Disclaimer

There is a huge tendency among women in general, and homeschool moms in particular, to compare ourselves to others and find ourselves lacking. I can see what another homeschool mom is doing and think, "I should be doing that", or carried to the extreme, "I'm a loser at this and should just put my kids in building school." I know this because I have done it.

BUT.

It is terribly destructive. It takes our eyes off Jesus and fosters discontent and even envy. God has unique plans for each of our families, and we need to focus on the priorities He has given to us, not those He's given to someone else. We answer some day to HIM, not to each other.

If you are a homeschooling mom who uses Tapestry and you don't do unit celebrations, that is okay! If you are a homeschooling mom who doesn't use Tapestry at all, that's fine too! If you don't homeschool but instead trust the education of your children to others, that's great! It grieves me to think there may be those who read about our hands on activities or our unit celebrations and feel inadequate. If that is you, please stop reading my blog.

I'll be honest and tell you a little secret that feeds into our unit celebrations. We have a very difficult time finishing home maintenance projects here at our house. A set of beautiful half finished wooden bunk beds has been sitting in our garage for 6 years now, while our cars are parked in the driveway. There is a hole in my kitchen ceiling, made by an overly enthusiastic Jedi knight, that will probably be there until we sell the house someday and are forced to fix it. My biggest fear in starting our schoolroom expansion project this past summer was, what if we never finish it?

Psychologically, it makes me feel so good to have a unit celebration and mark that 9 week period of study as DONE. There are so many other things in my life that are not done.

My friend Guinever uses the Student Activity Pages that come with Tapestry each and every week. We are hit and miss with those.

My friend Marsha hits English grammar really hard. Us, not so much.

My friend Sally has an immaculate house. She would disagree with that, but she'd be wrong. ;-) She comes here and enjoys our artsy craftsy clutter. I go there and enjoy her nice, clean home.

I have friends who play with their children more than I do with mine. Some who do a much better job at teaching household chores. Some who do bulk cooking.

You get the point.

Can we learn from each other and be inspired and motivated by each other? Of course! This is one of our God given purposes as women, to encourage and mentor one another. But God has wired us all differently, and if we let those differences cause us to envy or doubt our own calling, or focus on our inadequacies rather than the complete adequacy and awesomeness of God, that is WRONG!

So, as I share about things we do in our homeschool, please keep in mind that I am striving to be faithful to what God has called our family to do, as one who will give an account.

And that as long as I am supervising hands on activities, I don't have to dust. :0)

Epiphany

God is so good!

I have been praying about a school related issue for a couple weeks, having to do with the tension between holding our children accountable to complete their work with excellence, and having their content areas of study (history and science) be fun and enjoyable for them.

Our daughter has been at the dialectic level of history for two years and is now starting her third. Our son G is also transitioning to this level. The dialectic level is basically middle school age in cognitive development. At this level in Tapestry of Grace students have several questions to answer each week as they do their history reading. Some of the questions are deeper level ones that require thought and the putting together of information they knew previously with information they just learned. In other words, it's work.

I helped our daughter learn how to answer these two years ago when she first started at this level, as I am doing now with our son G. But since then she has been working mostly on her own. Some weeks the reading is heavier than others, and some weeks there are more questions than others. Some weeks she was still answering questions after youth group on Wed night, in preparation for virtual co-op the next morning. It felt to her like sloughing through a swamp all week long and never quite reaching the other side.

Over the past two years I have watched our daughter learn how to think. But I have also watched her enjoy history less. I became increasingly concerned about this and began to pray and ask God for wisdom in this area. I wasn't really willing to not require answers to these questions, and every student has to realize at some point that they need to do the work because it needs to be done whether they like it or not. But what could I do differently to ensure the best possible chance that she'd enjoy, and maybe even love, history?

As an aside to my fellow TOG moms, our daughter has always loved the hands on aspect of history, and the read alouds, and the other "fun" parts. It has just been since starting the dialectic level and having to answer the questions each week that a cloud has fallen over her previous love of history. And it's hard to watch someone who used to love it begin to resent it! What to do??

I had a long talk with my husband about it on Tuesday night, and woke up Wednesday morning with a plan. God literally gave it to me while I slept!

I told G and G that we were starting a new thing. Each Wed afternoon at 3:00 the three of us will have a history meeting. At this time, all history reading and the answering of questions will STOP. No more is required after our meeting, even if they didn't get them all done. We will discuss all the questions they have not yet been able to answer. I told them that they know a lot more than they think they know, and discussing together will prove this. They are welcome to jot down in outline form any answers that reveal themselves during our discussion, but if they still have blanks on their paper after the meeting that is okay.

In my desire to hold them accountable to their work, I have inadvertently been teaching them that answering every single question on paper is the goal. And that is not the goal! The goal is knowing facts and concepts and making connections in their heads. If I can show them this through the course of a weekly "mini discussion" (before their "big" discussion during virtual co-op) I think they will be encouraged with all they are truly learning and enjoy the process more.

This will also make Wed afternoons and evenings much less stressful, and there is already enough happening on Wednesdays this fall to induce stress! So, it has only been one week, but we had a great time during our discussion this past Wed, and even though they both had a few blanks on their papers, I think they totally got the gist of what our virtual co-op was all about on Thursday morning. After our discussion on Wed, son G said to me "well this is great! I only have to finish my questions and I am completely done with school today!" And I said, "no, you are done." Which got me a glowing smile. :0)

This will work with these particular children because I know they will have been working diligently since the previous Friday to accomplish their daily reading and answer as many questions as possible. If they were slackers I would have to have a different plan.

I share all this for two reasons. One, to show that God cares about even this. I prayed and He answered! Nothing about your school day is too small to bring before the Lord. And two, even a 5 year Tapestry veteran and a 9 year homeschooling veteran can learn new things! (actually, I learn new things every single day!! One thing I love about homeschooling!)

Our End of the Year School Celebration!

If you have read my blog much during this past year, you know that we have been studying the 20th century in our history studies. Our history curriculum, Tapestry of Grace, recommends a unit celebration after each 9 week period of study throughout the year, but this year we had a year end celebration that was all 4 units rolled into one. So we called our celebration "The 20th Century Diner". Each of us dressed up as a character from one of the decades of the 20th century, and we interspersed our presentations with food from that decade.

Up first was our Little Man, who represented a soldier from World War I. He recited the poem "In Flanders Fields" and he did a beautiful job! There is a video of his presentation below this post, and you may not be able to understand what he is saying because, despite all our practicing, he spoke too quietly and too fast. But he remembered the WHOLE thing with very little prompting!! I was so proud of him! I read an introduction to the poem before his recitation that told a bit about the poem's author, John McCrae, and gave some background information about conditions during the war.


After Little Man had finished, we shared biscuits together, as biscuits were a staple food item for World War I soldiers.


Next up was our son L, who portrayed the famous (infamous?) gangster, Al Capone. He tried to look very serious and "gangster-ish" for this picture! Notice the tommy gun under his arm. He is pretty proud of that tommy gun. :-)

After his presentation we served salad to our guests, as the modern health food movement had its roots in the 1920's.


Then our daughter, representing a girl from the 1930's, shared her report about the Great Depression. This was her final composition of the year, and she wrote a 5 paragraph report. Unfortunately, because her report was so long, blogger will not allow me to load the video of her presentation (don't you just love those 4 little words...."file exceeds maximum size"?). She fashioned her outfit loosely after the American Girl Kit Kittridge.


After her report she explained what hobo stew was, and we then served hobo stew to all our guests!

Then we fast forwarded a few decades to the early 1960's, where our son C played the part of John F Kennedy and read a report about him. He did such a great job with the reading of this report! (I wrote it, he read it)


Our son G portrayed Neil Armstrong and gave his report on the first moon landing in 1969.


After this we served the beverage "Tang", which was originally developed for the astronauts to drink in space.


Next I gave my report on the hippie movement and the Vietnam War.



Last but not least, my husband dressed the part of a naval officer during the first Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991, and shared about that experience (very cool since he has first hand knowledge!).


This concluded our family's portion of the evening, and we turned the stage over to my friend and fellow co-op mom Sally. Here her youngest son is reciting a short poem. Is he not the cutest?!?


Her 6 year old shared a poem as well. The pirate hat was not part of the costume for his poem, he just wanted to dress like a pirate. :0)


Next, her daughter shared about a colonial era book she had read about some children scaring indians away with some carved pumpkins while they were home alone. After reading this story, she had stitched a scene from fabric scraps and framed it. It turned out so well! She is already a talented young seamstress!


And lastly, her oldest son read his report on the country of Peru (yes, he is barely tolerating this picture, but since I have known him his entire life he basically had no choice!).


In our living room we had set up tables displaying some of our work from the year. This was Little Man's preschool table. On it were some activities he had done during the year, as well as crafts he'd made at co-op, his alphabet book, and his "history/science" binder (the one he insisted on having so he would match his older siblings).


We had a science table ~ here are the ocean boxes my boys made as a year long cumulative project of the ocean creatures we studied.


Our 7th grade daughter had her own, different, science book this year (Apologia General Science) and these are pages from her science notebook. I bought her a lapbook kit that accompanies General Science, and as she made each mini book she reviewed the concepts and definitions of each module in preparation for the test.



Here is our history table. It showed many of the books we have read this year.


On the walls we had a few posters/reports displayed. Here is the poster we made about segregation while we were studying the civil rights movement. Each picture illustrates segregation in a blatant way (such as different doors for blacks and whites into the same establishment, or a back staircase into a movie theatre that blacks had to use). When we originally did this activity, I showed the pictures to the children and they had to "find" the segregation and highlight it in yellow.




We ended the evening with cake and ice cream in honor of Sally's 40th birthday!!!! (whoo-hooo Sally! Now we're in the same decade again!)


It was a fabulous evening and really, really fun. I'm so thankful for the concept of unit or year end celebrations, how they help to solidify what we've learned, and give us fun memories to "hang" our information on. I know when we come around to 20th century history again in 4 years, the children will definitely remember this year end celebration where they played a soldier, Al Capone, a girl from the depression, a president, and an astronaut!

Little Man reciting the poem "In Flanders Fields"

L's report on Al Capone

C as John F Kennedy

G reading his Neil Armstrong report

Our Week in Review - Finishing the 20th Century

We have plowed through 36 weeks of school and have officially called it "done". It has truly been an incredible year studying 20th century history and I have learned so much! Perhaps I will share more at a later time about my ponderings of the forces of culture and change, and how christians have responded to the cultural changes around them in this century, and how we need to be salt and light in a world that seems to be spinning out of control. So many thoughts swirling around my mind at times ~ processing and pondering what the study of history means to ME and to our family. How should it affect us? And how should we affect it?

In any case, we read, we discussed, we learned. The boys and I did not quite finish learning about all the recent presidents and are still working on the last few (shh! don't tell them they're still learning! ;-) I got behind in reading to them the last few weeks, so two weeks ago we studied the presidencies of Johnson and Nixon (looooong explanation about Watergate ~ try it sometime, it's challenging to explain in simple terms). Our last week of school we learned about Ford, Carter, and Reagan. All in one week! We still have to cover the presidencies of Bush Sr, Clinton, and W. Many of the events of George W's presidency we have discussed as a family numerous times, so those are more familiar. We have also talked quite a bit about Obama's presidency so far ~ what he's done compared to what he promised, and what he promised compared to what we truly need.


For the last two years (Tapestry Years 3 and 4) each of the older 4 children have kept a Presidents Notebook. They have written down information about every single president as we studied them in order. It's fun to see how their penmanship has improved over the last two years, and how much more they were able to write as they have gotten older! We had hoped to finish it completely, through George W, before our end of the year celebration coming up this Friday, but I don't think that is going to happen. Still, they are fun tools for helping us remember all we have studied, and they help us see the common threads that have run through all the presidencies from the very beginning to now, despite huge cultural shifts in our nation and world.

We are doing lots of preparation this week for our end of the year celebration. Tapestry recommends a unit celebration at the end of each 9 week unit throughout the year, to mark the end of a period of study and to do it in such a way as to put an exclamation mark on it! Our end of the year celebration will be all 4 unit celebrations rolled into one. Each of us (me and my husband included) will be dressing up as either specific characters from the 20th century, or as representations of certain time periods (such as the hippie movement - that would be me! haha). The children are very excited about it, and actually so am I.

In addition to this being a fun way to end our 20th century history studies, I also view it as similar to a public school open house or science fair ~ where the students can display their projects and parents ooh and ahh over them. Because my husband and I are usually the only ones oohing and ahhing at the children throughout the year, this is an opportunity for them to share with a slightly wider audience (family and friends). I am praying they will handle it with grace and humility.

Hopefully Little Man will remember all his lines (18), L will have fun but not be *overly* dramatic (especially with his toy gun), G and G will speak up loud enough to be heard, and C will fully enjoy wearing his Sunday suit. :-) I don't want to give away more clues than that ~ you'll have to check back on Saturday to find out who was who and see pictures of my hippiness!

Our Week in Review - Geography

Our son G is learning the names of the state capitals for his final geography assignment of fifth grade, and to help him (and all of us!) we played geography bingo this week.

The pre-made bingo game was just covering the names of the states with a token when they were called out, but we added another layer to the game. Anyone who wanted to could guess the name of the capital when the state name was called out, and if they got it right, they received a chocolate chip!



This was very fun! Unfortunately, not too many chocolate chips were awarded, so the children didn't really have a sugar high. But I sent them outside to run after this anyway. :0)

Do any of you adults remember all the state capitals?

Humbled

The last two Thursday mornings it has been my turn to teach our daughter's Tapestry of Grace virtual co-op, where we join other students online who have done the same reading and answered the same questions during the week as we have, and have a history discussion together. The second of those two Thursdays we were covering the presidency of George W. Bush, including 9-11 and its aftermath. I did copious reading, and scoured the internet for appropriate photos to put into my power point. Since I am a visual learner myself, I always like to put lots of pictures into my power point presentations for class, so the students have something engaging to look at while we are talking.

The night before class I had stayed up until about 1:30, finding the last pics and putting the finishing touches on my power point. The next morning my daughter and I logged into class and I began teaching. The students were well prepared and we had a great discussion. There were aspects of 9-11, the war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq that I wasn't sure the students were connecting, so I taught my little heart out on those topics. We covered the highlights of Bush's 8 years in office, packing a LOT of info into a short period of time, and covering topics that were intense and still to this day, emotionally charged.

I felt pretty good about how the class had gone, and afterward I asked G if she had learned anything new. She said,


"well, in my reading this week I learned that Obama's middle name is Hussein."


Hmmm. So much for my teaching!


"A man's pride brings him low." ~ Proverbs 29:23

(Yes, I felt about one inch tall!)

Our Week in Review - The Writing Process

Last week, our three older children who are in the writing class at co-op completed their final assignment from unit 6 of IEW, which is learning to write a report from multiple sources. I was very excited about this final assignment, as they could each choose a topic of their choice and then write a 3 paragraph report, practicing what we'd learned in that unit. Since it was to be a 3 paragraph report, they then had to select 3 sub-topics to write about, one paragraph each. The "taboos" for this assignment were, they could not use the internet as one of their sources (learning to use the internet as a source of info will come later, for now it is just tooooo overwhelming, as so many links and so much info comes up whenever you google something), and they could not choose a biography of a person (same deal, too much info for now). I love how IEW encourages us, the teachers, to give them appropriate parameters for success.

Once they had each chosen a topic, we headed to the library. I gave them a mini lesson on how to use the on-line catalog to find books on their topic, when they didn't know specific titles ahead of time. Then we stood in the stacks and carefully looked at each book we pulled out to see if it would make good source material. Did it have a table of contents and/or an index? Did it have pages and pages of info on each sub topic, or rather a manageable amount? Did it have headers to show each topic?

Some books had information for 2 of the subtopics, but not all 3. So in order to have 3 sources for each of the 3 paragraphs, we ended up checking out about 6 or 7 books each. Son G chose to write about medieval times.


Son L chose to write about rainforests. In both pictures above and below, you can see the boys working on their outlines. We are learning that the outline is KEY. If you have a good outline, and you have worked to organize your thoughts on the outline, the actual writing is pretty easy. At the beginning of the year, they would both say to me, "can't I just start writing?" but now they have learned the value of the outline!


We used large 11x17 paper, folded to make 6 squares, for our outlines. They had one of these large papers for each paragraph. The 3 squares across the top were used for writing outlines from each of the 3 sources for that particular sub topic. We looked through the books we'd checked out to find which pages had info on which subtopics, and then I helped the boys by jotting down in the bottom of each of these squares the title of the book and the page numbers where info on that sub topic could be found.


Once the 3 top squares were filled out, they used the middle bottom square to make a "fused" outline. This is simply choosing which facts from the 3 top outlines are the most interesting and important to the writer, and then transferring them to the outline below. Each top outline only got 3-5 facts, but the fused outline could have 4-7 facts. The fused outline then became the working outline that they wrote from. Below is son L's fused outline for his paragraph on jungle layers (click on picture to enlarge).



I will admit this was laborious. For the boys and for me. :-) But the process of practicing is where learning takes place!

Our daughter G chose to write about the civil rights movement. This is also what we've been learning about in history. One of Marcia Somerville's (author of Tapestry of Grace) mantras is, read, discuss, write. In that order. We do lots of reading and discussing, but because we are going through all 9 IEW units in order this year, we have not always written about our history topics. In fact, rarely. So this was very exciting for me to watch G interact with our history material on a much deeper level. She did so much extra reading to find appropriate source material, and really thought hard about how she wanted to organize her paper and how she wanted to write it. She and the other 7th grader were given the option to write a 3, 4, or 5 paragraph paper, and she chose 5!

Here she is working on her paper in her room. Her fused outline is up on her magnetic board in front of her, and she is referring to that as she writes. She does virtually all of her independent work at this desk in her room.


Please forgive me for this proud homeschool mama moment, but I really am so proud of all 3 of them for working so hard on such a BIG writing project! The finished reports turned out very well. It was great for our character development too, to stick with a hard task and keep working at it little by little until it was done. And a public shout out to my friend Sally who taught the writer's class for this unit ~ well done Sally!!!! Thank you!

Our Week in Review - China and Korea

Last week we learned about China. I love how Tapestry has all of us in the same time period, but at a level that is appropriate for each of the children's age and maturity. We are up to the 1950's now, and spent a week focusing on events in China leading up to that time. While our daughter learned about communism, the Chinese civil war, and Mao Zedong, our upper grammar son learned interesting facts about China's land, animals, and plants, and had just an introduction to Mao and communism, while our lower grammar boys focused on China's land, animals, and people.

I checked out a bunch of books from the library on China, and our boys had fun just looking and gleaning what was interesting to each of them. I read a little from the books here and there, but mostly let them choose what to look at.


Then we worked on our history lapbooks, making an information wheel about China.


Even our 7 year old son C, who still has difficulty writing for any length of time, enjoyed this!

And Little Man, who did no writing in his wheel, had fun drawing pictures of his own choosing (not necessarily from a book, so the whole China aspect is not really present ;-)).

(here is his made up animal!)


That Friday night, instead of our usual pizza, we had Chinese food! We spread out a blanket on the floor to catch the spills and ate right on the floor as many Chinese still do today. The boys sat cross legged and us girls sat on our knees or sideways. And we all used chopsticks, which was quite hilarious!


Fortunately, I brought back some dishes from my time in Japan many years ago, so we were able to use authentic rice bowls and separate plates for our other food, just as many Asians do. I'm glad I brought back 8 of everything ~ back then I had no inkling I would one day have a family of 7!




This week we are focusing on Korea and learning a bit about the Korean War. One activity we did this week was to try our hand at Chinese and Korean calligraphy. Here, the two youngest boys are painting the Korean vowels. They have 10!



Daughter G chose to write a series of Chinese Kanji that actually made sense when put together. She ended up with several phrases, this first one is "infant crow practices flying" (or at least that's what we think it says!).





One of the questions our daughter had to answer last week in preparation for her online history discussion with our virtual co-op, was "what is your opinion of how Mao Zedong rose to power?". Our daughter struggled with this for a bit. It is so much easier to answer factual questions. We are at the stage with her where we are teaching her how to answer more open-ended questions, or questions like this one that ask for her opinion and she must think through all that she has learned about a particular person and then analyze the information to reach some conclusion. It is exciting to work with her and see the growth happening.

For this particular question, we talked for about 15 minutes about events in China leading up to WWII, and its immediate aftermath. The struggle for power between the Nationalists and the Communists, how they came together to fight their common enemy, the Japanese, after the Japanese invaded. How after Japan was defeated in WWII, China resumed her civil war. We learned what kind of strategist Mao was, and how he believed staunchly in the power of the peasants and was ultimately able to gain control and bring China under the communist banner. We talked about his personal life, his motivations, and his beliefs about violence (in stark contrast to Gandhi's views on non-violence, which we had learned about the previous week). After all that, I asked her the question again, and opinions began to just pour from her like water! I think even she was surprised by what she knew and what she thought. Tapestry encourages students to back up their opinions with facts they learned during their reading that week, and ultimately, with Scripture. I love that our history curriculum is helping me teach my children HOW to think!

Each week I find myself even more grateful for the wonderfully rich and deep and fun curriculum that Tapestry of Grace is! Besides teaching us how to think, I so appreciate the emphasis they put on learning about other cultures and nations, and how events in one part of the world connect to events elsewhere. My prayer is that God will use this to help develop in our children hearts of compassion for the world, and an awareness of God's hand throughout history.

Movie Night - The Hiding Place

Last Friday we watched most of The Hiding Place movie after finishing this book about the life of Corrie ten Boom (in addition to this book which I read aloud to the children, I also read the book, The Hiding Place, on my own. A really, really, really inspirational read!)


It is another one of the Christian Heroes Then and Now Series, and like the others we've read this year, it was fantastic!! I LOVE this series. Corrie ten Boom lived with her parents and older, unmarried sister in Haarlem, Holland, where her father owned and operated a clock shop. After the Nazi invasion of Holland in 1940, her family began to harbor Jews in their home, some for a short time, and some longer. When Corrie was 50 and her sister Betsie was 57 (and their father was 84!), the Gestapo raided their home, not finding the Jews hidden in the secret room, but arresting the family and several others who were gathered there for a prayer meeting at the time.

Both the book and movie chronicle Corrie and Betsie's experience in a local prison and then later at Ravensbruck concentration camp. Their father died of pneumonia after only 10 days of captivity ~ this was heartbreaking for his daughters when they finally learned of it, but they were able to rejoice that he was safely "home" and not experiencing the hell on earth that they were. There were several points in the book where I had to stop reading due to tears (the children were very patient!). They had every human reason to resent their captors, and in fact for a time Corrie did. But God's love won out, and by God's grace they were able to love their fellow prisoners and even pray for their Nazi captors. Due to fleas in their barracks which kept the guards away, they were able to hold Bible Studies and worship services freely. Betsie or Corrie would read their little Dutch Bible and then translate into German. Others would translate from the Dutch and German into Italian, Polish, French, Hungarian, and several other languages, so that all the prisoners in their barracks could understand the Word of God in her own language. Despite their surroundings, the book painted a beautiful mental picture of these times huddled around their little Bible ~ so many women from so many different backgrounds and walks of life, praising God together in so many different languages! In their pre-captive lives they would have never mingled together as they did while in the concentration camp.

Sadly, Betsie died from illness at Ravensbruck. Three days later Corrie was released, many years later finding out that her release was due to "clerical error". The week after she was released, all the women at Ravensbruck her age and older were gassed. For 30 years after her release, Corrie told anyone who would listen about God's love and forgiveness. She traveled the world with this message.


The movie is rated PG and was very well done for family viewing. It was never graphic, but often gave a sense of the horror of what was happening at the camps by what was heard off camera, or by comments made by the actors. The beginning of the movie was a bit slow for our kids, and we did fast forward through some "talking" parts. We have read other books about people's endurance, bravery, and even escape during the Nazi domination of Europe, but this one stands out because of its strong christian worldview, and the message of redemption through Jesus Christ. ONLY Jesus could grant those who suffered under the Nazis the power to forgive. What a powerful message to share with our children!

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!