Our Week in Review

Last week wrapped up our study of the Civil War.  The middle schoolers and high schooler learned about the final battles of the war, the surrender, and how Lincoln's assassination set a different stage for reconstruction.  Our younger two boys finished reading in depth about Abraham Lincoln.  We recorded a great docu-drama off the National Geographic channel called "Killing Lincoln" and watched that as a family.  (Disclaimer:  one rather violent stabbing scene, and another graphic barn fire and shoot out during which Booth is killed.)  Very, very well done.

Son G (8th grade) is writing a 5 paragraph essay on the Battle of Gettysburg,  Son L (7th grade) is writing a 5 paragraph essay on Robert E. Lee, and son C (fifth grade) is writing a 3 paragraph report on Abraham Lincoln.  Those papers will all be finished and turned in this week.

New daughter H has been formally withdrawn from her public school and is officially a homeschooler now!  She received her new Math U See Pre Algebra book in the mail this week and has been very excited to start that.  As excited as I have ever seen her about math!! :-)  I have been working on a school plan for her that will fill in the gaps she has, while allowing her to learn at her own pace and in the manner that best fits her style.  It's a work in progress, but we are slowly getting there.  It is quite a thing to take a middle schooler out of public school mid-year, unexpectedly, and plop her into a homeschooling family!  By God's grace we are all doing pretty well with the adjustments, but the flow and rhythm of school is not yet what I would like it to be.

We took a fantastic field trip this past week to a special presentation by our symphony orchestra!  It was specially designed for students, and was masterfully m.c.'d by the conductor.  We all enjoyed it immensely, but probably me the most!!  Symphony orchestra has always been one of my dearest loves....I do not think my sweet husband knows how deeply orchestra music resonates with me.  If he gave me nothing but orchestra tickets every birthday and Christmas for the rest of my life, I would die a happy woman!   (local friends, hint, hint)

(a note to Grandma...Little Man has since had a hair cut and looks quite snazzy now!)

We had a girls night out this week, and stamped home-made cards!  Great fun, and lots of beautiful cards to show for our effort.

I'm not a huge fan of grades, as they are often an artificial representation of what the student actually knows, but if you will allow me a proud mom moment regarding grades...daughter G received an A as her mid term grade in chemistry!  She worked HARD for that grade, and I am pleased that the letter grade shows how her hard work is paying off.  Her chemistry teacher is fairly tough (and it's NOT me!), so it was definitely an earned grade.  Great job G!!  We are proud of your work ethic!

Our Week in Review - Classical Greece, part 2

Before I tell you about our history studies, I just have to share this picture from Little Man's Bible Journal..... it has a story behind it, which I find hilarious!

We are reading through Psalms and Proverbs right now, reading the chapter from each book that corresponds to each day's date. So on March 16 we read Psalm 16 and Proverbs 16. The Proverbs are so interesting to read with the children.... each verse can be its own picture and I never know what they will choose to illustrate in their Bible journals. It is pretty amazing to look through them after class and see how they have chosen to illustrate some small gem of wisdom.

Little Man, of his own accord, chose to illustrate Proverbs 16:31, which reads, "Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life." When he showed me this picture afterward, he said, "this is you, mommy. Your gray hair is like a crown. I think when your dye grows out this time, you should leave your hair gray and wear it like this." Hahaha! In addition to my lovely hair, I got a kick out of my pointy b**bs! I love that Little Man so much. He makes me smile.


We spent last week continuing our study of the classical period of Ancient Greece. We learned about some of the Greeks who made significant discoveries or advances in math, science, and philosophy. Fortunately for anyone with young children studying famous dead Greeks, there is a whole series of books about Greek mathematicians, scientisits, and astronomers, that are well written and very fun to read. A couple of our favorites last week were this book about Pythagoras, who developed several math formulas still in use today:


...and this one about Erasthosthenes (AIR-a-TOS-the-neez) who figured out a way to measure the circumference of the earth. Later it was realized that he came to within 200 miles of the actual distance around! Not bad!


We worked in our history notebooks last week, catching up on some explanation of architecture...



...and writing down some interesting facts we learned about other aspects of Greek life. We LOVE the lapbooks that Tapestry of Grace sells ~ what a great way for the boys to narrate back to me (and/or write down) what they have internalized from our reading!



In other news, our third grader, C, learned the difference between linear measure and the area of a square or rectangle! I guess this was appropriate since we learned about Greek mathematicians all week. At first it was hard for him to visualize, so I got the brainstorm to show him the difference between a ruler and a lego building board. That did it. He got it!


It was a great week of learning, and we are almost done with the Greeks! Very soon we will have our unit celebration and be on to the Romans!

Overheard.....

Little Man is working on skip counting by ten. In his math book today there were pictures of groups of marbles, ten in each group. He was to skip count them and tell how many there were altogether (without counting each and every one). Afterward, he was explaining what he'd done to his 8 year old brother C.

Little Man: "In skip counting this equals 30, but in real life it's 32."


(I think we still have some work to do!)

Third Grade - what son C is doing this fall

First of all, a big shout out and thank you to my parents for this wonderful book they sent C recently. The Boy Who Changed the World, by Andy Andrews, is a story of how four boys' lives intertwine to make a difference in the world, and it's even more wonderful because it's true! The first time I read this book it gave me goosebumps, and I loved reading it out loud to all the children with son C front and center on my lap. Thanks mom and dad!



A couple of weeks ago C finished reading through The Beginner's Bible. This has been his daily reading practice with me for about a year, ever since he finished 100 EZ lessons and had his reading party. He read two stories to me nearly every day, and felt a huge sense of accomplishment when he got to the end! (it was worth TEN leaves on our reading tree!)


I have been including him a bit more in our Tapestry of Grace history studies this year, partly because he's ready for more and partly because so far, Year 1 of Tapestry has lent itself well to doing things all together as a family. Which I love! This was a chart that all the children but Little Man made as we read through the latter part of Exodus. It showed where all the furniture for the Tabernacle was placed and what it was used for.

We both love what he's doing for writing this year. Though I am sold on IEW as a writing program, I am waiting until next year to start C on it. This year he is using this All About Me composition book from Love to Learn. Each of his older siblings has also done this in third grade.


Each page asks a series of questions about the student's life ~ so by the end of the year you have a lovely keepsake of this period in your child's life. On Monday C writes his answers to the questions, a rough draft, in a separate notebook. I am working with him on double spacing in his rough draft notebook, to help prepare him for that requirement when he starts IEW next year.




I correct his rough draft, and on Tuesday he copies the corrected version in his All About Me notebook. On Wednesday he draws a picture to go with his writing, and on Thursday he colors his picture. Each week he has a finished page like this:


It is working out very well, and is a nice segue to writing every day with IEW next year.

He is steadily working on math, and recently went through another lesson that taught how to tell time. He has worked on the minutes before. This time he worked on learning the hours, and how to put the whole thing together in order to read an analog clock. I love how Math U See teaches time, because it's completely visual and logical. The circle of blue blocks are the minutes, that can be skip counted by fives or counted individually. The blocks outside the blue circle are the hours, the one block for one o'clock, the two block for two o'clock, and so on. It was a bit of a struggle at first, but when the light came on it was a wonderful moment! (and I love that I get to see and experience these lightbulb moments myself because we homeschool!)

I have not started C on any formal grammar yet this year, but that is coming in January. All in all, he is having a great third grade year!

Our Week in Review, and a new twist on Kindergarten

Last week we had a whirlwind tour through the remainder of Genesis as we read about the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph). Lots of interesting stories and situations in Genesis!! I had to constantly read ahead and did phrase a few things differently for our 8 and 5 year olds. Our older two children are also doing the same reading silently on their own, so they got the whole scoop, including sex, homosexuality, and circumcision just in this week alone!

Our history studies this year have us on a very aggressive Bible reading schedule, but I am determined to do all the Old Testament reading outloud so all our children can hear it. It is an amazing review for me too, and I am learning TONS every day.

Here a few pictures of the children's Bible journals from the last two weeks. This is daughter G's drawing of Noah and the animals coming out of the ark:



The same picture by son C:


And son L:


This is son G's Tower of Babel:


And here is Little Man's! His tower comes complete with cranes. ;-) But notice the talking bubbles coming from the two people at the bottom of the picture. He drew different symbols in each bubble to show that they couldn't understand one another!!


Though I could have spent several whole days on our history/Bible studies, we did do other subjects too. Here is son G working in his Fix It notebook. Have I mentioned how much I love Fix It? On the left you can see the 4 passages he fixes each week. He marks corrections right on the paper using the proper editing symbols, goes over corrections with me, and then re-writes the corrected sentences on the right hand side using his best cursive. This is all we are doing for grammar this year, and though I sometimes worry that I'm not hitting grammar hard enough, if we can accomplish the same learning with less pain, I'm all for it!



Daughter G is a pretty good typist already, but sons G and L are just learning keyboarding this year. Here is L doing his daily typing practice (which he LOVES):


In an ongoing effort to fit quality kindergarten time in with Little Man, I stumbled upon a routine that seems to be working really well for he and I, and that is to do a week's worth of math workbook pages in one day, a week's worth of handwriting workbook pages in one day, and a week's worth of phonics pages in one day. In some ways this goes against my own educational principles of frequent review in small chunks. BUT, he does get math practice, handwriting practice, and phonics practice in other ways on the other days. It's just the workbook pages that we are hitting only once per week.

The reason for this is the workbook pages require me to be right there, teaching and guiding, while he can be more independent doing math or writing related activities on his own. Here we are on "math day" doing all of lesson 5 in his workbook. We are still working on one to one correspondence, number recognition, and learning to write numerals.


And here he is on another day, sorting and counting little plastic fish.



This is a language arts activity he can do on his own that teaches opposites. Each set of two pieces is self correcting because they only fit with each other and not with any other piece.




I'm thankful for all we are learning, and for all the ways God helps me each and every day!

Our Week in Review - Math and Science

It's been a while since I have posted much about school, but we have been plugging away. Getting spring fever and wanting to be done, but at the same time wanting to finish strong! We are finishing things on a somewhat staggered timeline. Our grammar books will be done before the end of May, but math and science will continue probably well into July (we actually do math year round). Writing (and co-op) is done for the year except for end of the year projects. We will wrap up our history study of the 20th century the first week in June.

Here are snippets of what we've been learning in math and science the last few weeks.



Daughter G and I have really been enjoying Apologia General Science ~ much more than I thought we would! It has been a great fit for our family and I can't say enough good things about it. If you recall, we were on a mission last year to find a general science program that was written from a christian perspective but still had "good" science in it ~ "good" meaning the science has not been bent to fit Scripture. We have been exceedingly pleased with our choice, and have seen how Scripture and science support each other.

These pics are all from the module where she learned about geology. She loved this module! One of the first experiments we did was build crystals with alum powder. The glass below with white liquid is just alum and water. The glass with red liquid has the same ingredients with red food coloring added. This was supposed to become rock candy for her siblings to eat, but for some reason the crystals never really formed in the red liquid.


However, after only a few hours, crystals began forming along a string in the clear liquid!


We compared the shapes of crystals with the shapes of small rocks, and learned that much of the earth is made up of angular shaped minerals in the form of crystals. We learned about different types of erosion that wear down the sharp corners of crystals, making them more smooth.



Another experiment she did involved making a cast and then a fossil of sea shells. This was to illustrate how fossils are formed. We started with purple modeling clay, smeared some shells with vaseline so they wouldn't stick to the clay, and then pushed them into the clay firmly, leaving an impression.



We mixed up some plaster of paris and poured it in the mold. I forgot to take a picture the next day, but the "fossils" turned out really cool looking!


Meanwhile, the boys and I learned about ocean reptiles, including frogs and salamanders. The brown frog in the picture below is a "pipa pipa" and is almost completely flat. It looks like a leaf lying on the ocean floor. Further evidence of how God gave animals some defense against predators so that some of their species always survive. We had fun adding these animals to our ocean boxes.






We then learned about prehistoric reptiles which are now extinct. One group of them was the pliosaurs, and the largest pliosaur of all was the kronosaurus, whose head was 9 feet long! To illustrate this we went outside and drew his head on the driveway. Each one of his teeth was the size of a banana! The boys had lots of fun with this activity.



We also read about the leviathan in Job 41, and then made a Venn diagram showing the similarities and differences between a leviathan and a whale. There is much Job 41 does not tell us about leviathan, but what it DOES say is pretty amazing. Go check it out!



We are now learning about all the different fishes God created. One of the first things we learned is that both "fish" and "fishes" are correct. If you are talking about two or more fish from the same species, the plural "fish" is correct. But if you are talking about one fish from one species and another fish from a different species, you would refer to them as "fishes." Something I didn't know before!

In math our daughter is continuing her mastery of decimals and percentages, while son G is working on division and fractions, son L on multiplying 3 and 4 digit numbers, and son C recently learned how to add 3 digit numbers. One reason I love Math U See, is that we can literally see how the problem works out when we use the blocks. Here C is "regrouping" (you may know this as "carrying the one") when the numbers in the blue tens column add up to more than 10 and he can make another red hundred with them.



How I thank God for the fascinating world He made for us to learn about! And for the privilege of learning together with my children at home!