Week of April 25-29th

This week Big H finished story # 15 in HOP 1, "Slam & Dunk: The Big Game." He worked through this story working very hard at it. I'm going to stay in this review area to build up more confidence and ease with these words. He was very proud to be reading such a big book to his father. Little E has just started this book but has not finished it yet.

In First Language Lessons we are up to Lesson 35 and I've found our copy of it. Thank you Holly for lending me yours. I'm going to have to mail it to you, I meant to bring it to the convention this weekend. This week we did a picture narration of NC Wyeth's The Master Bedroom.

We also reviewed proper pronouns for days of the week. I had the kids put the days of the week in order they both did very well at this. Little E needs a bit more work. The both mix up Tuesday and Thursday. We also reviewed are memory verses: The Caterpillar, Work, and Hearts are Like Doors. They also were introduced to a new memory verse.

Days of the Week

Mother Goose rhyme, adapted by Sara Buffington

Monday's child is fair of face,

Tuesday's child is full of grace;

Wednesday's child is ever so sweet,

Thursday's child is tidy and neat;

Friday's child is prone to a giggle,

Saturday's child is easy to tickle;

But the child that is born on restful Sunday

Is happy and cheerful, and loves to play. 

We ventured into dictation this week. These are the sentences we worked on.
1. The cat ran.

2. The dog sat.

3. The man can tan.

They have such a hard time with the sight word 'the' I wrote that on the board for them to copy. I also corrected any reverse letters they wrote as we went along. They both did surprisingly well and I don't think it will be as stressful as I thought it might be. I've decided to start off by using words from HOP K program. I think they will both being doing three sentences.

For Math U See Big H is on lesson 13 Beta and Little E worked on lesson 11 Alpha she was working on the shapes: circles & triangles.

For science we finished week 10 and are half way through week 11. We finished up week 10 learning about the animals of Madagascar in "Usborne World of Animals" and learning how sausages are made in, " See How it's Made." In week 11 we are starting to learn about the animals of Europe the children watched 10 part, 10 min each video series on youtube called "The Wildlife and Scenery of Europe." The children located Europe on the map, as well as the Pyrenees Mountains and Coto Donana in Spain. They learned about the habitat and animals that live in the Pyrenees Mountains: Ibexes, Marmots, Bearded Vultures, Pyrenean desmans and Butcher birds. They also learned about the habitat and animals of Coto Donana in Spain some of these animals are the: Iberian lynxes, Red deer, European bee-eater and Flamingos. In the Western Isles they learned about seals, puffins and otters. They have just started to learn about the animals of Asia at the end of this week. They located all of these areas on a map.

Wrap Up April 4th -8th

The kids watched me make a window stars this week. I was going to get them to make ones as well but folding tissue paper is tricky business. I went to Michael's to see if they had kite paper but they didn't I think the kite paper might be a bit stiffer and easier to fold. When I get around it I'll have to buy some online. I made a few using primary colours so the children can see the secondary colours the primary colours make as the sun shines through them.

I was excited to receive the 'Blue Fairy Book' this week. The kids and I have read the first two stories: The Bronze Ring and East of the Sun and West of the Moon. They both seem to being enjoying it. This week in Hooked On Phonics the kids have been working on the inital consonant sounds of:sh, wh, and th. There last review page contained the words: that, than, this ,them, then, chap, chat, chip, chick, chum, Chuck, thin, thick, thud, shall, shag, shin, shut, shed, shell, whip, whiz, whiff, whim and when. The word play section is a page that has empty spaces that the kids take cards with letters on them and spell out requested words. In HOP K the letter spaces where three long, they are now spelling out four letter words. The word list this week was: chin, thin, ship, chip, when, then, chop, whip, shut, and shed. BigH found this fairly easy to do and LittleE really struggled with it. I gave her the intial consonant flash cards to help her. LittleE will be reviewing this spelling next week. She reads the words well but when asked to spell them really struggles. It's really nice to see BigH humming along with his phonics.

For copywork BigH finished 'The Land of Counterpane' and LittleE has finsihed 'Who Has Seen The Wind' a few weeks ago. I plan on video taping the reciting those poems. They have started to be work on the 'Doxology.'



Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

We've been behind on our science so we are going to focus on it for awhile now until we are caught up. This week the children learned about Congo jungle and the Serengeti plains in Africa they coloured in and labeled these locations on their map of Africa. They learned about Gorillas, Congo bongos, Elephants, and Leopards to name a few.

I've misplaced our First Language Lessons book and I'm going crazy searching for it, it's one of our favorite resources. Also this week we've been using a new resource for Spanish 123.teachme.com we've been doing the day of the week in Spanish & the season at calender time. They have also been learning some vocabulary for animals, food and colour.

Wrap Up Feb 21-25

In Language Lessons, lessons 25-27 we have been working on common nouns aunts, uncles & cousins. And proper pronouns Auntie Pam, Uncle Ben and cousin Xae. They have been doing copy work for these lessons and they're working on a new memory verse.

Hearts Are Like Doors

Anonymous

Hearts, like doors, will open with ease,

To very, very little keys,

And don't forget that two of these

Are "Thank you, sir" and "If you please!"

For science we have finished week 7 in Sonlight. We covered the Sonoran Desert, which is the hottest dessert in N. America and the art of hand blowing glass from the book, "How It's Made." We  have also done some nature study drawings of Black Capped Chickadees. They flock to the feeders on our covered porch so the children have ample opportunity to study them. We also get Stellar Jays, Mountain Chickadees and we have newcomers as well but we've not been able to identify them.

In Math U See BigH has been working on Unit 10 in his Beta program and for the most part is finding it easy. LittleE is working on unit 9 in alpha and is coming along, she is still struggling a bit with her 9+ tables. They both have been working on the drill pages on the MUS website.

They are both still working on the HOP K sight words LittleE consistently can read 23 out of the 30 cards. BigH can read about 7 out of the 30 but he's been working on them for about two weeks and LittleE has been working on those sight words for about 2 months. As soon as BigH can read 15 out of the 30 I think we will move on to HOP 1 with both children. I'm hoping by the end of next week he'll be almost there. I have been working on these words faithfully and daily for short periods of time.

BigH & LittleE have also been having silent reading time and read out loud to Mom, Dad or a family pet daily.

For History we have been reading about Egypt from, "A Child's History of the World" and we read " Step Into Reading Tuts Mummy." We also read chapter 10 in "Missionary Stories with the Millers" and read about John Beekman a missionary in Mexico who was working with the Chol people. The children have done map work finding Egypt and Mexico on the map and marking them down.

We have followed along with our Church in studying the book of Exodus with Studio 32:7 for our Bible Study.

“The parents’ chief care is, that that which they supply

shall be wholesome and nourishing, whether in the way

of picture-books, lessons, playmates, bread and milk, or

mother’s love” ~ Charlotte Mason


Weekly Wrap Up Weird, Unsocialized Homesdchoolers

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