Week in Review: September 2-6

Fall is here! This is my favorite season of the year and it seems to be coming early to the south. The leaves on our trees are starting to fall, something that doesn't usually happen until mid-September at the earliest. My girls will soon be outside raking up leaves and we'll be enjoying the cooler air. I decorated last week for fall inside, something I've done since we lived in Florida where fall simply does not exist! I've also been enjoying my favorite Yankee Candle, Pumpkin Spice...mmmmm!

School has finally seemed to hit its groove for us this week. We have the normal bumps, but much less dragging things out and a lot of

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 23

This week's letter was S and the Bible lessons focused on Jesus performing miracles. For our math activity Grace practiced choosing which group had more or less. I even had groups of smaller numbers, like 5 and 7, and she was able to tell me that the group with 7 had more. I continue to be surprised by concepts she already grasps and continue to see the benefit of doing school with older siblings. Both Grace and Beth have learned many things I've never had to teach them simply from observing Rose.

We are also reviewing a new handwriting and letter recognition curriculum that is so much fun! I can't wait to share it! As you can see, Grace's fine-motor skills are really accelerated for her age. She'll be four in a few weeks and already can write almost all of her letters without any help or guidance from me. There are a couple she forget or gets confused, but so far she hasn't needed a lot of help.

This is my favorite picture of the week! After reading about the little boy Jesus healed Grace said, "That was so sweet. Jesus is really sweet to make the little boy well." Then she asked to pray for our friend, Diego, who has cancer that Jesus would heal him too. I was again surprised at the depth of her connections to real-life.







Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 5

We have continued to study about the Pilgrims and I was reminded again this second time we are going through Beyond that there is so much I just wasn't taught in school. I can't help but wonder if it was intentional. I mean I know the whole argument of there is only so much time we have to teach and something has to be left out, but if they are going to spend time on the information in class, shouldn't it be accurate and complete? The Pilgrim's frequent imprisonment and hardships in Holland were never mentioned, but merely glossed over. My husband and I watched Kirk Cameron's documentary, Monumental and there is much which we have learned included in it. This documentary is excellent and I plan to let the girls see some of it as we continue to study about the Pilgrims.

Math has always been a favorite part of Beth's day. She frequently requests to do more than one lesson in a day and I usually let her. I'm happy for her to move at her own pace and she rarely makes any mistakes! This week she learned how to read a thermometer which is marked of by twos. Rose didn't remember learning this before so Beth volunteered to teach her! It was so sweet to see her be the teacher and she did a great job! She explained the concept clearly, did an example, then had Rose try one. Since her answer was correct Beth followed it up with lots of encouraging words! Sweet moments that make homeschooling such a wonderful blessing!

Preparing Hearts for His Glory: Unit 3 (first half)

This history in Preparing has been so much fun for us! I had heard that it was a favorite guide for long-time Heart of Dakota families, and it is fun to finally experience it ourselves! Rose loves our history readings. She loves them to the point that she is incredibly disappointed that I don't keep going. She also really enjoys the drawing for her notebook. She loves art anyway and it has been fun for her to do the independent history.

We have continued on with both dictation and All About Spelling and she's doing great. We had taken a bit of a break from All About Spelling for the summer and have had a little trouble staying consistent with it, but that has been my issue with planning for all three and I'm getting the kinks in our day worked out. We started working with suffixes which gave us an entirely new set of tiles to work with! They're pink and pretty. What more can I say?

The Rest of the Week

I'm trying to make sure I take time to enjoy my girls. This week we enjoyed more read-aloud time, playing Kids of Catan, and playing some putt-putt in the backyard. It is easy to get distracted with the duties I have, the work I must complete, and the things I would like to do, but I've decided missing out on time with my kids is just not going to be an option anymore. I will stop and take time to enjoy them, learn about who they are. I will not make it just something I check off a list or try to claim school-time is the same as spending time with them just having fun.


Next week will be a break for us and I'm looking forward to a really fun field trip at the end of the week!