Week in Review Sept 12 - 16, 2011

[Dorla]

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!

[Dorla]

We are using Preparing this school year with DITHOR - which is awesome...
Samuel, who is 9, does extremely well if his assignment has anything to do with a computer, so his book presentation for the realistic fiction genre was done as a power point presentation.
Please take a look! http://www.authorstream.com/Presentatio ... iss-agnes/
Dorla
www.escuelitaaparicio.blogspot.com

[Littlelight]

We are using BLHFHG, and this was our first week reading Stories of the Pilgrims.
My girls really love it so far!

Here is a link to my blog and some of the projects that we did this week.
http://cityon-ahill.blogspot.com/

[Carrie]

Dorla,
It is so good to see you! We pray you will be richly blessed through your year with Preparing Hearts!

Littlelight,
I'm so glad that you had a good week in Bigger Hearts and that your little honey is loving Stories of the Pilgrims. My sons have loved it too!

Thanks for sharing, ladies!

Blessings,
Carrie

[anne cochrane]

We finished unit 4 in Preparing this week. The kids enjoyed doing the science project, making the cactus WE start our school break for a couple of weeks now

http://www.anne-homeschooladventures.blogspot.com

Take a look at our week if you want.

Anne

[blessedmomof4]

A successful week 1 in Rev to Rev, and even more successful addition of youngest dd continuing CTC on day 4 today Keri is ready to fly in Rev to Rev-today she gently asked me not to "hover" I guess I have to relax a little lol. Tamara picked up where she left of on day 4 unit 5 of CTC, after letting Keri get acclimated for the first three days of this week. The days all went very smoothly, and we were finished by 2pm-I'd prefer1:30, but 2:00 isn't bad!
Keri enjoyed making the Indian headdress, and the racer for science was a hit! She was also very interested in the Story of Inventions. I am proud of her work in written narrations for history and science. Tamara had a good start back, and had a lot of fun with science. We don't have cement around the house, so she did the alternate experiment with salt dough for science. But instead of carving in animal tracks, she got some help from our chihuahua I started her in Rod and Staff Grammar 6 and it was a perfect fit. I have Keri in dictation 7 and Tamara in dictation 5. So far placement seems just right on those. I am also proud of Tamara for jumping into her written narration on Tuthmosis the Conqueror and doing a great job. If I get a chance this weekend, I will post a couple of pictures

[homewithmom2]

So thanks to this forum I am joining the blogging world. Not sure if that will last but I will give it a try Here is what we did this week: http://homewithmom2.wordpress.com/2011/ ... ept-12-16/ My older one is just bursting with anticipation and wants to keep reading on. But...patience is a virtue.
I included pictures from our Field trip, not sure if that is ok - but it did relate to how the first settlers farmed etc. Other than that I think we are starting to settle in with HOD

[moedertje]

Well, I tried blogging, but this is just a bit quicker for me and with life in the fast lane, I need quick. My dh had surgery on his shoulder this week so we had a bit of a different schedule. Lots of health and life skills for the kiddo's. They even witnessed the stitches being taken out of Daddy's shoulder.

Anyway, with HOD the way it is written we managed to get lots done this week, Sunday before surgery, the morning of surgery, day of doctor's visit. etc. Than on top of that everyone came down with a cold! except Daddy PTL

Preparing Hearts for His Glory Unit 4


Making the clay map for 'History Project" to show the area where early civilization began.

Map labeled with Rivers and Seas and seeing how the rivers run into the seas.

Everyone enjoying history reading this week and "Life in the Great Ice Age" is a favorite in our house. Ds can't wait till he can read it from cover to cover after we are through it for school!

Ds went ahead and traced some of the things this time. He ended up drawing the fungus and plant. His cursive is nicely improving. He is not yet done with all his capital letters, but wants to write as much in cursive as he can and adding the capitals as he learns them. This is not be the way it was intended, but it works for us.
I was so glad to read Julie's post on narration a while back. This week I ended up modeling narration to ds at the beginning of the week and we took turns at the end of the week. He had a lot of disturbed nights, getting up to check on Daddy and praying for Daddy at night for the pain to subside. He was such a blessing to Dh and I during the night season.

Little Hearts for His Glory Unit 21 finished up and than 3 R's
Because of the hectic week and ds 6 being in unit 21 of LHFHG, I decided this week to do 3 R's after finishing last weeks unit. We usually do 4 days a week of LHFHG to be in solidarity with older ds. in Preparing. Ds continued to do his Rhyme in Motion (Take me out to the Ocean) all week and his Memory Verse!


Math still a favorite with ds, PTL

Learning the number combinations, here is learning the ones that make 8. Since we were in a different mood with colds and surgery etc. we used paper punched apples to do this activity, instead of fruit pieces

We finished off unit 21 with Pizarro and the riches he wanted to gain and how wicked he was to the king of Peru. Getting a room full of gold and ending up eliminating the King. For this activity we used rolled up balls of Play-dough and pressed coins in them for an imprint.

We finished lesson 15 of Reading Lesson and I am still very much blessed with the program. Ds loves to do his Reading Lessons with Daddy every chance he gets!

My Mr. Independent likes to read and follow the instructions for his Thinking skills pages and only needs help occasionally. His handwriting is coming along very nicely and he still continues to like ARFH and so do I.


Little Hands to Heaven unit 6

We had a head start on Sunday, knowing we would miss at least one day this week. We continued to have fun learning about the life of Joseph, how God took care of him and how forgiving he was toward his brothers, with the letter E and the number 6.


The number 6, using 6 pillows or blankets as Joseph was a great interpreter of dreams and to dream we must be asleep!

Little Pink E-E-Elephant was very popular this week and she walked nicely on the letter E. She went along to my friends house who watched the kids during surgery!

Hide and seek is going well and dd plays that game all day long, when we read books, when we drive! This week she did so well on writing all her numbers the "Count on Me" page without help (not a requirement at this time, just her personal goal) . Her story telling with the picture is improving! She also began skip counting by 2's on her own when we did the dramatic play with 10 "Little People" as Josephs brothers and she had to count them out for me. So we will start next week to skip count and work on writing those numbers as well.

Dd drew a picture of Joseph and we sprinkled salt around to make a dessert scene and folded a pyramid. She did well tracing her e's and wrote a couple of them as well.
She is really taking off with the handwriting and having fun just making letters. At the dr's office she copied little notes to her friends, from a model I wrote. My only girl and she's so different in her interest than the boys

Carrie has the idea to write with an ice cube on construction paper, since I knew the little princess would have cold fingers, I made her a popsicle to write with the night before. I used food coloring and H2O and it worked great, till it started melting too much, since dd wanted to continue for a while Using washable tempera paint might work better to prevent staining of clothing etc.

We love doing the letters and my walls are still nicely decorated with the boys their letters that they decorated. We did e-e-erasers, that dd placed on all by herself neatly and organized, I might add. E-E-Egg shells that we d-d-dyed and c-c-colored the week before.

Thanks Carrie for such a great week. We did not finish Preparing all the way, but I was totally fine with how much we got done in this past week and I'm still sane

[spidermansmum]

Dorla- Hi-.Great book review.I am reading this to Nathan.I might show him too.
Michele-loved your blog-so pretty and so autumnal.I thought you did a better job on drawing a barn than I managed
Anne -you had a busy week.Adorable photo's.
Lourdes- Its sound like you had lots of fun.Imlooking forward to hitting those curriculums
Modertje-I love the picture of your kids piled around whilst you read history. .
Here is my blog for the week.
http://stanleysmagicgarden.blogspot.com ... eview.html

[KristinNitz]

Week 2 complete of BIGGER and had another fab week. I wish I would have known about HOD when I first started homeschooling 5 years ago. Anyway, we live only a few miles from the beach and we figured since we are reading about the beach in BIGGER then we should go and look! So we did. I have lots of pics on my post of things that I have never really noticed in all the years of going to the beach. This was a great experience not just for my kids but me too!

http://nutbugs.com/heart-of-dakota-week-2/

[annaz]

We completed Unit 6 of CTC. We had a little issue with the History Project. I really scratched my head on that one, but after reading it over and doing it it really turned out well.

Watercolor project


Student Notebook Page


DD working on math.


DD reading Apologia Zoology. Man she loves this book. I can't get anything else done while she reads this book!



and our infamous History Project

[LynnH]

Once again love reading everyone's weeks.
We completed week 4 of RTR, you can read about it on my blog http://graceandfur.blogspot.com/2011/09 ... 11211.html

[gotpeace91]

We had a great week! It all seems like a blur to me now but I know we had fun.

Resurrection to Reformation Unit 6

I decided not to do the extensions in Medieval History based writing for a while and this alleviated a lot of the frustration for my son. He is also out of From Bondage to Freedom in reading extensions and he likes Black Horses for the King much better and this helped as well. I was gone with my sister on the day that he baked the loaves of bread for his history project. I was so impressed when I came home and the loaves were all laid out looking pretty. We both thought the loaves were delicious and he was excited to find the little verses in the center of the bread and read them to me.


Preparing Hearts for His Glory Unit 6

My daughter continues to do very well with PHFHG! I thought she did a great job with her crook for History Project.


I am so excited right now because we did some organizing in the school room today and I love it! My husband built some wonderful book shelves for me. Here is the link for the bookshelf plans that my husband used----> http://www.frugalhomedesigns.com/2010/0 ... elves.html I'm also pleased with the idea that I came up with for organizing the colored pencils. Here are some pictures. I thought it was so funny that the dog and cat decided they wanted to be in the picture.

[MelInKansas]

Thanks everyone for the posts and blog links! It's inspiring to me to see things I've already done and how others have done them (ideas for next time around ), or things we probably will do, Lord willing.

We had a couple of rough days this week it seems. Whenever I go off my schedule trying to get something done before school, or before the kids get up, my mind goes off in a different direction and I'm not focussed. Then the kids don't get directed the right way either and sometimes it can be rough getting us back on track. But we did get through, we finished everything, at least days 1-4 of unit 8 of Beyond, reading with DD4, and my house returned to some small semblance of normal after a very very busy week the previous week. And we have clean clothes to wear.

DD6 found the spelling words this week, ending in y, difficult for the first time. She kept wanting to end in i-e instead (because they all made the long I sound). I kind of feel like we need more practice, I made her repeat the ones she missed, but I don't feel like she was solid in them by the 4th day like she has been the others.

The Pilgrims are journeying to America in Stories of the Pilgrims. The Mayflower craft on day 1, and counting out 180 "casks" to put into the Mayflower really helped them see a little bit what the boat was like and all the things they had to pack along with them (I only had her count to 120 actually, and that was laborious enough!) The science on day 3 with the water and oil, we actually put a little cardboard boat into the baggie of water and shook it around on the waves to show what the storm was like, they all thought that was pretty neat. Again I can't say enough how much I love all the different ways things are brought together in Beyond (in all of the guides I have used actually). My children get such a rich experience of thinking about things from many angles and perspectives.

We also loved talking about the sun and how the earth rotates on day 4. My kids did the activity over and over where they would shine the flashlight on the globe and spin it around to show how its day when our side of the earth is facing the sun and night when its turned away. I love how real this is making it to them, pictures in a book just don't do the same thing for them in being able to grasp this.

We finished up our adventure story, which was My Father's Dragon. My children LOVED this book, as they loved the others I have read for storytime so far. I need to figure out what the next one will be so I can see if I need to get it or if I already have it.

Thanks for another great week!

[Tansy]

I blogged my review if you want to see pictures click here
http://gardenforsara.blogspot.com/2011/ ... ck-in.html

We had fun finishing up Unit 4 in preparing and starting unit 5