Weekly Update: July 9-13

I didn't plan to start school this week...but my daughter talked me into it. How can I turn her down when she loves learning and begs me daily to start lessons back? In hindsight I probably should have waited another week because this week was Bible School every evening at our church. Even with that the week went off with only a few hitches!

We are working through her guide, Bigger Hearts for His Glory, at half speed for a few reasons. There is a big skill-level jump between this guide and Beyond Hearts for His Glory which she completed earlier this year. She's learning how to look up and define words using a dictionary, recording scientific hypothesis then evaluating that hypothesis, analyzing literary elements, and learning to write more formally.

The second reason is she will once again be taking a two-day-a-week class at Deerstream Learning Center. The environment at Deerstream is everything I want for her. She will be studying humanities and science. I am also blessed to be teaching at Deerstream again for a third year.

Bigger Hearts for His Glory - Unit 1 (Part 1)
I let the girls sleep as late as they wanted since everyone was up past their bedtimes and running around getting thoroughly exhausted. She has been working on math daily because she was asking to, but adding in all the other work, including new skill levels, tired her out quickly.

We will be alternating history and Bible with Science and Poetry weekly. This week was our first week of history. She enjoyed the stories about early explorers and especially the little tidbits which helped her to think about them as human.

Memorization is one of her strongest areas so she challenges herself to memorize the Scripture verse in one day. The verses this year are longer, causing her to be stretched more, but she still memorized it in one day!

The best part of the week was when I questioned her about how she felt about math. Last year math was a struggle. The curriculum we used was more abstract than concrete and she often did not understand the concepts we were learning. Insecure is the best way to describe how she felt. That sent me on a search for a new curriculum. We landed on the very traditional and solid Rod and Staff math. It is straight forward, builds on itself quietly, and left my girl feeling confident about her math skills to the point that she is begging to go ahead in her book. I asked her why she liked this better. She said, "Because I know I can do it."