January 24 - 28th 2011

I can't believe how fast this month is going by. I finally feel like I'm back on track after the Christmas holidays. This week we've put in a good effort getting back in to the rhythm of home learning.


We've remained on Lesson 7 in MUS alpha/beta doing a page each day. Monday we will move on to Lesson 8 for both kids.

We completed the last chapter in Henry Huggins and LittleE is looking at the book on her own it's exciting to see her enthusiasm. Our new read-a-loud  is "Understood Betsy" by Dorothy Canfeild Fisher we've read up to chapter 3 and both children are enjoying it and doing some narration work for after each chapter. As well as going over some vocabulary and questions that are asked in the Sonlight curriculum package for the story.

Henry completed book one of ETC online. Shout out for the BigH! :-D LittleE has start book 11 in HOP but is still working on it. I notice that she is getting tired I'm thinking I'm going to be making her lessons shorter  maybe do two 10 min lessons daily. I'm not sure how that will work out. One day this week the kids decided to mix things up a bit and LittleE worked on ETC and BigH worked on HOP with me it was a fun change.

We've finished three lessons from Language Lessons FWTM: 13, 14, and 15. They focused on proper pronouns first, last and middle names and also we started a new poem to memorize.



'Work while you work'

Work while you work,

Play while you play,

This is the way

To be happy each day.

All that you do,

Do with your might,

Things done by half

Are never done right.

Author Unknown

And they also practiced printing their full names which if fairly challenging because the both have two middle names. They also spent some on their copy work from the poems they are working on, Who Can See The Wind & The Land of Counterpane as well as LittleE doing a page out HWT and BigH doing some work in his Kumon book. LittleE has shown quite an interest in writing notes to the lady next door. She'll recite to her father what she wants to say, he writes it down, she copies it into a card.  The neighbor lady has a new miniature puppy, we allowed LittleE to buy a little toy for the dog. LittleE neatly wrote out a little note in the card and went over for a visit to give it to her. It's very sweet. LittleE says Edna is her best friend. <3


Our art work is coming along nicely the kids worked on one of the activity sheets from How to Teach Children art. The children worked again today with mixing primary colours. BigH seemed to really enjoy his time painting and took his time and concentrated on his work. Our end of week project is using primary colours water colours to paint quilt designs. The children had to draw them out first before they painted then. I have to get my scanner hooked up to my computer once again so I can put up some of their beautiful work.

Started on week 6 of Sonlight's science the children worked on colouring in the Amazon Forest on their map of S. America as well as locating the Amazon river. We also worked on learning about the PH scale because we have been having some problems with our 20 gallon tropical fish tank (luckily I have a Biology 12 text book) we worked on PH levels and did some more PH tests and talked about the PH scale going from 0-14: and how 0 was very acidic, 14 was very base or alkaline, how 7 was equal parts acid and base and therefore neutral. We talked about how acidic things taste sour and base things tasted bitter. Both kids got a chance to perform a PH test of the water in the fish tank.

For history this week we completed chapter 9 in 'A Child's History of the World'. Which covered the peoples of Israel settlement in Egypt and how they came about and also how Rameses had ordered the killing of all the Israel's baby boys. We followed this up by later on reading from our DK Bible Exodus chapters one & two. We just love this Bible the historical notes and other items of interest enlighten our understanding of the places and people that lived so long ago before us. BigH looked up Egypt on a blank map (came with our Sonlight package) and wrote in the name of the country in. We also read Chapter 6 in Missionary With The Millars.

We've missed Spanish with Mr. Morales again... Trying to arrange for our Spanish lesson to be on a different day. Fridays are our fun days we go swimming our try to do some other field trip activity and work on art and read-a-louds. Had such a great day Friday with the kids and hubbie lucky me!

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.~1 Peter 4:8

Jan 17-21 2011

This week we started out with an art project that is going to be completed in eight weeks. We are going to be going through chapter three 'colour' in Evan-Moor's, "How To Teach Art to Children" Each week the children will completed one colour work sheet and one art project. Some of the projects are fairly large and  the children will work together to complete them. Mondays we will complete the work sheet and Fridays we will be working on our art project. I feel this project will give the kids a new vocabulary and technical know how when working with colour.

Monday the kids filled in a primary and secondary colour chart and Friday the painted a flag one side of the flag was painted with primary colours the other side was painted with secondary colours.

This week LittleE finished reading book ten in her HOP program. BigH has completed 75% of book one of ETC online. We also finished reading chapter 4 of Henry Huggins. We also spent each morning working on calender; days of the week in English & Spanish and the months of year.

Tuesday our Distributed Learning teacher Holly & her family came for a visit we looked through the kids work I was glad to be able to show Holly the HOP program because she is not familiar with it. Both BigH & LittleE showed of their reading skills. E read some of her HOP books and H read some of his pages out of his Kumon work book.

For math this week we continued on with Lesson 7 in both alpha and beta in Math U See. BigH worked on carrying over and LittleE practiced more with counting to 100.

The kids had a hockey tournament in Enderby BC this weekend they played three games on Saturday and worked very hard. The both received trophies for participating in the tournament. And Sunday they played two games here in Logan Lake. The slogan this weekend was, "All hockey all the time."

~

"If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person."
~ Fred Rogers

January 10- 14th 2011

Calender time this week we've been practicing the days of the week in English and Spanish. Plus we've been working on the months of year. BigH seems to be starting to remember the months of year. We've also worked on memorizing our birthdays. The kids have also continued on their copy work poems Who Has Seen the Wind & Land of Counterpane.

This week we've still been working in lesson 6 in alpha & beta Math U See; lesson 7 in the beta program for BigH introduces the caring over concept I want to make sure BigH is grasping everything he's learned  before we start. BigH has also worked on his Rhyming & Phrases Kumon work book this week and has also spent an hour and half this week working on his phonic with Explode The Code Online. He's enjoying it and seems to be moving along nicely with the program.

LittleE worked this week on her Hooked On Phonic Program (http://www.hookedonphonics.com/learn-to-read-kindergarten) and finished reading book 8 her Kindergarten HOP goes to reader 14 I think she will finish this level sometime in March.

We also worked on science this week and have completed Week 5 of Sonlight's science program we spent time learning about some of the animals and different habitats of South America. We also learned about how paint is made with pigment and binders and about magnets in compasses.

We also are on chapter 8 of "A Children's History Of the World." They studied this chapter with BigD and also read about the the Tower of Babel in their DK Illustrated Bible. We have also started the read aloud, "Henry Huggins" by Beverly Clearly we've read from the introduction to chapter 3.

The children have finished Lesson 12  in "First Language Lessons For the Well Trained Mind" a chapter on story narration. Both the children seems to really enjoy this text and know what a noun is and the difference between common and proper noun.

The children have been very helpful this week LittleE did an amazing job cleaning the bathroom for me and BigH has been helping by vacuuming the hallway. They have also been enjoying all the snow we've had by spending an hour each day outside sledding and playing.

Friday is a short day we did math,phonics & read a chapter in Henry Huggins then went swimming.

~

If you have a mom, there is nowhere you are likely to go where a prayer has not already been.  ~Robert Brault

Christmas Decorating with Gifts From Nature

Had a fun day today decided to use up some old crayons and decorate some pine cones for the Christmas tree. I was not the brilliant mom who thought up this wonderful craft we found it here don't blame me if you get addicted to that site.

 The kids took great joy in peeling the paper off the crayons and we melted the crayon wax plus a little bees wax. In a double boiler style over the stove, once it was melted.  We tied  yarn  around the pine cones the kids dipped the cones in the wax. I helped out making sure the top part of the cones got covered.

It was BigH's idea to use the left over wax in some ice cube trays we had to make crayons. They turned out very nice with more of a consistency of pastels. The bees wax softened the crayon wax considerable and we now have some beautiful blue & green crayons.





“Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher

 



Other things we accomplished this week @ homeschool

We have completed lesson 6 in Alpha & Beta Math U See lessons

Completed Lessons 9 & 10, First Language Lessons;For the Well Trained Mind (more work on common and proper nouns and capitalization.)

A Children's History Of the World we have read chapter 7 and have placed our first timeline sticker in our 'Book of Time' at 3100 bc noting King Narmar that united Upper & Lower Egypt.

LittleE is more then half way through her HOP K book she's on pg. 82 working on words ending in 'un'.

BigH is working away on Explode the Code Online and been reading some of LittleE's HOP books which has been wonderful.

We continue to work on 'The Land of Counterpane' for BigH and 'The Wind' for LittleE each day they work very carefully doing one page of copy work. They will also usually draw a picture was well to go with this copy work.

We have also been diligently working on the day's of the week in Spanish we founds this cute video that has been helpful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5WHgkjL3kE&feature=related We go over the Spanish days of the week while we are doing calender time.

We have been going over almost daily, The Duggar family guidlines which we renamed, 'Family Beliefs'.

* BigH received a certificate of Achievement from his BC 4-H Cloverbud unit 3!  My boy congratulations!!! This year they learned about pigs, goats, bicycle safety, dogs, clothing, and sewing to name a few things. LittleE did all the same work but she was not old enough to officially join. Everyone acknowledged her and clapped for her knowing that the only reason she did not get a certificate was because of her age. That's ok she took it well and she is now old enough to be a Cloverbud.



I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go, I will
       counsel you and watch over you. ~   Psalm 32:8