek maps. The labeling and constructing of maps/routes really helps him see visually what he is reading about in "Mystery of History." He can clearly see why it would be hard to defend certain geographic areas, and why it would be easier to defend others. This week, Riley followed the path of the Spanish Armada in his WH Atlas, and then labeled the Netherlands Map Trek map to show the "Spanish Fury" uniting 17 provinces under Prince William Orange...


In science, Riley is really enjoying reading the narrative book "Along Came Galileo." Riley loves to think about things in mechanical ways, and trying to discover why things are the way they are and how they work together is always of interest to him. This book is a window into the mind of a deep, creative thinker who wasn't afraid to think outside the box. It appeals to Riley's sense of reasoning! For one of his assignments, Riley made a science notebooking page about the three famous astronomers in his readings. I really love these notebooking assignments! They provide enough structure to be meaningful without having every single student's notebooking assignment look just like everybody else's.


In DITHOR, Riley and Emmett have been studying the story element of point of view. The perspective an author has makes a difference in the way a book is written, and both of them thought it was interesting finding about their different authors of their different books. Riley finished "Just David," and Emmett finished "The Secret School." Both of them really enjoyed their books! Carrie has such a knack of finding the diamonds in the rough when it comes to choosing DITHOR books. We have loved the DITHOR book packs, and many of the books they have read remain their all-time favorites through the years. They like to reread them in the summer, and I like to see our at home personal library growing slowly, and being filled with quality living books rather than what we used to have in public school for reading. Here they are interviewing each other, taking on different points of view and modeling their different perspectives as if they were their book character...


In Christ,
Julie

[crlacey]

Julie,
I've always enjoyed seeing what your boys are doing since it gives me a glimpse of what we'll be doing soon. Though I forget to take pictures too often. One of these days I'll figure out the technology to get pictures posted (once I remember to take a picture!).

[my3sons]

Julie,
I've always enjoyed seeing what your boys are doing since it gives me a glimpse of what we'll be doing soon. Though I forget to take pictures too often. One of these days I'll figure out the technology to get pictures posted (once I remember to take a picture!).

Thank you! You'll have to check out my last weekly check-in post to view my latest drama with technology! I am not a techie either. I somehow have HUGE pictures that cannot be resized. If you would like to see my dc really up close and personal, the last check-in fits the bill. Anyway, I love words too, so if you don't want the hassle of posting pictures, just telling about your week here is neat too! Or, if you really long for pictures, one thing that helps me take pictures is to put my camera right on my windowsill in the kitchen. I tend to remember better things right in front of me in plain eyesight these days. The rest just is somehow deflected. I blame it on my mid-40s! Thanks for sharing you read my check-ins!!!

In Christ,
Julie

[Gwenny]

Julie, I like the pictures big--I can really see them and not have to click on them to get a better view. Maybe it's because I'm old!

[my3sons]

Julie, I like the pictures big--I can really see them and not have to click on them to get a better view. Maybe it's because I'm old!

I hear ya. I'm reaching that point too!!! Thanks!!!

In Christ,
Julie