Week In Review Aug.08,2011 to Aug.12,2011

[gotpeace91]

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!

[gotpeace91]

OK, since I usually start my reviews with a bang at the beginning of the school year, and then fizzle out in a few weeks; I've decided to keep it simple this year. 1 or 2 pics and 1 or 2 favorite highlights of the week.

Preparing Hearts for His Glory Unit 1



My daughter is so excited about how much her drawing has improved over the years.
My favorite highlight of the week would have to be how she drew an empty thumb instead of an empty tomb as seen in this link. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10002

Resurrection to Reformation Unit 1



My son is enjoying all his new books. I think he is very interested in the subject matter this year. My favorite highlight of the week is the fact that I started listening to the What in the World CDs with him. They are wonderful! I'll have to go back and listen to the ones from last year. He really seems to like having me listen with him too.

Happy HODer,
Leah

[MelInKansas]

Hooray for another great week in HOD!

This will be my last week of being "on track" doing days 1-5 on M-F because we will be off Monday with some guests staying at our house. We are in Unit 4 of Beyond. We had a bit of a bump with handwriting, the poem was longer, I decided to have her do more copywork and it really backfired. Lesson learned: do a little and do it well. We also found the memory verse: Matthew 6:19-21 challenging. It was a mouthful, and today we had a really good discussion about the meaning of it "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth...." Our discussion was about toys. When you have a toy and your sister wants that toy, if you selfishly say "I had it first, no you can't have it," then where are you storing up treasures? I think (hope, pray) they really connected with that.

Really blessed by the readings about the Pilgrims - my children are loving Stories of the Pilgrims! Making a dike out of Play-doh was fun today. These stories are so alive, we have really related well to them.

Along with her Emerging Readers my DD has decided she wants to do another chapter book and read a chapter to me each day. I think this is mainly because she was trying to read it on her own and having difficulty with too many words. For example: "Pennsylvania." I can see why that would be a tough one for her. But she really loves reading and now she has started writing stories too. I did this a lot when I was a child. Her stories are really cute and she draws pictures with them too. I am definitely scanning or keeping some of these precious things!

I hope all also had a great week!

[moedertje]

Preparing 1/2 pace, unit 1

Grandpa's box is still my ds his favorite book so far. He is truly enjoying Preparing. I am glad that he is being pulled out of his shell. I am absolutely blessed by the way Carrie is teaching us and the kiddo's how to do written narration. This is a bit intimidating to teach, I have been praying that the Lord will give me wisdom in teaching


His cursive is becoming very nice a bit slow, since we are close to working on his capital letters in 'Cheerful Cursive". He wanted to do all he can in cursive.


This week we finished the shield with the "Coat of Arms". It was great for Carrie to have him learn how to figure out what color would be best as a background to contrast his 2 main colors. Ds was extra excited when I put a handle on his shield, but he does not want to play with it and ruin it.


Ds was super excited when he realized he was doing a science experiment and he had much fun doing it.


I agree with PP that I will keep it short as to not get too overwhelmed every week, posting about 3 kiddo's

Thanks to HOD we had another very exciting week of learning.

[moedertje]

Little Hearts Unit 19

Ds was very, very sad that we ended his bible this week. He quickly perked up when I told him we would keep reading other stories and that we can go back and re-read in his bible. We used "101 Favorite Stories of the Bible" by Ura Miller, recommended by HOD.

The highlight of the week was our science experiment making a rainbow by mixing the 3 primary colors with each other. We had to leave or rainbow out till Daddy came home so ds could show him. This year I try to have little sis in the room when he does school, but she came out for this fun experiment.

He loves the TB stories and has made great progress from last year when we started, in his ability to answer the questions with more depth, narrate and dramatize the stories. He has now named the frog from the Weebles Grandfather Frog.

He also had a blast making the road with graham crackers and having people join in on the conversations about Jesus, how he rose from the dead. He lined up all the animals and some trees and picked some "Little People" to be in his drama.


Math started off with teaching him the different coins and their value. He was struggling a bit at the beginning of the week and has not completely grasped the concept of skip counting and place value, but today when he could buy some items with the money. He did not make a mistake. He knew exactly how much money he had, what he could buy and how many of each item especially the 10 cent chocolate chips He had fun with the coin rubbing and the drawing of coins.

This week he made a birthday card during "Thinking Skills" and it was very appropriate, because his best buddy's birthday was today.

This week we learned about martyrs and I had just started a "family time" book by K.P. Yohannan (Revolution of World Missions) that goes along with this theme, so I think he understood the concept very well. One of these as described in "History Stories for Children" was St Valentine.
We don't really celebrate Valentines Day, so he did not get that part of what 'Valentines' are, but he understood the story and did a great job decorating the heart and it turned out very cute.


Ds is so excited that little sis has her own school work now, but he does not forget to invite her to come and do his "Rhyme in Motion" with him. With some of the activities, I noticed last year that including her during his dramatic plays and all science delays the school day, so this year with teaching 3 guides we only include her in some of his activities and have her scheduled to do different activities in her "alone" times.

He is fine with doing just one line for his handwriting now.


Thank you so much Carrie for making school so doable with 3 guides.

[moedertje]

Little Hands to Heaven Unit 1

DD was so excited and beaming with joy when I told her that she was starting Little Hands to heaven. That she would have her own books for school

Of course the excitement of having her own "Finger Play" was so incredibly cute. A-A-Adam, Can you believe? God made animals, like her doing the ant eater, sniffing the floor. And big brother wanted to do it with her, so when he was done with his seat work, he read her the whole thing and showed her the motions.


We had gone to find stickers to match her letters and were looking for alligators. She started saying all the sounds and pointing out stickers we could use for her other alphabet letters. She has the sounds and is getting very close to being able to blend. So for her A we punched out paper apples together and glued real apple seeds on top. And she put animals on the other a. She told Daddy all about getting real apple seeds to put on her A.

She found 8 of her A's on the Hide and Seek page and did extremely well tracing the line. I was waiting to see if she would recognize the different type of lower case a that is used in reading books and she did.

DD had a good time cutting out the tree, gluing it on and recognized the number 1. She wanted to make the number so I had her write 1 number 1 on the page.

She picked for her baby doll to walk the A for her letter activity.

Seeing if we could create something out of nothing and we were not able to do it. DD said only God can do it.

More getting rid of energy and brothers joined in on this fun activity. First having her jump forward, backward and sideways over a belt. Than wriggling it like a snake and doing that again. Oh, what fun.

Third time around for LHTH in this home and loving it even more. It's also the last time. I might have to adopt a little one to go through it again....

[anne cochrane]

Everyones photos lokk fabulous

We are still working through Unit 3 of preparing. Still at a slow pace. Some days we achieve a lot of activity , some days we don't and I ma learning to be o.k. with this!

I have updated my blog http://anne-homeschooladventures.blogspot.com. I post all of my weekly photos and journey in homeschooling there.

This week we finished our cave paintings which turned out wonderfully. My daughter is becoming more independednt in her work and my son is being to settle into the routine well!! We are really enjoying these wonderful activities.

Anne

[Dustybug]

I am still behind in my week in review blog posts, so this is not the most current week, but it IS the most current blog post. lol

http://reachtothemoonandback.blogspot.c ... ek-27.html

[Kathleen]

Oh! I just love reading all the week-in-reviews! Brings a smile to my face every time!

Leah - You'll have to tell you daughter that her drawing IS good! (As one who grew up not ever wanting to draw because I couldn't do it perfectly , I'm SO glad that I'm able to teach my kids to enjoy learning and creating and that they shouldn't worry about everything they make looking perfect!) Anyway, I really like the effort she put into those drawings - they're GREAT! And, I love your son's balloon planets. We used the paper circles last week when we did it. Grant is loving his science time, too.

Melissa - Thanks for sharing what you learned about copywork. I've been guilty of expecting too much, too. Glad you're enjoying the activities! The play-doh dike was a favorite here, too. And, I have to say that those little heart to heart discussions like you shared about are what truly has me thankful to be able to homeschool and be with my kids every week. What an important job being a Mom is (when our goal is to raise godly kids)!

moedertje - You're in for a great year in Preparing! I love your boy's enthusiasm as he does his science experiment! He is LOVING it - you can just see it in the picture. I love his shield, too. (We ended up with cardboard swords here after that project, too.) I have to say that your beautiful glasses made your "rainbow" even prettier in LHFHG. How fun to start LHTH again, too! You can sure tell that your kids LOVE doing school by those smiling faces! Good job having fun, mom!

Anne - Looks like you're doing great with Preparing, too! I love your kids' cave paintings and timelines. If you want to link the specific blog post where you reviewed this week, moms would be able to look back at this thread and still see what you did in August 2011. You can click on the title of the post before you copy it to post here, and it will take us to that specific post. Like this: http://anne-homeschooladventures.blogsp ... nit-3.html

Dusty - I loved your pictures of your little ones doing LHTH! It is truly SO much fun to be teaching little ones! I especially liked the picture of them playing the "what's missing" game at the table. Reminds me of when Allison and Garret were that age and doing LHTH together. By the way, our 11 month old started walking last week, too!

[Kathleen]

LHFHG - Unit 1/2

I have to say that I am already really enjoying my time doing school with Garret this year as he matures! He just loves to dive in and learn and smiles the whole way.

Our history stories this week finished off creation and moved on to the 1st sin. Here Garret is enjoying the thinking game where he got to hop like a kangaroo and waddle like a duck. (We were playing "Adam says...")

Here he is following my directions using prepositional words. He's digging outside the Garden of Eden.

On Thursday, we talked about the fact that God can see what's in our hearts. He is pleased when we come to Him for forgiveness and are obedient, and He is sad when we hang on to our sinful thoughts. We read the story of Cain and Abel. Our art project for the day was to etch some things that are in our hearts. Garret loves having birthday parties with his friends, so he drew a party hat. And, he loves to play with our kittens, so he drew one of those.


I really enjoyed watching him narrate as we read Reddy Fox this week. Knowing that in a few years he'll be writing 8-12 sentence narrations independently has me so appreciating the step-by-step way this skill is taught in HOD's guides. This week he acted out the story of Drummer the Woodpecker warning Reddy Fox that Farmer Brown's boy was there with a GUN ready to shoot him! He is really being a good listener and enjoying our storytime.

"Snack math" got 2 thumbs up from him this week, too! These are his "cookies" that he topped with the correct number of goodies, after he wrote the appropriate number over each one. You can guess that what he really liked was eating the goodies afterwards!


I'm out of time now, but I WILL be back with our fun from Beyond and RTR, too.
Kathleen

[Kathleen]

Beyond - Unit 10

I have to start with just a couple of pictures from our Unit 9 activitiy that went along with Friday's Bible reading. We read about Nehemiah leading the people as they rebuilt Jerusalem's walls - hard work that they stuck with! Here Allison is rebuilding the walls...and I was the invading army. I pounded the floor 10 times and then rushed in and attacked. She had to repair the damage I made and then go back to work. We sure had fun with that one!


I love that Allison and I are in God's Word each and every day as we do school together! Here she is looking up her memory verse for the week as we begin learning it on Monday.


As we studied history this week, our Stories of the Pilgrims had us first reading about naughty little Francis Billington. We sure were glad that he didn't blow the Mayflower to bits! I bet those moms on the ship were SURE glad when they could put all his energy to good use working to build their homes!!! She loved this project, and had fun telling her dad and brothers all about it at lunch time.

We went on to read about the Pilgrims being directed by God to find a place to land. Here is our science activity where we used play-doh to make the ocean shelf, slide and floor. Then she sailed a boat to see if it hit the ocean shelf or if there was a deep enough harbor.


Allison really liked our science experiments this week! We talked about the water cycle and how God uses it to provide fresh drinking water for us. We talked about why it is important for people to choose a place to live where they have access to fresh water to drink. Here we filled a bag with some water and blue food coloring. We closed it tight, and taped it to a sunny window. We've been watching for "clouds" and "rain" to develop. We think we saw some little clouds, and know we could see little drips raining back down to the water.

We also talked about how salt water makes things float easier. Here we dropped a crayon in fresh water (which sank). Then we added salt, and dropped the crayon in again. This time it floated!

[Kathleen]

RTR - Unit 2

This week Grant was studying the early church councils and creeds in history. It's fun to see him be able to do his resarch independently now, after me working alongside him in Preparing and helping when he had questions in CTC. Now, he researches and writes his postcard and he's done! This week he researched the city of Alexandria. Here he is writing his postcard to me with his information.


He really enjoyed making his stained glass window during his history project time. What a great reminder that CHRIST is the center of Christianity, too. (I snapped a picture of him with his "arch of Titus" from last week, too.)


I've been reading the book of Acts in my personal quiet time, and have to say that I've really enjoyed how Forbidden Gates has brought that time period to life. We sure were rejoicing to have Nathan come to believe that Jesus was the Christ, our resurrected Lord!

During science this week, Grant learned about the sun. I have to share a little funny story... We have a friend in real life who is always updating us on Solar Flares. She does so in such a way that makes it sound catastrophic and gloom-and-doom! I'm not sure if it's her goal, but talking with her sure makes you wonder if you should be really worried about the earth surviving our weather (or our welfare surviving politics). Anyway, while reading this week about how God created the sun, Grant narrated to me about solar flares and thermonuclear fusion. God did in fact CREATE our sun so that these explosions are happening all the time! And solar flares are NORMAL! Absolutely amazing, in my opinion, but definitely a normal part of our great God's creation. Truly, what a MIGHTY God we serve! (I already had this as my opinion, but now I can hopefully share the scientists' take on it and ease a bit of the worry that this friend seems to be consumed with. ) Here is a picture of Grant with his solar eclipse.


We're enjoying a great start to RTR here! What an enjoyable and deep way to learn!

AND...I just have to share a picture of our littlest HODie. Smiling along with the others!

Kathleen

[Tree House Academy]

Hey ladies...

Sorry it took me two weeks to report again, but my older son was with dad and has not done school in the last two weeks. Younger son did one week of bigger in two weeks so we could enjoy some vacation time. This week, we are back to school full time with no more breaks scheduled until October!

No pictures, but we are really enjoying our year with Bigger. It is definitely a step up and a challenge, but ds7 (almost is meeting it head on and doing great!

[gotpeace91]

Oh Kathleen, your little guy is so cute! I love his little romper outfit! Allison looks like she's growing by leaps and bounds. I told my daughter what you said about her drawing, that was sweet, thanks! Grant is doing such a great job with all his projects. Wish I could have done snack math like Garret when I was a kid.

[wonderfilled]

I'm a little late in posting here. This is our first year with HOD and it's going great. I can't begin to mention everything so I'll try to just hit some highlights.

I'm so impressed with CTC and with the notebook pages. The boys have been doing such great work in them. Here are pictures of their notebooks. The first two are the oldest boy's pages and the next two are for the younger one.





I also love how everything flows together: Dinosaurs of Eden, The Story of the Ancient World, Genesis finding our Roots, A Child's Geography of the Holy Land and the Diana Waring Cd's. Not to mention the Bible Quiet time and the history projects and probably more that I'm forgetting.

My ds (soon to be 7) is loving Beyond. He especially likes the math activities and that sometimes he gets to use edible items to work out the problems. I had started him on Abeka 1st grade math last year and when we were halfway through I realized it was just too much for him so we quit and played with cuisenaire rods and did some worksheets I printed off from the internet. I'm so glad he can start over and enjoy math since he was getting the idea last year that he isn't good at math. He also loves being read to and I'm finally finding time each day to read something just on his level to him.

Here's one of the poems he copied and his picture for it. I thought it was really sweet.



I'm having a lot of fun with Little Hands, too. My son loves the fingerplays and can't get enough of them. I just have to hold up two fingers for "Two big bears" and he starts to giggle.

P.S. This is kind of two weeks mixed up in one as you probably noticed. Also, this is my first time posting pictures and I'm wondering how some of you get such a nice size for your pictures. The only two choices I had were either really large or just thumbnails. And how do you post pictures side by side? Thanks in advance.