3-6-08 Weekly Check-In - moved to main board see note

[MamaMary]

Hello Ladies!

I'm not sure how to get my post to come to the top of this thread, so sorry Mary for stealing your first spot slot here! I'm moving this thread over to the main board, as it would appear we've derailed a bit with the focus for the weekly check-in!

The intention was to have this weekly check-in give a glimpse to others of some of the exciting and fun things you did with Heart of Dakota this past week.

Many of the topics in the thread I'm moving ended up having to do with life in general or ended up sharing blogs and photos about other curriculums you're using too! So, we've gotten off topic for this particular folder. I know many of you do use other curriculums and that is fine! It's just not the topic the folder was created for, nor the focus of having a Heart of Dakota board.

We can either restart the weekly check-in for this week or wait until next week and give it another try! I'll leave it up to all of you!

If we're going to have a separate folder just for a Heart of Dakota weekly check-in, then we need to stay on topic with it!

Blessings,
Carrie



Ok Girls,

Here is our second Check In Thread!

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!

I will try to post mine later today

[annaz]

We are bad this week. Very bad. I'm trying to get back on track with the Days, because of course the Olive in me is annoyed that we're off.

We've had a ton of workers at our house with home improvements and also yesterday was a dryer vent fix. I've had to run to the credit union for the workers too so we've not done what we should. But this will put us on track days wise next week. Makes the Olive in me very happy!

I will say that my dd is getting all her bible verses in, because she loves the freeze and exercise games with those verses in Beyond. A reward of gum for any memorized verse helps too!!

She also loves Helen Keller biograpy, but we're seriously stretching the book to get in all the lessons. How do we fix that? That's another post.

The Early Readers Bible that we changed to from Beginner's bible is going extremely well. I think it's just a tad easier and a bit shorter too, so there's no sighing on that. I'm happy about that.

[inHistiming]

This post on my Blog shows what we will be covering over the next several weeks as we just started a new Unit on Tuesday. I will try to post some pictures soon, especially of Corbin's first week. I'll post another comment when they are up. We've been doing good to get any schooling done at all with dd sick; and I REALLY need to get to the grocery store! So, a lot of our schooling may be Life Skills for the rest of this week.





http://www.perfectbydesign.blogspot.com ... oming.html

[mom2boys030507]

This has been a fun week. We painted Jamestown in the spring (Unit 23 day 1 Little Hearts) and Fished by Fire (Unit 23 day 2 Little Hearts) The boys have loved both of these projects.

Micah Colored the letter A with an Ant eater and did an amazing job. He tried to stay in the lines.


Bryce wrote out this weeks memory verse. His hand writing is improving so much. He also hit 2 other big milestones. He finished Level 4 in Hooked on Phonics and has now read 75 books. He is working his way to 100. A goal we set last fall. This has been a great joy for him to be able to put a sticker on his hundred chart when he reads a book to someone.

I would love to see the writing of some other Little Heart users.

[Candice]

We are just cruising through Little Hands as usual. I am still very proud that my daughter shows a great interest in the bible stories and seems to "get" the intended message.

I have to admit that I have put myself in a bit of a tizzy because of the California HS laws (where we live) being up in the air right now. I fear our homeschooling future will be put in jeopardy and it scares the dickens out of me! It could boil down to two options for us: Send my kids off to a private school or become a credentialed teacher myself so they can stay home. Neither will work for me! UGH! Well, time will tell I suppose.

Karen, it looks like Bryce is doing a WONDERFUL job, you must be very proud!

Candice

[granolamom6]

Well, I have to admit that I didn't think I would have a share this week. You see, while things have been going great with my little one doing Little Hands, they were just ho-hum with my 6 year old dd using Little Hearts. I thought at first it was because she just wasn't used to doing school work every day and was not happy with having to "do school" every day, but deep down I knew that wasn't it.

This morning it hit me. Little Hearts was not the right level for her. Fortunately, I had bought all of Beyond before I bought Little Hearts so I had all the books just sitting on the shelf. I realized that Beyond was probably a better fit for her.

So, we switched gears and jumped right into Beyond today, and after a little pep talk from me, she jumped into it and did really well. In fact, I am thinking that the spelling list will be a great thing in helping her getting going with reading. She is very kinesthetic and I think the writing out the words will be so good for her. (She did great with the spelling, by the way.)

[beandip71]

Here is a link to my blog with our week in review. Enjoy!

Gina

http://beandipblog.blogspot.com/2008/03 ... eview.html

[crlacey]

We are enjoying doing LHTH at a faster pace. Basically, I didn't want Katie to miss out on some of the great things in LHTH, but she's really ready to start LHFHG. So to ease into true schooling, we'll do a condensed version of LHTH.

This week, she read a word I never would have guessed she could read. She was playing a game and it asked if you wanted to load a character or make one from scratch. So she came out and asked who "scratch" was!
Her handwriting is getting better too. She wrote a short 3 line letter to her Uncle stationed in Korea. I forgot to take a picture before she sent it off.
And we are really enjoying the Bible stories, crafts and dramas. The only thing she doesn't like doing is math. So we just do that on days she's not objecting.

[my3sons]

We had just an awesome week with HOD! We have a bulging folder of things to put in our portfolio. It's really tough to pick just a few things to share here, but I'll try to limit myself...

LHFHG: My son could predict that the character that was coming to try to capture Danny Meadow Mouse was Reddy Fox. I LOVE that the Thorton Burgess books have the same characters. It was exciting that my ds could guess which character would do this - the beginning of character analysis! Hooray! Plus, he just loves this reading time! The activity we loved was the blindfold one where he had to find his way through the room blindfolded and draw a face on a paper blindfolded. Of course my oldest ds had to do this too after it was so much fun! They have a better understanding of Bartimaeus' joy when Jesus helped him see again! My grandma was blind, so this was neat for them to experience what that is like.

BIGGER: We loved the history activity where we used letter tiles to write Ben Franklin's saying. It really stuck with my son how tough it was for Horace Greeley to set type when learning to be a printer. My ds had to typeset his name and other things after that too - he loved it - though he decided he's very thankful there are computers and printers. The other activity he loved was the Science notebooking. It was from the pioneer sampler, and it was about wool and the flowers used for dye. He made a beautiful chart of this I'll try to post a pic of later. This is a big deal because my ds used to hate to color. Now he's enjoying it so much thanks to the notebooking in Bigger. It's just the right amount of work to turn out a beautiful notebook without being tedious or overwhelming.

One last thing I wanted to say from my heart - I think that it's really important to share our excitement for HOD here in the weekly check-in, as I believe was intended by the creation of this message board topic. When others come to this board, I love that it is an encouraging place to be to find out more about HOD. Let's continue to uphold HOD and each other by putting positive posts here! We are the "faces" of HOD on this board, after all, and others that visit should "leave here" feeling excited about HOD and being a part of our board. I love this verse:
Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and praise your Father in heaven.
What a great verse! Let's let our "light" shine here on HOD! Can't wait to read the rest of your weekly check-ins!

Love in Christ,
Julie

[inHistiming]

Candice,

How are you feeling with the recent decision concerning homshooling in CA? Any ideas about what you'll do? I'll be praying for you. Although my brother's family doesn't homeschool, he lives in CA, and I think he will be disappointed in the decision, as well.

Julie,

I think you're absolutely right about letting our "light shine before men". I LOVE to read about others' experiences with HOD, and I know there will be many who are searching for the 'right' curriculum. We, and our comments, are definitely a deciding factor in the process.

[shera]

Well we are half way through Unit 4 of LHTHG. My ds says his favorite part of school this week is learning about Joseph. For some reason the fact that his brothers killed a goat has stuck in his head. Probably because he is a boy I guess. He is also really enjoying the rhymes in motion. We have been known to do all of them in one day. This will make for a really long day at the end of the year if this doesn't stop.

Sarah

[my3sons]

IHT - Thanks so much for what you had to say!!!

Sarah - I am laughing outright here about your post! That is exactly the part my boys would love! God certainly made boys different than girls, didn't He? Julie

[Carrie]

Ladies,

I'm bumping this to the top of the board, so you can read the note I put at the beginning of the thread.

Blessings,
Carrie

[MamaMary]

The intention was to have this weekly check-in give a glimpse to others of some of the exciting and fun things you did with Heart of Dakota this past week.

Oh Carrie,

What a GREAT catch! I can see how easy that could happen. There are just so many wonderful Mama's here! (smile)

Though I know I've probably attributed to the chit chat type posts, I think this is a GREAT catch. I love that there is absolute purpose to this board. I don't want to "dig" to find out info about Heart of Dakota.

I will start a new thread. I am planning to add mine tomorrow. I can't wait to share our "Shield" from Beyond. (no one said it had to look real, right?) Also, we went on a field trip to the beach to explore our science lessons from bigger.

[crlacey]

Now that the week is officially over, this week in LHTH, we covered the stories of Abraham and Joseph. (We're speeding it up since Katie is actually ready to move int LHFHG.) We actually went out to our driveway with chalk and drew the greener grass area for Lot to choose and acted it all out. Katie enjoyed the acting part. Sometimes she picked Lot's part, other times she wanted to be Abraham. She even took Daddy outside when he got home to do the story with him!