Our Week In Review

During Bible this week we finished reading through the book of John. This is our fourth gospel to read outloud, and on Monday we begin reading the book of Acts. This, and teaching our children to read, is the one part of our homeschool journey that I take greatest satisfaction in. I love many other aspects of homeschooling, of course, but knowing that our children are getting a daily dose of the truth and power of God's living Word, is so thrilling to me. What a privilege!

The two oldest boys (L pictured) also worked hard in their Stockade books this week. Stockade is our Wednesday night boys' club at church for those in 3rd through 5th grades. Son G is trying very hard to finish his second book and get all 18 patches before the end of May. After that he moves up to the middle school youth group! (gulp - how is it possible we will have two in middle school????!)


Little Man did a variety of fun activities this week. Here he is with his chicka chicka boom boom tree.


One of his activities with his brother L was a listening activity. This is another hold over from my public school teaching days. They both followed along in books with a story on tape (yes, tape. I taught public school about a hundred years ago!).


This preschool art activity with daughter G was a big hit! LOVE this book by MaryAnn Kohl, which I have had for years.


The book, with page marked, and all the supplies for this activity were in one of our daughter's workboxes. When she came to it, she and Little Man went up to the kitchen table where I'd laid out the big tray to work on, and she knew exactly what to do.






Ta-da! Sand art!


Our daughter did a series of science experiments this week which purposed to teach her all about experiments ~ what variables and controls are, what a blind study is, and a double blind study. How to eliminate all the variables so that you're testing for only one. Here she is dipping a variety of things into pepper filled water to see what thing will send the pepper flying toward the edges of the bowl (a piece of soap did it - rather dramatically!). We have gotten a little behind in science and will have to work very hard to catch up to where we should be in order to finish the book in June. Either that or work on science during the summer.

Meanwhile, her brothers and I read about walruses this week. They worked in their science notebooks, writing down what they thought was important or interesting about walruses from our reading, and drew walruses to go with their writing.




In history, we wrapped up our study of World War II and began learning about the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. It is so interesting/strange/amazing for me to learn about events that happened during my lifetime. The children had never heard of the Cold War before, whereas I grew up in its shadow and have memories of nuclear attack drills during elementary school. I have a very vivid memory of when the Berlin Wall came down - I know exactly when it happened and where I was (Japan) and what I was doing (I was at a missionary retreat and we all watched the news and literally jumped and danced for joy).

During our history study the last couple weeks, the boys have had fun playing this old military strategy game called "Mission Command".




We also worked in our history lapbooks.


And we did the usual math and grammar and spelling. And that was our week!