Weekly Review 1/3/11 to 1/7/11

[my3sons]

Ok Girls,

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!

[my3sons]

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL YOU FELLOW HOD LADIES! We are back to school, how 'bout you?

We have had a good start to the new year, and it was nice to get back to normalcy here. I hope you have had a good beginning to 2011 as well!

Resurrection to Reformation:
I know I've said this before countless times, but I cannot say it enough, I am so glad for Wyatt being able to be independent this year. He is enjoying growing and maturing into his homeschooling, and I am the happy mama watching him do so. This moving from "boyhood to beyond" (borrowing the phrase from the title of one of my favorite books we're doing this year ) is what is allowing me to mother my younger dc well too. I began some phonics with my little guy, for fun, and because he's known his ABC's for forever, it seemed like a fun thing to add. I also moved my middle ds from half-speed to full-speed BHFHG. All of this was no biggie because of RTR just marching on so beautifully for my oldest ds.

My oldest ds continues to love the history readings in RTR. They captivate him so much, that he appears to be unable to hear even his mother's own voice while reading. I know this, because when I ask him a question and he is reading, there is no answer, not even a flinch or a flutter. He does not move, and is apparently engrossed having traveled back in time to the history period of RTR. I don't mind... usually.

Wyatt gets to not only read great books, he also gets to do amazing hands-on projects. It is for this I am especially grateful. I've not seen any other program do this like HOD does. He gets his hands-on things done every.single.time. Why? Not because I am the mom of the year, I can tell you that. No, it is because of how HOD writes hands-on things - in short time segments spread out over days, with supplies I have in my house already, with directions right to my ds that he can follow... independently. Plus, they are fun and match what he's reading. I would not pull this off without HOD. Here is his mud cloth painting...


His under the table Michelangelo painting (which made him have incredible awe at how Michelangelo's turned out )...


And a favorite he just finished a relief map complete with labeled flags matching what he read in history...


You see what I mean? No way would I get this done on my own. As my ds gets older, I feel like these projects help us hold onto the fun of school, while still encouraging meaningful learning.

The Medieval-History Based writing lessons sure has my ds turning out some good work these days too. It really has become an "I" independent instead of an "S" semi-independent for us at this point. I check in with him, give a brief run-down of what to do, and he's off and running. I feel HOD's secret to growing good writers over the years is VARIETY. I loved the creative writing with RLS Poetry back in PHFHG, Write with the Best creative writing back in CTC, and now IEW in RTR - all very different, yet all very good. And running throughout the years is R & S English's clear and concise writing instruction as well. A nice combo. My ds is not the only one who needs variety - I DO! So, that's another reason I enjoy the writing so much.

My ds said all 16 Scripture verses of his Phil. 1 study for me today. He didn't miss a beat. I was impressed, and my dh was floored (ya gotta wow the dad sometimes with homeschooling, just to keep him loving it all the more, right? ). The music CD has made it pretty much effortless for him. Unbelievable. I wish I'd done this more as a child. Can I just say the all of Philipians is quotable IMHO? That book of the Bible is positively full of gems to be learned. I am amazed time and time again how many verses I love come from Phil. I'm glad my ds is learning them. Likewise, the Phil. Treasure study along with it is a great connection. He likes waking up to do it each day, and I hope he always starts his day that way - with the Lord!
I hope you had a good week!

In Christ,
Julie

[my3sons]

Bigger Hearts for His Glory:
Riley is full-speed now and doing beautifully with BHFHG. We took our own sweet time growing into it, and boy has it paid dividends. Today, for the vocabulary box, I said, "Choose 2 words." ... THAT'S IT! He knew what to do for the rest and did it all right. He came and told me his guess for each word's meaning after using his contextual clues from his history book, and he double-checked he'd found the right meaning in the dictionary, but that was all. A real milestone.

A few favorites from this week - Washington and Cornwallis battling it out (notice Cornwallis' troops with their arms up in surrender ):


The clay model of the parts of a tree trunk (which we kept 3 days until Dad got home to see it) ...


The notebooking map for history...


And the all-time favorite of the week... creating his own insect to camouflage and hide within the house for his brothers to find (which they could not, even when we narrowed it down to one small area of the room , we had to do the 'you're warm, hot, cold' thing for them to find it, and even then, there was a considerable amount of time to find it ): You try it. Look in the flowers. Can you find Riley's wooly worm?


Try looking closer...


Enlist some help...


Yeah, that was a big hit for Riley!

A big hit for me this week was Riley's oral narration on "The Indian in the Cupboard". It was one of the type what they narrate days in the plans, so here it is:


One other neat thing - he gets multiplication and division now. It has just totally clicked. He doesn't have his facts down yet, but I don't expect him to. He can arrive very quickly at the right answers by skip counting. HOORAY!

In Christ,
Julie

P.S. Why does my ds have the same shirt on in every picture?!? These pictures span like 4 days. Hmmmm. Time to talk about wearing fresh, clean clothes each day again. Oh bonus, I just noticed the last picture is a different shirt. There is hope.

[my3sons]

Little Hands to Heaven:
This little guy LOVES "The Singing Bible's" song "Jonah and the Whale"! We cannot hold each other and sway singing to it enough. He skips around the house singing it, and the only thing that can top it is actually acting out Jonah getting swallowed by the whale and being spit out on the sand. Of course LHTH planned for him to do that already - PTL!

Here Emmett is with his whale art project. We traced his foot and did some coloring. His foot is the whale. I remember doing this project with my older 2 dc, and Emmett's feet are much bigger! He may end up being my tallest ds.


For his "Count on Me" pages, he is able to do more and more on his own with the drawing part. I still help direct his hand, but he has more of the strength to move the marker and write without my "pressing down" for him now:


This was a favorite activity from this week. Emmett tried to be the fierce wind blowing as it did on the boat Jonah was on. Here he is blowing a paperclip... a marker... and last Linny the Wonder Pet (who was too stout to be moved, though Emmett gave his heartiest effort ):


We started some very basic phonics this week, and he is so excited. Marshmallows are involved, so excitement is a given for Emmett. I love the laughter my little one brings to our home. God is so good!

In Christ,
Julie

[moedertje]

Happy New Year to all of you

It has been a while for us to post and my picture taking was a little stifled.

LHTH:We are currently on the letter I i for LHTH with dd 3. We will start full speed at the beginning of August, but since she asks to do school continuously, I figured we could read the Bible stories and do the letters. We do all the motions, but right now we don't do the finger-plays. For G g we did gum wrappers since this little princess LOVES gum..

She loves to participate with the crafts that we do in LHFHG. See below.

LHFHG: We continue to do history etc. 3 times a week, but do the 3 R's 4-5 times a week. Ds has done great learning patterns, measurements with non-standard equipment, comparisons. He still loves doing his math activities and his math page. He also likes to teach Daddy everything he learned that day.


We learned about the Golden Calf that Aaron made for the children of Israel, which he quickly said was an idol that needed to be taken down. Making the Golden Calf was great fun that dd and older ds had to participate in for snack time.


Building Jericho's Wall was a hit with everyone and ds was very sad when his wall caved in! We made different ones but with our blocks this one was the sturdiest. My older ds actually asked permission to join in with us, before doing his seat work


The Thinking Game that was played over and over was Balaam and the donkey with the Angel holding the sword. Well, the reason I did not get a picture was because ds had me running in place, jumping, hopping. He loves to have Mommy do all the activities. He would have Daddy do it as well, but he had surgery on his arm so he could not participate.

Ds and little Sis had great fun making Rahab's Wall with the red cord hanging out to show the spies where Rahab and family lived so they would be spared.


We absolutely love ARFHW. Ds is having a wonderful time doing his letters and getting the chance to color the animals on back and adding something cute to it. Since we are reading Peter Cottontail, I figured I would put one of ds's favorite. We just had a review and are moving right along.


The excitement of Thornton Burgess continues with Peter Cottontail. I love how ds does his narration to Daddy in the evenings This is the letter I had to write to ds and he filled in his name and Mommy on the bottom!


Bigger Hearts: We had some sickness to deal with and an asthma attack so we took it easy this week and just did English, Math, Dictation, DITHOR, and Story time.
Not much to photograph, but glad ds has been enjoying working with money. He had a bit of a time when he got to subtraction. That has not seemed his strongest side, but with some encouragement to check his work he did it!


With dictation he is going strong. He does great and enjoys the dictation process. I think the little paragraphs keep him interested. Good pick Carrie

Now that we are working on paragraphs in English ds has done great remembering to make his indent every time, yeah!!!! We are working on his skill on giving titles and he is coming along rather well. He picks out the subject no problem. This is good practice for handwriting to write a paragraph in each lesson. i am thrilled with R&S 2.
I was so proud of him the other day when I asked him for 3 sentences to dictate to me so he could write a little "thank you" card to someone who send them Christmas gifts from Daddy's office. Than he went ahead and copied them ever so nice. Should have taken a picture, since writing cards or neat handwriting are not natural for ds!!

For story time we finished "Balto and the Great Race" and started on "If you Lived in the Time of the San Francisco Earthquake". Ds has much improved on the details he gives during narration time.

This was such a neat Art project, that I had to post it.. It was from the week before..We chose to copy the whole poem and I had him write one stanza in his art book that we keep all 2 dimensional projects in. I loved how it emphasized that it helped Louisa Alcott do her work cheerfully. Good reminder for us Mom's as well, when we have to juggle housework, school and all the other activities we have to do. To do them cheerfully and unto the Lord.


A very Big Thank you to HOD for making school, fun, easy to digest and a great learning experience

[Tree House Academy]

Back to school for us too!! It wasn't the absolute best week ever, but not bad for a week back after 2.5 weeks off.

Beyond was fun, as always.

This was the highlight of the week! LOL Ds7 was doing his phonics and my old man cat jumped up on his chair like this. "Hey...what's going on? I like school too." LOL I just had to take a picture!



Poetry copywork



Copying his days of the week on our LA lesson today:



In history, we have been studying about two little pilgrim boys who were kidnapped by the Indians and forced to work for them. When they came into the clearing to the Indian Village, they saw the reflection of the lake and the treesin the sunset.



We started DITHR with ds7 just before Christmas and it is going so well! He is doing the discussing and drawing and I am doing the writing for him for right now.

[Tree House Academy]

CTC

Ds11 had a great week. He got back into the swing of things after a rough-ish 1st day. He was finished with school by 12pm on Tues and Wed, had co-op on Thurs, and finished by 1pm on Friday.

*My* favorite part of the week was these cookies!:



Ds had a great time making them...and they were so good that I made another batch for us all to enjoy. YUMMY! Even dad loved them!

Ds11 is really loving the study on Birds and chose to be creative with his notebook since he likes to draw but is never satisfied with how his birds turn out:



He doesn't even mind answering the questions and he is doing a much better job making sure they are answered in complete sentences.



More and more often, his summaries and verses are running long, so I just let him do the writing on paper and attach it to the space provided in the Student notebook. He is doing such a nice job on his summaries that I hate to even say anything about making it shorter or writing smaller.



All of my praise goes to God for leading us to HOD. Schooling really is so simple and rich using this curriculum! I can't wait to order for next year come May!

[LynnH]

We also jumped back into CTC this week. Noah had tons of fun with the science experiment and the history project. Here is the link to my blog http://graceandfur.blogspot.com/2011/01 ... 32011.html

[Tree House Academy]

I love reading your posts Lynn. Your ds and my ds are now right back together in pace in CTC. We enjoyed the bird experiment as well and I didn't realize we were switching history spines next week. How exciting! I noticed N is wearing a spongebob shirt in the last picture...my son decorated his grager with a picture of spongebob!ROFL! He did a pretty good likeness, though I did tell him I was pretty sure the Jews wouldnt' have done such a thing...nor did they know who Spongebob was!

[John'smom]

What fabulous weeks you all had!!! It was such a blessing to read, I'm inspired to try and get back to posting our week again next week.

[Catherine]

Hi Everyone,
This is my first time doing a weekly review because we just officially started LHFHG last week! It's going so well and we are thrilled to be here!

http://homeschoolingmomtographer.blogsp ... mness.html

~Catherine

[spidermansmum]

Had a wonderful week with HOD.The highlight was again -on Day 5.We were doing the bible study.DS loved me roaring like a Lion as he tiptoed from one end of the house to the other.He is enjoying the mystery book-Keys To The Treasure..I loved the picture he created of the silhouette of the trees at the indian camp.I laminated and made a calender of it.
Fridge spellings this week


Model of a river


Math

[LynnH]

Rebecca,
It is fun our boys are both on the same week. Noah decided his Grager was a Dragon Grager.

[Tree House Academy]

Rebecca,
It is fun our boys are both on the same week. Noah decided his Grager was a Dragon Grager.

Bryce loves dragons. I think he and Noah would be good friends. They sound a lot alike from your posts. Sweet boys!

[birchbark]

Creation to Christ Unit 16

Science notebooking, DS's map of Egypt, and his first poem done for R&S grammar!