Monday

The kids completed Unit 3/Day 3 in LHTH & Beyond today and thankfully C took a great nap so interruptions were minimal! ;o)
D's copywork went much better today. He didn't complain and copied 2 lines of the poem on wide-ruled notebook paper we bought late last week. His handwriting is so neat!

For math, he's been learning basic multiplication (i.e. making 5 groups of 3)...today we used colored pebbles and play kitchen bowls. He had no problems with the manipulatives but when he went to the worksheets for today, he was a little confused writing the multiplication problem out (the answer & signs were given he just had to write the 2 numbers after looking at pictures like 2 bunches of bananas with 5 bananas in each bunch). I circled the few that were incorrect and I helped him work through the problems. He's not happy when he doesn't get them all correct, but I assured him it's okay. This is challenging and it takes practice. That seemed to encourage him.
He took his Unit 3 spelling test today and misspelled only 1 word "which" - he spelled it "wich" so I had him write it correctly 3x. Again, he wasn't too happy he had made a mistake, but I assured him it's okay because we fix it!

To go along with his history reading today, we talked about the world being round and the horizon (land meets sky, water meets sky). We talked about the state of Kansas we'll be driving through in a few weeks and I told him we'll have to stop on the side of the road where it's really flat, get out of the car, stand and look all around the horizon. He was excited!

K's school day went well. She worked through another lesson in 100 Easy Lessons and did a great job sounding out 6 words today. She also read a few words in a book I read to her before bedtime last night (be, me, she). She was so excited...I love getting to experience that excitement with her. ;o)

Here's her Do It Carefully page...she had to circle the shape that matched the shaded shape. A few of them were the same shape with just a slight difference which confused her. She was quick to circle the first thing that looked like the shape, so I encouraged her to slow down and look at each shape in the row.

For math, she stamped the correct number in each row of numbers 0-10. She chose to use purple ink with a heart-shaped stamp (surprise!). She also practiced writing numbers 1 and 2 again.

While I was working with Drew, I got out these small foam blocks ($1 bin @ Target) for her to sort and play with since C was napping. She decided each one was a fruit and she filled various bowls with them and served them to Drew and I. :o)

Schooling Outside!

Today's weather is gorgeous and so we took our school outside during C's nap this afternoon...

K LOVED sitting on the blanket doing each of her activities from LHTH Unit 3/Day 3 and LHFHG Unit 2/3.

Earlybird Math...She counted the animals on the page perfectly. I penciled in the number lightly and she drew over my numbers.
Do It Carefully...She LOVES this book and always talks to herself as she works on her tracing saying, "I need to DO this CAREFULLY!" So cute!
K reading words from Lesson 15 of 100 Easy Lessons...She is so proud of her reading skills! D has a great time watching her learn to read the way he was taught to read!

We moved inside to the dining room after her lessons were done as D struggled to do his copywork outside today.

K painted stars with a crumpled paper towel & white paint on a dark piece of paper to go with the story of Abraham (God promises to give him as many dependents as the stars in the sky). The Bible story book reminded us at the end of the story that God does keep his Promises! What an encouragement! :o)


D completed his work (Beyond Unit 3/Day 3) at the dining room table, too.

He was instructed to draw Squanto last week (it's our Storytime book right now) and he did it with colored pencils. He also added a bottle of sunscreen in Squanto's right hand. I laughed when he told me what it was last week. I told him I didn't think they had sunscreen back in Squanto's day, but it was good-thinking on his part! :o)

Today D was instructed to surround Squanto with objects he thought are important to Squanto. He came up with the following:

• home (hut on left side)
• cornmeal (black "bowl" in left hand with yellow on top - not very visible in pic)
• family (people on right side)

We read more in our history book about the Brewster family and how they were being watched by the King's soldiers as they were not worshiping the way the king ordered them to worship. We talked a few minutes after his history reading about who this group of people become eventually...pilgrims! Drew's eyes lit up and then he realized they will meet Squanto! It was fun to see everything we've been reading "tie-in" to what he knows of history already from last year. :o)

Monday - Wednesday - Lots of PICS!

So far this week...

D has finished up Beyond Unit 2 and began Unit 3 today.

K has finished up LHTH Unit 2 and began Unit 3 today, too.

This is the poem illustration D drew on Monday to go with the poem titled, "Father, We Thank Thee." He drew objects mentioned in the poem and then added his own objects (our house, the bikes, garage...you know what we've been doing daily the past week - taking bike rides!) :o)The first verse of the poem he copied for Unit 2 (doing 1 line a day - we're working up to 2 lines/day for Unit 3) and easing into more copywork as writing is his least favorite thing to do. :o(

D took his spelling test for Unit 2 on Monday and received a 100%! He self-corrected "when" the word he had struggled with all through Unit 2 last week. I was proud of him!

His timeline addition for Unit 2...Jamestown 1607. This was after we read about two children who lived in the settlement of Jamestown and what life was like for them. I love reading about history through the eyes of the children. It really comes to life for D!

To end Unit 2 yesterday, we read excerpts from the book of Ruth. She was responsible and worked hard (to go with his Bible verse for unit 2 - Gal 6:9 "Do not become weary in doing good..."). God rewarded her faithfulness in giving her Boaz and a son which was in the line of King David and years later...Our Savior!

D's art project was to make rows in a field (brown paper folded accordion-style) and then add stalks of grain and the extras that were left behind for Ruth to pick up.

He enjoyed learning the accordion-fold...
He cut the stalks out all by himself, no tracing, no pre-drawing...just cutting!
The extras Ruth picked up in the last "row" of the dirt...

I went back & forth last week about K doing some of the things in LHFHG (Fine Motor & Earlybird Math) and decided we will do it this year. She did a great job with this tracing from her Do It Carefully book...

Today's Do It Carefully page was making an "X" on the picture in each row that didn't belong. I had her make a few practice "X's" on scrap paper, then she did "real" ones on her page. She took her time and looked carefully at each picture. Some were a little tricky. :o)

I did a few counting/patterning activities with her on Monday & Tuesday...

We used foam numbers I cut for another math game this summer - she counted the correct number of blocks to place below each number. She knows 1-5!!!!
Patterning with the blocks...pink & purple of course!

Playing with Mighty Mind today while I work with D on some of his work...

Since D used chocolate chips for his math today, K begged to do so, too! She had to make 5 chocolate chips appear in each cookie on her paper. Then when it was complete she could eat them!


We've taken 5 days to write the numbers...working on one each day. I make up a silly story to go with each one to help her form them correctly. She's doing well. I feel as if I wait until next year to do Earlybird math with her, she'll be past it academically, even though right now there's a bit of a struggle making numbers correctly. (It's not her desire to do it, but her actual fine motor skills.)

D's art project today to go with his history reading...a gray wall with green vines & red roses...




Of course whenever paint is out for one child, the other one begs to paint, too!

K is painting the wall (I drew a sample paper for D) completely red. No roses or green vines for her wall!

Her finished "wall" completely red - dripping with TONS of paint!


D's new list of spelling words for Unit 3 (again from the harder list in the appendix)...He was so excited "little" has 6 letters! He even finished his list with "I (heart) You!" I love it! He has such a tender heart.


We've had a busy 3 days so far this week, but it's been fun and has worked well to school during C's naptime in the afternoon. :o)

Friday Flood

We rearranged our days a bit this week so I'm now schooling K in the morning and D in the afternoon during C's naptime. This helps D concentrate on his work better and not get so frustrated with C trying to get my attention! This also means I lose my 1-2 hour window of trying to get some other things accomplished. Oh well, it's this "season" of life right now. :o)

We ended our week with K doing LHTH Unit 2/Day 3 and D doing Beyond Unit 2/Day 3...

K loved getting to do the "sink/float" science activity after reading about Noah in the ark and all the rain/flood. I put her over on the unfinished side of our basement, so the carpet in the play/school room wouldn't get flooded! She tested out a few objects that would sink/float and then had fun pouring water from the pitcher into cups. :o)


She's sporting her glasses now...they're pink with sparkles on the sides! :o)
K completed Lesson #10 of 100 Easy Lessons on Friday. She is remembering her letter sounds and doing a great job carefully putting the sounds together to read words like... am, see, sat! She keeps flipping ahead in the book (like D always did) looking to see the words she'll read next. She's anxious to get to the stories & pictures!

D enjoys his math activities we're following from the guide (why I didnt' think about ordering the Beyond guide ahead last year to follow the 1A/1B plans, I'll never know! ;o). I decided to have him go back to a few pages of Singapore 1B where we left off at the end of last school year. There were a few concepts I felt he really needed to go through prior to continuing with 2A this year. He was adding 3 numbers together for Friday's work and especially liked that I had a few butterscotch chips left for him to "add" together and then eat! D writing out his spelling words on the marker board - his favorite way to write! He was supposed to dictate/write sentences as suggested in the guide, but he wanted to write the words again. He did a great job and only misspelled "when" again. He reverses the "n" and "e." He was getting discouraged earlier in the week about doing his spelling work, after he noticed the difference between List 1 words and List 2 words. I switched to List 2 because I felt would challenge him more (and I was right). I told him that first day he was a "Super-Speller" even if he has trouble with a few words. It's why we do Spelling as a part of our school day. :o) That little comment about being a Super-Speller" totally changed his entire attitude about the words. It was amazing. He sits down to write his words and tells me he's a "Super-Speller" so he can do it!

D's week so far...

This week we ended Unit 1 and began Unit 2 in Beyond. This post is all about D's work in Beyond...I'll post pics of K's work another day...

On Monday, Drew made a shield to go with the Psalm 18:16 we studied on Monday. I like how his history box for the last day of every unit uses scripture to go with what we've studied. As we ended our study of people crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Spain to Florida we read about God being a refuge and a rock. We talked about what it may have meant for these brave people trusting God to get them to the new land and what it means in our lives when we live as He is our rock.

D really enjoyed creating his shield (and he made a sword, too). He wrote "God is My Rock!" above the dark rock. He also made himself creeping out from behind the rock. It's so hard to see in the pic below because of the glare of the foil, but he did a great job. The shield and sword now reside in his room. :o)We had school on Tuesday, but my camera battery needed recharging and I had yet to get it recharged so no pics. :o(

On Wednesday we spent 3 hours at the pool with our h/s co-op which was a lot of fun since the public schools had their first day of school that day! Another perk of homeschooling. ;o)

Today for D's poetry copywork I cut a "poetry line size" hole in a piece of paper to help him see only one line of poetry. He really liked this and even though copying poetry isn't his favorite thing to do, the paper with the hole made it a little more bearable today. ;o)
We're using the small marker board most days for his spelling (other than day 4 of the unit when he takes his "test"). He told me on Tuesday when we began Unit 2 that "these words are harder" as I had switched from List 1 to List 2. He's spelling most of them correctly so I know they're not too easy and not too hard for him. I think we'll stick with List 2 this year.
I realized after his work was assessed this past year, that I had nothing to show the evaluator for science...other than the plans in the LHFHG guide. So this year I created our own science notebook page that he can fill in for each day we do a science activity.

We went back today and caught up from two activities last week (ocean currents & blubber). Since he doesn't enjoy writing, I had him dictate what he learned (bottom lines) for now. He fills in the unit/day at the very top and draws the picture to go with his activity.

Below is the page for the "blubber" experiment...
Today's science activity was about how flying squirrels fall to the ground - gliding down as opposed to going "splat" as D would say. He crumpled one piece of paper and dropped it. Then dropped a flat piece of paper. The flat piece obviously "glided" down and the crumpled piece fell straight to the ground.

Success!!!

We had a very successful week back with HOD!

D completed days 1-4 of Unit 1 in Beyond.

He LOVED his science activities. On Wednesday he learned about ocean currents to go along with history studying the voyage of Spanish settlers to Florida. D made a small current using a dropper, index card and tub of water. Later that day while he was outside filling the kiddie pool, he discovered another current (hose underneath the pool water pushing his plastic boat) and came running up to me to tell me about it.
K is repeating LHTH for the second time. We're not doing the letter activities (other than the rhymes) or the math activities again. I've been adding some other ones in and decided to shelve the earlybird & fine motor skills books that go with LHFHG until next year when she's in Kindergarten. She wasn't ready for all the writing yet. In the meantime I'm coming up with other activities for her to do from the internet or things we already have on our shelves.

One day it was a printable from a website (can't remember where I got it). She was coloring numbers, cutting them out and pasting them in the right order. She did it all by herself! She tried to stay in the lines and did a good job overall!
Gluing is one of her favorite activities...I see a future scrapbooker!!! ;o)
All done!

D's science yesterday was about whales/dolphins that have blubber (fat) to keep them warm in the deep, cold parts of the ocean where they live. He coated one hand with Crisco and the other with nothing and put both in cold water. I had added a few ice cubes to the water to make it really cold. He noticed a difference between his two hands right away! The one with the "blubber" on it stayed much warmer than the non-coated hand.
This is another non-HOD activity for the kids...they begged to play with colored plastic clothespins I bought at a local craft store for $1. My mom had found a bunch of extra felt at a garage sale for $1. I cut small "clothes" shapes out and let them hang them on the "clothesline." This kept them busy for about 20 minutes. I'll bag it all and use it again when I need something to keep K busy while I work with D.
D is doing well with Singapore 2A so far. The plans in the Bigger guide make it easy for him to understand. Today we took playing cards (2-9) and shuffled them. We each had a ones/tens paper in front of us. We each drew 2 cards from the pile and make a number...trying to make the largest one. D did a great job figuring out the higher # had to be in the ten's place to get the bigger number. We made a greater/less than sign out of foam and put it between us, turning it to the higher number. We kept tally marks on the side. Drew beat me 11 - 10. :o)
Kate's non-HOD activity today was making a dot pattern "snake" since in LHTH we had read about Satan being a snake and tempting Eve to sin. She messed up once, but otherwise kept the pattern going...

Something new for D this year in Beyond is poetry. Last year there were songs/rhymes that he enjoyed doing (after the first few units). I didn't know how the poetry would go over, but so far he loves it. He especially enjoyed making up motions as I read it yesterday.

He illustrated the poem today and copied another line of it. Eventually he will be copying all of it, but this week we did only 6 lines. He does not like to write, so we're easing into it slowly!

The spelling words this week were too easy for him, so we're going to try the optional (harder) list next week. If he breezes through those then I'll be coming up with our own...but I wanted to try what was in the guide first. Here's his spelling "test" from today that he did perfectly! He added the sticker to show a job well done!
He began his timeline for history today. This year we're doing it on a large piece of banner paper we can unfold as we add to it. It'll fit in his portfolio for the end of the year and be easier to store during the year. He drew a fort for St. Augustine (1565) and a boat for Columbus' voyage in 1492.
Now we're off to the weekend! Yeah! No stress on me to get books from the library or plan out next week! ;o)