Week in Review: December 1-5

It's been a while, right? Well my unintended break from blogging has ended. We've gotten past the really rough spot we were in getting work done happily and weathered a rather wicked cold. We enjoyed a wonderful visit from Grampy and Grammy from Florida, celebrated Grandpa's (my dad's) birthday, and had a delicious Thanksgiving feast! Oh, and we also spent a few days in Atlanta. So, now you see why I haven't been around blogging!

JUST in time for Christmas I have an awesome giveaway to bless one of my readers with! My kids love Signing Time and they have a brand new Christmas collection just in time for the holiday!

Click here to learn more about it AND enter the giveaway!

Here is a little peek into just this past week. Maybe I'll get some posts about our Atlanta field trips up soon!

Preschool:Finishing up...

So after Christmas I plan to have Grace begin Little Hearts for His Glory. She's already handling Kindergarten math and 1st grade reading, so I'm certain she is ready. Honestly, she was probably ready a little sooner, but with the problems we were having staying on task and with a good attitude the last thing I wanted to do was add in another guide!

She's been begging me to learn to tie her shoes so we pulled out the practice shoe someone gave to us a while ago. It somehow doesn't seem possible that my littlest sweetie is old enough to be learning to tie her shoes...and be in Kindergarten! But she is, and I have to embrace it.

The big news for the week is Grace has finally mastered the correct way to write an S!!!! Yippee!!!! I have to admit the reason I am so happy about this is a little selfish. I'm not sure if you experience this or not, but at times when my girls have something academic they do not know or haven't yet mastered I am given a raised eyebrow and the ever so subtle, "Is this something you are working on?" comment. I'm grateful these comments and looks don't come from family, but they can be a little frustrating nonetheless. So, this is a personal victory of sorts.

Grace enjoys her end of books assessments in the ABC series from Rod and Staff. This week she said, "Is this like a test?!?!?" She thinks it's great because she knows her big sisters take tests and so it's just such a big deal in her mind.








My best moment with Grace this week was when she said, "Mommy, I love that you homeschool me because I get to hug and kiss you whenever I want!" Warms a mama's heart!








Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 10

We're plugging away in Bigger Hearts and honestly it is so much easier. Nothing like completing a guide once before to make it seem like a piece of cake the next time around! Everything about school is easier with Beth. Maybe it's because she's heard it all before so it sounds familiar, or maybe that she isn't quite the perfectionist that her older sisters is. Who knows, but I typically find her more laid back even if she is always asking when we'll be done so she can go play. She's started reading some of this history on her own by her request. I am happy to say yes most of the time because she is still comprehending and she's moving forward with independence in her learning!

The girls did their vocabulary words on the same day this week...by accident. I accidentally had Rose's guide turned a page ahead. Whoops! Anyway, they shared the dictionary and helped each other look for words, so maybe this happy accident will occur again!

Whenever I tell Beth it's time for a timeline entry she bounces up and down and says, "Yay!" What more could I ask for? All my girls love history, but Beth seems to engage a bit more in the history right now. She loves early American biographies so Bigger has been a great fit for her.

This week I really started working with her on rhyme scheme. As an English teacher I really love how much literature is emphasized in the Heart of Dakota curriculum, especially poetry. My daughters are so very comfortable with poetry and I anticipate their ability to understand and analyze poetry to only increase as we progress. To begin their rhyme scheme instruction I teach them to highlight or underline the last words in each line of poetry which rhyme with each other in the same color. It is very simple and is a very visual way to see rhyming patterns. She loved it so much she begged me to go back and find the rhyming patterns in her previous poems! She didn't really have to beg, but this is how she asked!

Last but not least, can I just say I am so happy that my daughters love grammar. I didn't really learn to love it until my history of English class in college, but I did appreciate the order and need for it. I envisioned groans and complaints every time we cracked the grammar books, just like I experienced when I was teaching full-time. Not with these girls of mine! They love it and seem to enjoy picking out sentence parts. That's what comes of learning in an environment without peer pressure to dislike some aspects.

Preparing Hearts for His Glory: Unit 28

My ever studious first-born rarely smiles in these pictures, but she really loves to have fun! Rose seems to separate school into a work-is-serious type of category. At least, that is how she wants to look when I'm snapping pictures! We talk a lot about diligence and the need to work this way each day. She made great effort this week to work diligently and also helped her sisters stay more focused. Such a sweet, grown up little 9-year-old!

This week Rose very much enjoyed our book-mark history project. I modified it a bit because I was concerned the original instructions would leave it too thick and break the binding in her Bible eventually. So we used 3 flat ribbons to mark sections in the Scriptures and she was so pleased she asked to make more for Christmas gifts!

Rose writes a 3-5 sentence narration (or summary if you aren't familiar with Charlotte Mason terminology!) about one of the history readings each week. This weeks turned into a full-page! When I realized she had written so much I reminded her it didn't have to be that long. She said, "Yes it did! There were too many things I needed to say!" I think I have a writer on my hands. Here is what her narration about the Aztecs...




The Aztecs were very civilized people. They had houses, treasure, and temples. Now the Aztecs were not Christians and they worshiped idols and sacrificed human beings to their gods. Cortes sailed to conquer them. The Aztecs thought that their ship was a bird that sent them from heaven. Cortes burned the ship so the sailors could not go back and then they started to shoot cannons which the Aztecs thought were lightening. But their leader offered him gifts. Then Cortes went into the temple to get their leader to become a Christian, but he wouldn't, so Cortes captured him. This caused great fighting, but they were no match against shells and cannons. 

We had an excellent conversation about why what the Aztecs were doing went against God's Word, but Cortes' actions weren't godly either. One of the things I've loved about Preparing Hearts for His Glory is how my daughter is encouraged to think critically on her own about the rights and wrongs in history. While we don't delve into all the dirty and dark corners of the past, we touch on them enough for her to begin realizing how people sometimes do things in the name of God, without really doing them for that reason in their hearts.


We are taking our time reviewing the multiplication math facts. The first time around they didn't seem to stick and higher level multiplication just wasn't going to happen. I'm so grateful I paused and reflected before pushing her on to something which would cause greater frustration. As my husband is fond of reminding me, "This is why we homeschool, right?" I'm grateful for my man to remind me of this so faithfully!

I keep hearing that eventually all the spelling rules we are learning through All About Spelling and dictation will translate beyond spelling lessons. I'm still waiting for that to happen, but in the meantime, All About Spelling level four is going splendidly. Rose and Beth both typically remember the previous rules we have studied without pause. Grace will start this up in January as well...oh boy! Three levels of Heart of Dakota and three levels of All About Spelling! We'll see how long my sanity holds out.


So there was our week. Don't forget to enter the giveaway!

Yuletide Ice Cube Fair: A Book Look Review

"Is that for me!?! Is that for me!?!" Grace could hardly contain her excitement when I opened the package. We're a family of die-hard veggie fans. I've been watching since high school thanks to an awesome babysitting gig and my husband since college at Liberty University. It was great when we finally had kids and had a legitimate reason to fule our veggie fanaticism!

This sweet little Christmas book from Veggie Tales delighted all three of my girls. My oldest two snuck off with it on separate days and enjoyed the story before I got a chance to read it to their little sister. It is written in poetic verse and feels Seussian in style. Kids always love a good story in rhyme. The characters are true to their personalities and once again Junior teaches us a lesson to remind us to focus on the Savior throughout the holiday.

This book is really, really short and is best suited for preschool and early elementary. Grace could read some of it on her own which really excited her so early readers will thoroughly enjoy it. I appreciated that there was a good message to focus on Christ and the simplistic message is one we can all benefit from remembering.

Grace read it on her own, then asked me to read it to her...then asked if she could read it again! That's what a good book is like for a kid. They want to read it over and over. If they are bored, it's difficult to get through the first reading. Rhymes are great because it helps kids learn new words while reading a little faster. They recognize the endings and can often figure out words based on the rhyme pattern.

This is a great book for the Christmas season coming up, the perfect gift for the Veggie Tale fan in your life!


Disclosure:  I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook.com® <http://BookLook.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Week in Review: September 29-October 3

Another week is done...yay! We had a lot going on outside of homeschool, so it wasn't exactly a stellar week, but we made it through and finished strong. Unfortunately, I'm behind on grading the girls' work and getting next week's lessons ready so guess what my Sunday afternoon will hold?

First off some highlights...

My husband ran in our local Chick-Fil-A 5K race and placed 10th overall and 1st in his age group. No, I didn't run. I completely hate running, so while we enjoyed the race I have absolutely no motivation to join in! The girls had a blast with all the fun stuff to do while Daddy raced and our big news was the Grace is no longer afraid of the cows! This is huge...majorly huge! She's been afraid of them since she was just an infant and yesterday she kept running around hugging all of the cows (I think there were 6!).

Our other big event was Grace's 5th birthday! We had a family party like we always do with a Splash Mountain cake as requested by the birthday girl. We celebrated with my parents since Grace and my mom share a birthday. Fun, right? When Grace requested a Splash Mountain cake a few months ago I had no idea how I was going to pull it off, but it came out pretty great thanks to the adorable figurines I found cheap on Ebay!

And onto school news...the other stuff was more exciting, but most of you reading are much more interested in school than the other details I'm sure! We had a good week. Like I said, nothing really spectacular, but good nonetheless. I love these pictures of all three working studiously. It isn't like this is what our day looks like most of the time, these are the rare moments and I love capturing them! Most of the time it is me sitting in that empty chair trying to answer questions while simultaneously teaching a completely different subject. I have figured out that my oldest two do better if I do the same subject at the same time with them. We do everything they need me right there for (History, grammar, spelling/dictation, poetry, Bible, etc) first and then what they can do fairly independently (math, literature, vocbu-lit, handwriting, independent history, etc.) afterwards. This has not only created a smoother morning, but given them greater incentive to get done sooner. If they don't get finished before lunch they have to work after lunch which they prefer not to do.

Grace: Preschool

Grace and I used to do our work together first thing, but since I switched how we work with my older two, she does her lessons about 10;00 or 10:30. This seems to be working well for everyone. She doesn't mind waiting and I feel less pull from my older girls needing me. This week we practiced writing capital H for handwriting. We use a combination of Fundanoodle and Handwriting Without Tears along with some traditional manuscript paper.

We got to move into the next Abeka reader this week and I like that we're focusing more on reading comprehension. She sometimes likes to add to the stories or make up new stories with the pictures!

Grace also finished the D book with Rod and Staff. I'm trying to figure out exactly when to start Little Hearts for His Glory. I think she could actually handle it right now, but I don't want to push too hard and it will be a jump for her to get used to more work, not to mention more for me! I want Beth to be a little more comfortable with Bigger Hearts before adding in another full guide. Who knows, maybe in a couple of weeks we'll start out half-pace or maybe we'll wait until January. I guess you'll just have to stay tuned to find out!

On Friday I had a few things left for Grace to do so I let Rose be her teacher. Both of them loved this arrangement, at least for this one morning. We tried it once or twice last year and it failed miserably! It was really nice for this to work out particularly on this day because I had some things to finish up with Beth.

Beth: Bigger Hearts for His Glory Unit 5

Beth seems to relaxed and doesn't even seem to mind the increased workload. I remember last year as we were finishing up Beyond Little Hearts she would sort of grump around with a bad attitude about it all. I guess this shows how ready she was for the jump! Vocabulary is especially an area I see her doing much better than expected. I'm still helping her find the words, but for the most part she does an excellent job without my help. The sentences are challenging and this week she forgot to use the word in a sentence, but wrote a sentence which was about the definition. They were great sentences though!

This history activities are her favorite part and sometimes Beth will ask to do them again on another day. This week she made a collage about wants vs. needs. The hardest part about this for her was acknowledging our pets were wants, not needs. It only came up because of the examples in the guide, but she did agree in the end they weren't a necessity. She also had a hard time with clothes because she felt we don't really need those, just wanted to have them. It was a great time to talk about modesty!

We do Bigger mostly in 4 days. On Fridays we complete a math lesson, a grammar lesson, dictation, a chapter for literature, and the timeline and notebooking page if they haven't been done already. She gets soooooo excited about her timeline. She isn't not typically into art, but enjoys drawing the miniature pictures. I think writing on the small timeline has really helped her handwriting!

This girl loves dictation and grammar. I have no idea what it is, but she gets so excited and says, "Oh goodie!" when I tell her it is time for either of these two subjects. Let's hope it lasts!!!! (Don't worry, I'm not going to be crushed when it doesn't...)






Rose: Preparing Hearts for His Glory Unit 24

I've figured out we are hopefully going to be finished with this guide just before Christmas. It is going to be bitter-sweet saying goodbye to this guides. We have loved it so much, but I also know how great Creation to Christ is going to be! At least I have the pleasure of knowing we'll hit Preparing 2 more times!

Rose has very much enjoyed the globe activities this year. We've been using a globe since Little Hearts for His Glory and this is the first year where I feel like she really gets continent placement and how to find stuff. Once again staying with the HOD way has paid off. Sometimes I wondered if she would ever grasp these ideas!

One of Rose's favorite activities is diagramming sentences. When I tell her that is what we're doing she says, "Yes!!!!" I love this girl!

Since I'm often calling out spelling or dictation while working on something with another of my daughter's Rose will often draw on our whiteboard. This week she suddenly is writing beautifully and is being much more careful about her spelling and neatness. Now I'm just waiting for the breakthrough in math.

Rose really loves the timeline cards as well. I forgot to have her do them last week (oops!) so she had double this week. Even so, completing 6 cards didn't seem to bother her at all. Her favorite was the Mt. Vesuvius card to remember Pompeii.

For me, this is what homeschooling is about...

...learning together. We may not all be learning the same thing, but we're learning together, all in the same place, all with the same goal. It isn't always pretty. Right now our school room is a disaster and I'm going to clean it up a bit after I'm done typing. But pretty or not, learning is happening and we're growing together as a family as well as academically. 

How was your week? I'd love to hear about it!

Week in Review: September 22-26

We had such a great week! We enjoyed our bi-annual global focus week (think missions conference) so much as we learned about what God is doing in Japan. We made new friends and enjoyed fellowship with our church family for four days. It was a great time, but as you can imagine, the kids got worn out pretty quickly. We started off strong and got all of our work done the first two days, but I took a cue from the kids that they were getting really worn down, so we just stuck to history and literature for the end of the week.



Grace: Preschool

Grace is counting down the days to her 5th birthday! She's feeling quite grown up and can't wait to celebrate turning five. It's bitter sweet watching my baby's birthdays pass each year, but much more sweet since I am able to enjoy watching them grow and develop through homeschooling.

We focused on writing the letter I this week and she really liked this one because it was so easy and because it is in her name. We are not learning the letters in ABC order, but by style. Right now our Fundanoodle book is teaching the basic lined letters first. I think this is a really smart way to build their fine motor skills.

Grace enjoyed some time using our school-room computer this week. She can use this really well now and navigates to the approved websites with ease. It is a bit overwhelming how well young kids can use computers and the internet. We use their computer time to help them learn responsibility and teach rules of use as well as enjoy whatever learning games they are using.






Beth: Bigger Hearts for His Glory Unit 4 (2nd grade)

Beth seems to enjoy spelling and I think she is a natural speller as long as she is putting forth the effort. I don't know what one child finds spelling easy while another doesn't, but I'm glad for her sake it isn't difficult. We're over half-way through book two of All About Spelling and I can't say enough how great this curriculum is.

Beth loved loved loved our history readings this week. We studied about Pocahontas! She wrote an excellent acrostic about her and just like her big sister the best part of the week was when she found out Pocahontas became a Christian because that meant she will get to see her in heaven one day.

We really enjoy the history readings. I feel badly for families who struggle through them, but so far we haven't found them to be tedious at all. If you are in Bigger and finding the readings hard, try giving your child something to do. Right now my daughters are working on a 3D version of Jamestown, which goes along with Beth's history at the moment. They are actively engaged in listening because they can answer questions, but they enjoy keeping busy while I read.

I didn't get a picture of it, but she also passed the first level of Typing Tournament! She was so excited.

Rose: Preparing Hearts for His Glory Unit 23 (4th Grade)

Rose is so very close to passing the second level of Typing Tournament. She really enjoys it, but like with many things, gets frustrated when it takes her longer to complete than she wants it to. I think she is learning to take this much better this year and I'm happy to see her getting closer.

We took a look at Rome this week and the various cruel and not so cruel leaders. We learned about Pompeii as well and she was fascinated by this ancient city. I recently read a wonderful historical fiction book called City on Fire by Tracy Higley which is just excellent. It was like my own living book study!

I would not say Rose is a natural speller, but she is a determined student. She's doing incredibly well as we enter into the fourth book from All About Spelling. She takes her time and really thinks about it. I'm finally able to see some improvement in spelling in other areas. Not always, but most of the time which is a huge thing for her!

Good week and I'm so thankful for the flexibility of homeschooling which allowed us to more fully enjoy our global focus week. Here we are enjoying one last meal with our new friends. 10 Points if you can guess what restaurant we were enjoying! 

Week in Review: September 15-19

We had a really good week overall. Last year it took maybe 2 or 3 months to feel like we were in a routine. Even then it wasn't a consistent routine for a lot of different reasons. I'm so grateful this year to God for good health as we start out this year. I know there will be bumps, but starting off healthy is just such a wonderful feeling.








Oh, and I have last week's post, but completely forgot to share it anywhere last week! So you can click here to see what last week looked like.

Grace: Preschool

We are plugging away at our "preschool" curriculum which is actually kindergarten level work. She's reading at a beginning 1st grade level and I found out by accident she already gets the concepts behind addition. She is flying through the the ABC series from Rod and Staff. To be honest, I think she could handle the work in Little Hearts for His Glory, but I want to make sure I'm ready to add in another guide! We'll see how things go.

She completes her work so well and then I let her have some time on the computer, usually PBS kids. She likes having a little freedom to play and I love letting her. Our computer is used from a friend and we can set it so they can only go to particular websites. Recently she's also been using Nick Jr.

We have some art projects from a preschool Abeka book that was passed down to us. They are super simple, but Grace loves them so we did one this week with her hand print and footprint! They didn't exactly fit in either square.

My girls using Heart of Dakota guides!

They study well together and enjoy listening to each other's history and read alouds. I'm so thankful for what I feel is an academically rigorous guide, but doesn't feel academically rigorous to them. It just feels fun!

I give the girls the English tests from Rod and Staff and they just happened to both be taking one on the same day. That won't usually happen, but they thought it was pretty neat!

Beth: 2nd grade, Bigger Hearts for His Glory Unit 3

This is by far my favorite picture of the week. Beth almost always goes outside to read her literature. Even when it is raining she'll sit on our porch swing. Sometimes she doesn't look very comfortable, but she always looks happy!

Going through Bigger Hearts for His Glory this second time has been a breeze. I've been trying to analyze why and I think it is because my Beth isn't as hard on herself as Rose tends to be. I appreciate Rose's desire to do well, but Beth's easy going nature is making the whole process much easier. 

One thing Beth seems to really love each week is the timeline. She as introduced to this last year in Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory and was excited to start all over again. She also seems more interested in the history, however, it is partly due to my figuring out I needed to give her something to do. I figured this out with Rose, but not for several units in. Thankfully I remembered this at the start and so my second little sweetie benefits. Right now she's working on a 3D village of Jamestown we snagged back when Scholastic was having a dollar sale. 

Beth has been really interested in biographies recently, even just for fun evening reading. This is a really neat biography series is brand new and we got the opportunity to review one of the titles! They are all about people from the Bible and incredibly engaging for my daughter. You can read my full review here!

Both of my girls have been faithfully working on their typing skills. Typing Tournament is what I recommend for anyone looking for a kids typing program. We reviewed this last year and several months later they still beg to play it even if I don't plan to have them do it each day. Beth is doing great. She hasn't passed the first test yet, but she doesn't care because she keeps getting higher and higher scores making her more determined than ever to pass it. She loves the games and so does Rose. Grace is the only one frustrated by it because as 4, she's just not ready. 

Rose: 4th Grade, Preparing Hearts for His Glory Unit 22

Rose is really enjoying school this year. Remember how I said before Bigger is easier because Beth is more laid back than Rose was when she went through the guide? Well I'm very pleased Rose seems to have relaxed a lot and genuinely is enjoying the process. We still have our moments where her perfectionism rears its ugly head, but they are becoming fewer each week. She is happier with herself and her accomplishments and tells me almost every day how much she loves homeschooling. She is why we started. Her intense nature and inward focus on her work was not a good fit for a traditional classroom. She is such a sweet girl and extends grace to those around her all the time. I'm so thankful she isn't as hard on herself as she was in the past. 

For anyone just starting out on the Heart of Dakota Path who feels the writing is light, do not worry. I honestly felt the same way at the beginning, mostly because I didn't fully understand that Heart of Dakota follows a Charlotte Mason methodology. Now that we are 5 guides into this program I am totally sold. Rose is becoming and excellent non-fiction writer and it is coming easily. It didn't at first, but it has so far this year. I love her creative poems with inspiration drawing from our weekly poetry units. I'm really excited for the creative writing in Hearts for Him Through Time: Creation to Christ which we're on track to start in January. 

She was seriously sitting like this thinking while we were working on her creative writing for poetry. I love that we're talking about similes, metaphors, and personification. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love this curriculum and I fall more in love with it every week! 

And then my husband gave me this crazy awesome t-shirt! Icing on the cake for my week. Before anyone asks, I would LOVE to share the link with you, BUT it isn't in the website anymore. T-Spring is the company and it seems to have been just a one-time thing. Sorry!





Great week at our house. It feels so good to say this, but honestly, I know very well what tough weeks look like. Take a look at most of my weeks in review from last year! I'd love to hear from you. How was your week? Good? Tough? Somewhere in between? Please share!