Unit 1 Complete!

Both kiddos finished Unit 1 today (K-LHFHG and D-Bigger) and here are some pics of school the past 3 days along with a few pics of little C staying occupied.  :)

C pushing pompoms through the holes of an empty (clean) Parmesan cheese container.  (This is a new addition to our busy bag activities.)

Science Experiment answering "Why do some things float & other sink?"  (U1/D3)

 History activity from Bigger (U1/D4) - labeling a balloon with all the continents and major oceans...

K's science activity (U1/D4) - stepping on brown paper when I would say an animal name that lives on land...

 ...and stepping on blue paper when she heard an animal's name that lives in water.

 Updating her daily calender with Christmas stickers!

 Another activity to keep C occupied...

D's history notebooking (U1/D5) about Columbus' voyage.  He was really complaining at first, but then did a great job!

lots of artwork!

It was our 2nd day back with HOD today (yesterday was a vacation day for Daddy...need I say more :) and things went well.  D surprised me and wanted to start his work right away this morning! 

D's science notebook page today all about the tide!

He copied Psalm 95:5 at the top and did a really nice job!

He's beginning DITHOR (Drawn into the Heart of Reading) and we kicked it off with an ADVENTURE scavenger hunt to find his book since he's reading Adventure genre. :)  He's opted to do his reading at bedtime for this...He was begging me to let him read the entire book.  I told him we have to slow down for our DITHOR books as we have certain activities to do after each reading.  I love that he loves to read!  :)

K busily spreading glue (with a paintbrush) for her collage about her history (Jesus is the center of history!  Everyone prior to that looked FOR Him and everyone since looks BACK at the cross and then forward to his coming again!).

 She was really proud of her work!

 As we were singing her rhyme/poem today she wanted to wear her reindeer antlers for the part where she "leaps" like deer in North America!  I've been having her point out the continents as we sing the song...she knows where we live and is learning the others. :)

Little C wants to do everything the others are doing...so today she sat at the table for a little while coloring with her crayon roll.  She was upset in this pic because she had just broken her gray crayon.  She colors so hard!

Ornament for Day #12 - the Census (jar with rice and 2 marbles with faces to represent Mary & Jospeh).  It was fun to do this activity today because the chapter we read in Jotham's Journey just talked about the census, too!

D opted to do his art after lunch this afternoon.  He did a great job learning about foreground, middle ground & background in his painting.  He mixed various shades of purple to make the waves.

 His finished artwork...

I'm thankful we made the switch back to HOD.

Ornaments & HOD

Day #9 - Joseph ornament (similar to their Mary ornaments they made a few days ago).  They wanted Mary & Jospeh together in their separate pictures.

Day #10 - Pillow ornament - reminds them of the angel appearing to Joseph in a dream telling him it is okay to have Mary as his wife and that she will have JESUS!

C is pretending to sleep in the pic...I think. :)

Our HOD box arrived Friday.  As soon as I opened it, K was grabbing her books and begging to do work. How could I say no?!  She did a great job.  She even woke up this morning asking me if she could do another page in her Thinking Skills book...ha!  I told her that it's Saturday, Daddy's home and we're enjoying a break from school for the weekend.

D began Bigger, too.  He really enjoyed R&S grammar - maybe because it was simple (he already knows what sentence is)?!  He also aced his dictation and was happy to make a pencil check mark by the 1 to show he's past that dictation. :)  He also enjoyed his history reading about Columbus and when we reviewed the continents he remembered all of them but one from memory.

Truth in the Tinsel - Day #8

Today we made the SUN after reading about Zechariah's song in Luke 1 where he refers to Jesus as the "rising sun" in that passage.  (The kids AND I learned something new today!)  :)

I let C have her own glue bottle - she was delighted! :)

Truth in the Tinsel - Days 4-7

Here are the past four days of ornaments...the kids are learning so much & having fun!!!

Day #4 - Gabriel - Angel Ornament (jingle bell, pipe cleaner, wrapping paper, ribbon)

Day #5 - Mary Ornament (flat clothespin, paper, ribbon)

Day #6 - Mary & Elizabeth - (watercolor paints, paper & pop dots to make circle belly stick out :)

Day #7  - Mary's Song - (old CD, flat marbles, ribbon) - their favorite so far, I think!

Truth in the Tinsel

While we're between main curriculum...we're focusing a lot of our studies this month on Advent/Christmas - celebrating the birth of our Savior!  I found an amazing ebook online, Truth in the Tinsel.  I LOVE IT!  D&K&C enjoy it - scripture reading each day with an ornament to make (all things can pretty much be found in our craft stash or around the house).

Here are Days 1-3...

Don't let D's face fool you...he LOVES it, just didn't want his pic taken. :)

We're also reading Jotham's Journey each day and the two oldest kiddos LOVE it!

Making the Circle...

I decided to keep this blog open to hopefully encourage others homeschooling mamas?!  :)

After 5 weeks of using Sonlight (which is a really good curriculum) we're making the full circle and going back to HOD.  These past four months have been like a Merry-go-Round, but I keep telling myself, I didn't know it would/wouldn't work for us unless we tried it.  Thankfully everything resells very well, so I don't lose any $.  :)  And, the kids have still LEARNED...math, LA, reading, writing have stayed the same...geog, science & history have been what's changed - but they don't really know - they just know we've been reading lots of books...and will keep reading lots of books.  :)

I learned while using FIAR - it was too simple for D - he needed to be challenged more.  I learned while using Sonlight, D was challenged somewhat, but K was in over her head!  Because there was quite a bit of reading, she would often get bored and want to go play which meant she wouldn't be listening to what I was reading (yes, we tried playing with quiet things while reading - it worked sometimes, but not often).

So my top 3 reasons for the change back to HOD...

1. HOD really trains my kid's hearts.  I have GREATLY missed the spiritual discussions these past four months that we had while using HOD the past two years.  Yes, I realize we can have great devos on our own, but there's just something about it being laid out in the guide book, written at their level with passages they understand, questions to make them really think about what we've read in the Bible.

2. HOD's open & go plans...they cover everything without a lot of work for me, so if I'm brain-dead, tired or really busy things still get done!

3. HOD allows great one-on-one time with my kiddos.  I also know D will be challenged in his guide (Bigger)  because he's right in the middle age range and K will good in her guide (LHFHG).  AND...something I just discovered that while working with one kiddo, it frees up the other to play/entertain busy, little C (instead of always popping in a DVD, yes major mommy-guilt here over all the DVDs she's watched the past few weeks so we could get our reading done!)

geography & dances

We finally put up the large markable wall map that came with our Sonlight materials!  Yesterday, the kids had fun adding countries we've already read/learned about the past few weeks.  They "argue" over who gets to star/mark the next country.  :)

This picture only shows the countries in Africa we've read about...

• Togo - country where the Abeku tribe resides and doesn't have a Bible in their own language (yet)
• Congo (K's writing)- country where last week's missionary story took place
• Egypt - country where this week's missionary story took place

Today we read about celebrations, festivals and dancing in other religions/countries and watched online videos about Flamenco (Spain), Cossack (Russia), Hindu (India), Kabuki (Japan) dances and other instruments played around the world (bagpipes, sitar, etc).

As the first video played (a Flamenco dancer), K told me the dancer's dress was inappropriate (most of her back was showing).  I smiled and assured her she was right.  When the bottom of the dress was shown a few seconds later (it was very long), K said, "The front is appropriate."  :)

Snap Circuits Science

Just found this link online for a lapbook using Snap Circuits.  I printed the entire thing and will begin it with D for science next week.  I'm excited.  I LOVE using toys for learning.  I'm looking forward to learning more about electricity, too!  :)

Change

This year has been characterized by change.  After talking with a friend (also a certified teacher like me), learning it took her 3 years of homeschooling to realize what really worked for her kids, I realize I'm not alone in switching/changing things up to best suite my kids, learning styles & life.  :o)

I sold a lot of extra things we had sitting on our school shelves and was able to find an awesome deal online for Sonlight Core B.   It's Year 1 of World History. I had looked into it at the very beginning of researching h/s curriculum years ago but didn't consider it because of the price.  I realized that I can combine D&K easily...it's all reading (what we LOVE to do all the time anyway) and there's not a lot of extra hands-on things, but we can always add them when we have time/want to do them.

We're in week 2 and really LOVING it.  We're learning lots of things about other countries (languages, money, clothes, food, etc.)  I'm amazed at what K has remembered.  D loves that we're not reading the same book over and over (like FIAR at the beginning of the school year).  We're memorizing Psalm 1 right now and reading the book of Mark.  We're also reading the book, Leading Little Ones to God.  Once a week we're reading a story from Missionary Stories with the Millers.  For a fun read-aloud, we're reading Charlotte's Web right now.  We saw a pig (just like Wilbur) today on our field trip!

K finished up her EarlyBird Math last week and began Singapore 1A.  She is enjoying it, even though it's all b/w pages.  She decides to color most of her pages each day.   I'm sure it'll stop once it takes her more than a few second to complete a page. :)

D is close to finishing up his 2B math book.  This morning at breakfast he told me that 2/3 of the kids wanted shredded wheat and 1/3 wanted Cheerios.  Glad to know his work with fractions a few weeks ago is stuck in his brain!  Ha!

He is reading LOTS of books.  I love it!  He found LarryBoy chapter books and a book series about a kid who's family is a spy.  He had no problems earning his Book-It certificate this month!

C will come to the couch/table most days with the kids and say, "I want to do my school."  The other day she was sorting fun erasers.  Yesterday, she was "helping" K with her math paper and as K was counting (filling in missing numbers) C was shouting out the answers.  What a little Smarty Pants!  She picks up EVERYTHING the kids say/I read.

 

A little of what we've done this week...

I've done a horrible job of taking pics this week of school things, but here's some of what we've done...

We've read a lot of books this week about random subjects including a science book today about seasons - why we have nighttime/daytime (God made it & designed it), how the earth spins, orbits the sun, etc.

We've also watched a few neat videos for science this week including Bill Nye (garbage) and Popular Mechanics Roller Coasters and Extreme Sports.  I love taking advantage of our library resources!

For math this week, D began learning about liquid measures and did an estimating activity today with liters of water.  He told me he really likes doing "interactive" math.  His vocabulary makes me laugh sometimes!

He wrote his first story this week after drawing 3 pictures (what happened first, second & last) - it was all about Chain-Chomp (Mario Brother's character).  I was amazed at how well he spelled all the words in his story - he asked me to spell only a few.  I saw capital letters and periods where they needed to be and only a few errors.  Guess all the copywork (with all the grumbles the past year) has paid off?! :o)

He's been reading a TON and this week it's been several of  The Cul-de-sac Kids books by Beverly Lewis.  He's really enjoyed the short mysteries.  Again, I'm thankful for the library!

K had more fun with the dry-erase crayons.  Her drawing abilities are really improving!

She was able to read a story to a dog this week and was VERY excited about it!  The library had therapy dogs for the kids to read stories to and it motivated her to practice reading an easy reader book EVERY school day the past few weeks.  She read to a really cute dog that looked similar to my parent's dog.

She's 3 pages away from finishing up her Earlybird Math book.  She's been flying through the $ unit and earlier this week we had a "store" for her to practice counting change.  She enjoyed it and would do it every day for math if I set it up. :o)

The other day I found a Tangrams workbook that was tucked on a school shelf and pulled it out for D.  He LOVED it.  Solved the first 5 puzzles after he other school work was done earlier one day this week. :o)

We've also played a lot of games including Sum Swamp, Whiz Kidz and Sum It Up.  The kids are always begging for more games!  I LOVE it!

Cowboys & the Wild West

Life gets busy & my blogs get neglected...we've had fun reading a lot of books about Cowboys, Buffalo, Prairie dogs, Prairies & the Wild West. :)  The kids have enjoyed it.  They made these cute little cowboys/girls early last week...K even chose pink "yarn" to be her lasso and colored her cowgirl's boots pink, too! :o)

The re-discovered the dry erase CRAYONS and had fun drawing pictures last week...

 They drew a picture of the 3 of them in their treehouse.  Not sure why there's a PacMan & Red Ghost cloud in the sky though?!  :o)

We've played Telling Time Bingo, Monopoly Jr. and Up-Words as parts of our school the past week, too.

It's hard to believe this week marks the halfway point in our fall semester of co-op!  The kids really enjoy it (after C's initial 5 minutes of crying in the nursery) and are planning play dates with their friends.

D is finishing up telling time in his math book - he is ready for a new challenge!  K is just a few pages away from finishing her Earlybird math book.  She has been counting by 5's!

K has been reading an easy reader book over and over each day.  She's practicing it in order to read it to a therapy dog at the library next week.  It's motivated her to "read" (along with coloring in a slice of pizza toward her October Book-It Pizza Hut award).  We've shelved 100 Easy Lessons again and are working on recognizing/sounding out words in REAL books.  She really likes it.  :o)

D just finished reading The Marvelous Inventions of Albert Fernald last night. It was the perfect book for him because the boy invented/designed all sorts of gadgets and was caught up in a mystery.  I picked it up for 10 cents at a garage sale this summer thinking I'd read it to him at bedtime and he ended up reading most of it himself!  One night after tucking him in I said, "Isn't it fun to take a trip with a book?"  He agreed and then told me to leave his room so he could begin reading.  I LOVE it!

This & That

We finished up Grandfather's Journey today.  The kids completed their lapbooks - reviewed the location of Japan & California, drew various land forms from the book, made a 4 generations booklet with family member pics, and reviewed/colored pics of the Japanese culture.

For some extra "art" K has been enjoying making potholders (I did this when I was little, too)!  She's made 2 potholders in the last three days (having my help to tape the loops to the edges of the loom and chain the loops to finish the edge).  She loves weaving & putting colors together...such a little creative-craft-chick after my own heart!  She wants to start/finish the project in the same sitting, too!  ;o)

To the right is our crate of library books from our trip to the library this morning...we're studying cowboys, the wild west, buffalo, horses and more the next two weeks or so!  The kids are excited!

More Origami, Snap Circuits & Fractions

Today we read Grandfather's Journey again. D dislikes reading the book each day, but I try to point out something new to renew his interest. So today we talked about a simile used in the book and it worked!

We also read a book about things that come from Japan to our country (food, clothes, video games, etc). This really interested D when he found out Super Mario Bros. was originally made in Japan years ago!

The kids made BIG origami hats out of wrapping paper - the directions were in the book about what comes from Japan. It was an easy folding project they could do themselves!

Unrelated to our unit study...K discovered she could build her own circuit with D's Snap Circuits set.

D began studying fractions yesterday for math and BEGGED to do more pages. He completed 4 pages yesterday and 4 more pages today. He gets them all right and tells me he LOVES fractions!

Grandfather's Journey & Japan

This week, we're learning about topics from the book, Grandfather's Journey. The kids are learning about Japan, California, trains, origami and more!

On Monday, they watched a Netflix movie about origmi. It was intriguing and showed lots of amazing origimi creatures including a dragon that had 1000 scales and took HUNDREDS of hours to fold! They were excited to try it themselves...we finally did it today, not the 1000 scales on the dragon though!!!

They made fun origami animals today thanks to the instructions from a library book called Origami Zoo. They took turns picking what animal to make & thankfully chose the "very simple" or "simple" ones. We had enough trouble with the simple ones, though I may try an "advanced" one just for fun tonight after they're in bed. :o)

Frogs...

Butterflies...A mouse...eek!

We watched this video to learn a few words in Japanese. K loves kiwi and thought it was fun to hear the same word said in Japanese. We also watched a really goofy Japanese game show clip so the kids could hear a lot of Japanese being said at once.

We searched for Japan (and especially the city of Tokyo) on Google Earth. The kids enjoyed watching the globe turn and "fly" us across the Pacific Ocean to the islands of Japan. :) We were able to go to the street level in the city and they discovered Tokyo looks a lot like big cities in our country. We were able to move the mouse around and see the mountains in the country, too.

One Call Away by Brenda Warner (book review)

I was encouraged reading Brenda Warner’s book, One Call Away. She has been through so much in her life including an injured child, divorce, extreme poverty, sudden death of close loved ones and being thrown in the media spotlight with her husband’s successful career. While reading the book there were many times I thought I was reading an incredibly, well-written fiction book. It kept my attention and was hard to put down when I had to change a diaper or make dinner. I would think, how could all of these things happen to one person? As she tells her story, her emotions and thoughts are honest and real. Her book is inspiring to others because she did not give up, even when it felt as though everything around her was threatening to destroy her. Her faith in God is real and evident and He has given her the strength to move forward through each of the trials. It was exciting to read at the end of the book how she has used her success to be a blessing to others in the midst of their trials.

I was given this book from Book Sneeze. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Apples & Math

Here are pics of Wednesday through Friday of this week...they are in somewhat random order. (Blogger is not making it easy for me today. :o()

D was begging to play the dice math game Wednesday (roll the dice, multiply and color in the correct answer in squares on graph paper) so we did...We read How to Make an Apple Pie... once each day and complete more projects around the book. The kids learned where Sri Lanka, Jamaica and England are located. They also matched up the vocabulary words from the story with pictures. Today they'll be assembling their lapbooks.

K made this little subtraction book (words based off 1 page in the book) and carried it around all day Friday reading it to C. ;O) She also wore her "Johnny Appleseeding" shirt all day Friday.

We baked an apple pie on Friday. It was from an amazing recipe on allrecipes. Delicious!

The kids sliced the apples...

Helped roll out the pie crust...

Put the lattice on top...

And then ate it when it was out of the oven after lunch...MMmmmm!

K's apple math activity on Friday - using dot pens to make her own orchard coutning by 10s (1o apples in each tree - 5 trees total).

We went to a farm to pick apples on Thursday as we had beautiful fall weather! The kids met a few new animal friends...including an angora goat and pot-belly pig!

They were hard workers and helped pick an entire bushel of apples!