Week in Review: August 25-29

First of all....

Have you entered the contest yet?!?!?! Don't miss out on your chance to win a really great book just for you! http://gracefilledhomeschooling.blogspot.com/2014/08/prelude-for-lord-giveaway.html

AND an awesome new giveaway is coming to you again on Monday!

I'm posting this week from my iPad, which is a new endeavor for me. Our computer is having some issues so while a friend is checking it out for us this is the backup. I love my iPad, but I'm seriously missing my nice big keyboard and screen! I can't figure out how to make pictures smaller, so the foram will look a bit different. 

This week was good, maybe not as smoothe as last week, but good nonetheless. I started a morning meeting time over the summer. The experiment was a success and they have been asking me when we get to start again. I'm going to have to figure out how it will all work when we start with the homeschool classes my girls take which start up next week. We call it pahri mani conventu which means Lighthouse Morning Meeting in Latin. The girls love the name and have enjoyed the variety of things we learn about. Throughout the week we study a Greek or Latin root, study a painting, listen to classical music, sing a hymn, learn ABC Bible verses, study about an animal, read from Answers for Kids, and much more! One of our favorite things is reading from Grammarland by Edith Nesbit. This is a gem of a book which fits in quite well with the living book philosophy of Charlotte Mason and Heart of Dakota.

         

Grace: K4

Grace loves her lessons so very much. All of my girls have started their schooling with the same excitement and joy for learning. While this has waned somewhat as their work gets harder, they still love learning. Grace doesn't yet feel the pressure of more work, so her energy and excitement is fun to watch. 

We are working our way through the alphabet for handwriting using Fundanoodle and Handwriting Without  Tears. My first experience with HWT wasn't that great, but Grace seems to be doing well wtih it and it was given to us, so I'm utilizing what we have. 

Grace is flying through the Abeka readers faster than I expected. She is finishing up the K5 books and we will move right into the 1st grade level. Homeschooling allows such freedom with reading and I love that with both reading and math if we continue throughout the schoolyear then there isn't need for long and tedious review. 

After her lessons are over Grace enjoys playing PBS kids on the computer. Daniel Tiger is a new favorite of hers. 

Beth: Grade 2, Bigger Hearts for His Glory Unit 1 (second half)

 We finished up the second half of unit 1. She enjoyed the history activities, Bible, and poetry which we worked on this week. I think she is probably ready for full speed, but we start our classes in 2 weeks and I'd rather her get settled into that routine before trying out full-speed the first time. 

                               

We are using the tactile handwriting cards from The Logic of English along with Classical Conversations Prescripts for cursive. She is doing great and is anxious to start stringing letters together. We'll finish up individual letters in about 3 weeks. Then we'll move onto some copywork I think. I have to still figure out what we're doing for handwriting next! 

                              

Math continues to be an easy subject for Beth...almost too easy at times. What I mean by that is she has started getting rather careless in her work because she thinks she knows what she is doing, barreling ahead at times and not stopping to follow directions or really think about what a word problem is asking. This is something we are working through. It does help me personally to have both my older girls working on math at the same time so I can remain focused on just that subject. Math isn't the easiest for me and having to change mindsets in and out of math did not go well last year. 

We practiced arranging the continents, locating the continents and oceans, and some other fun geography activities. Beth really liked working on writing out the continent and ocean names on her own. We also studied poetry and she told me she missed getting to guess the title of the poem's name like she did in Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory. I told her we'd do that again for the next poem study. 

                                  

Beth did a great job studying her Scripture verses this week. It was a much longer passage than she was used to from Beyond, but she worked really hard and had it all memorized by Wednesday. We talked our way through the devotional questions. She understood about half of what was being asked, the rest we talked about. I'm okay if she doesn't "get" all of it right now. Bible understanding is a process and while she has asked Jesus to be her Savior, I don't expect her to understand it all yet. I'm pleased with her progress in this area. 

Here is the last bit of work we started this week. Typing Tournament is a really fun way to learn typing. I'm pleased that even though Beth is still working on the first level, she doesn't mind that she has to keep practicing for the test. She told me she's improving and was so happy about this! That matters a lot ot me. I want my girls to enjoy and appreciate the process of learning, not just look for high results. 

Rose: Preparing Hearts for His Glory Unit 19

Rose is doing great. I'm trying to encourage her to appreciate the process of learning like Beth seems to. She takes her work so very seriously. Part of this is just her personality, but I fear some of it is left-over from issues she had while in a traditional classroom. She does extremely well, but the littlest mistake makes her extremely discouraged. I'm trying once again to help her work through this and pray it will get easier for her one day. 

We did some of our reading outside since the weather has been so lovely. We've had a much cooler August than is typical here in the South. We have just loved Grandpa's Box and I am certain Rose will be sad to stay goodbye to this lovely book in a couple of weeks when we are done with it. 

                                

Math is our big struggle area, but this seems to be going much more smoothly this year. I read a couple of great articles this week talking about brain growth and the need for mistakes. I wish I had known how to word this concept better to Rose early on in her education. It is the same sentiment I have tried to convey to her, but I think my words got in the way. I'm going to start doing this a little differently now. 

Research for the history project was fun this week! She looked up information about perfume and how it was made a long time ago. 

Then of course we got to make some perfume! This was so fascinating. We used rubbing alcohol as suggested and added a couple of cloves, a cinnamon stick, and a small bit of a vanilla bean. Now a week later it smells overwhelmingly like rubbing alcohol, but once you use it, that scent dissipates and what is left is just delightful. Wasn't sure what to expect, but I'm happy with how it turned out and the lesson of how the alcohol pulls out the plant oils which old the scent. 

I stepped out of the room during spelling to deal with something else in the house and when I came back my sweet girl had a surprise for me on the board! She asked me to post it on my blog, so here it is! Rose is such a sweetheart! 

So that was our week...nothing really dramatic or overly exciting. It was simply a good, solid week of learning we can all feel good about in the end. I think those may be the best kinds. 

Here are the girls' weekly reviews! The novelty has already worn off. Beth wanted to write, "I don't know what to write." I have no idea if this feature will continue...only time will tell!

Rose (9-years-old)

Beth (7-years-old)
Grace (4-years-old)

Week in Review: April 1-5

Rose and I had a week off from our homeschool classes for spring break. I teach junior high literature and writing and Rose takes a science/humanities class. We both enjoy them, but also thoroughly enjoyed the week off! We had a more relaxed schedule even though we kept on with our regular at-home school schedule. Don't worry, I'm not refusing my girls a break! My in-laws are coming up for a visit in another week and we chose to take our at-home break then. Many of my piano students are also out of town this week so it sill feels like break!

Thankfully the south decided to finally thaw a bit from the cold and dry out from the rain! The girls have enjoyed a lot of time outside. Unfortunately a fever/cold also made it's round and we haven't enjoyed as much time with our neighborhood friends as we would have liked! Now that they're all better, it's sleeting outside. What a crazy spring!

Grace-Filled Homeschooling is also now on Twitter and Tumbler! I was so intimidated by these two, but now enjoying the benefits of both! I don't have many followers yet, so look forward to these new options for giveaway entries. 

Before I got on with our week-in-review...

There is still a chance to enter two giveaways from two fabulous companies! 

          

Click the images above to see my reviews and enter the giveaway!

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 17

Grace was very insistent this Monday that she do her lessons first. After her week off I can understand! She loves lessons. Her sisters do as well, but Grace nearly cries when they are over each day! Our letter for the week was N and her finger-play rhyme for this was N-N-Naughty. She thought this was incredibly funny. We also studied about the kings of Israel who were often n-n-naughty! 

One of her favorite things to do now is handwriting. I have used the pages from The Learning Page with all three of my girls and I adore them. They have sets of traditional handwriting pages with just a few examples, but they also have full sheets of dotted letters for tracing for both print and cursive. It is free to sign up and there are lots of other freebies as well.  Although they do link to sites where you have to pay for resources, all of the handwriting sheets can be downloaded free.

Our printer decided to be finicky right when I was ready to print Grace's N to glue on, so we went old-school with a sharpie and piece of blank paper! I could have just used the glue, but her favorite color is blue, so I thought this would be more fun. My girl could do this for hours. I'm not sure what it is she loves about it, but gluing things onto paper makes her day! 

We're just about finished with the B Book in the About Three series by Rod and Staff. She has progressed so much as a result of these simple black-line workbooks. She loves coloring the pages after she is finished so I'm glad they are black and white! I highly recommend this series and you can read my full review of them by clicking on the picture. 

Grace enjoyed playing a new game this week. Back when Rose was about two, I made a bunch of file-folder type games for her for matching colors, shapes, etc. I didn't know of all the resources to be found online at the time and I had several made and laminated. I also made a few games like this which I never ended up printing. I came across them a few weeks ago and I printed and laminated them. The point is to match the numbers on the fish with the correct number of bubbles in the fish bowl. It isn't fancy, but she had a lot of fun with it!

Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 25

Our cat can't get enough of sitting with Beth during lessons. You'll often see her little ears peaking out of Beth's lap in our pictures! One reason is because she loves the girls, but it also helps that our schoolroom is the warmest spot in the house on cold mornings! This is partly because of the large window facing west, but in no small part due to the space-heater I keep at my cold-natured feet!

Beth's word-wall letter was P. Her words included panda (her favorite animal), pig, pogo-stick, pumpkin, pen, pin, and Penny (the name). She has fun coming up with words and it has been a great starter for journal writing now. I really like the e-book journal I purchased at the dollar days sale for her which lets her draw pictures and fill in just a small portion of the entries. It has been an excellent tool for her and we'll continue this on into 1st grade.

I'm hoping to do a write-up of our reading/language arts program soon because I've been asked a lot about it. I will go into more detail at a later date, but for now here is what we do in the order they are added:

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

 Abeka's phonics K and 1st

All About Spelling

Heart of Dakota's Emerging Reader's Set

Heart of Dakota's Dictation

I start teaching my girls to read when they ask which has been 4 and 3 and a half so far! This is also the route Rose took via private school (k) and homeschool (1st). It left her with a very solid reading foundation which we're building on continually with All About Spelling. It seems a bit eclectic for my style, but our choices came from what we owned and what I saw working. I plan to stick to this path with Grace.

Our study of George Washington was a lot of fun this week! We learned about the cherry tree story including that it may or may not be true as well as another story of his disobedience to his mother concerning a colt! I had never heard this one before and Beth really enjoyed it. One of the activities was pretending to be a colt and George Washington riding it. Grace filled in for GW since the purpose was to follow directions (right, left, etc.) Beth did a fabulous job and I even through in some north, south, east, west directions. The only trouble she had was being able to follow the directions through the giggling!

We are almost through with the the Inside Outside book from the ABC Rod and Staff series. We'll be starting this series again with Grace next year and I will be a little sad to see them pass. My girls have all loved them and they have taught so very much. This last book focuses on wildlife in North America.

Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 27
I have been informed this is my portrait! I'm glad she drew me happy and waving. She also asked me to take her picture with it, so I suppose she is very proud of how nice it looks. Nothing like a portrait of you to make the say just a little sweeter!

Arithmetic has become just a little sweeter for both girls thanks to this wonderful program we are reviewing for the TOS Review Crew! I'll be posting on this in another couple of weeks, but I an tell you now that we use it daily and the girls beg to practice math facts now! Rose particularly likes that she is beginning to learn multiplication now. Her regular math curriculum starts that in 3rd grade and she's been regularly asking to go ahead and learn multiplication. Now she can!

We're on unit 8 of All About Spelling book 3. This is one of the best phonics follow-ups I've ever heard of or seen. Rose continues to easily recall all the spelling and phonics rules she has learned with ease. This rule we focused on this week was doubling letters to protect the short vowel and using y as a vowel at the end of words. Oh yeah...and my portrait is now saying, "I am a robot!" Hmmm....

For history we studied about the naturalist, John Muir, and touched lightly on the Spanish-American War. I appreciate that Rose is being introduced to the wars now lightly. She is young, but hears about them all the time. She also learned about some of the animals in North America that have gone extinct just in the last century. She drew a Florida Black Wolf as part of her notebooking page.

For literature Rose is reading a biography about Sacajawea from Knowledge Quest. It's also a review we're doing from the TOS Review Crew. I like that it is written from her perspective and Rose is thoroughly enjoying it. Since my background is teaching literature I make up my own literature units using a variety of pages and ideas. She just finished up her mystery unit and after the biography we'll move on to historical fiction.

I'm excited to announce I'll be hosting a giveaway from Safari, Ltd! If you've never seen their amazing animal and historical figures you'll really need to check them out. It starts Monday, so don't forget to stop by next week to enter!

Week in Review: March 25-29

I remember being told when we first started homeschooling that one of the downsides would be that my kids wouldn't be exposed to enough germs. I can't remember who said that, but boy were they wrong! Another cold decided to visit our home although it only took down 3 of the gang. Thankfully it seems to be passing and it wasn't very severe so we continued with school as usual for Rose and Beth.

Little Hands to Heaven: Week Off
Grace got a much lighter week which didn't bother her for the days she told me, "I don't feel good, Mommy." By Thursday she was ready to be back at it, but was still a bit crabby, so we just did a few lighter things. The girls all love playing on my Kindle Fire and I don't blame them!

She also enjoyed using her pattern blocks with some printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I've had these printed for a while, but I finally got around to laminating them so Grace could use them easily.

Grace also enjoyed using our newly acquired Nature Blocks (a set of building blocks from Lake Shore Learning). She was enthralled with these! You can click on the picture to see my full review of these really nice building toys.

Grace is feeling much better and will be back to our normal schedule next week!

Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 24
Beth had a great start to the week, but ended up catching her baby sister's cold! We continued with school as usual because she didn't have as much discomfort as Grace, but she didn't mind one bit.

In math Beth moved forward to subtraction! I once again didn't really have to teach it to her. She just understood after having sat in on lessons with her older sister last year. I did do a few manipulative explanations, but I don't know that there was really a need.
She also started word problems for the first time this week! She has made so much progress and I just love that we can set her own pace because of homeschooling.

For handwriting we continued with Draw Write Now. I can't say enough good things about this curriculum! Click the picture to take a look at my review. It has gently moved Beth to thinking more about shaping her letters with appropriate size and spacing. I love it!

Our history lessons focused on the early settlement of America. Her poem introduced the concepts of North, South, East, and West. She kept asking which way was north wherever we went and then would tell me the other directions based on that. She also learned the location of the first 13 colonies. She is learning so much this year!

We took our All About Spelling curriculum and tried something new this week! Beth spelled the words, then stamped them. I found a printable online for this, but I'm not thrilled with it so I'll probably create my own. She had a lot of fun with this and it was a nice, time-filling activity which kept her focused while I taught history to her older sister.

Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 26

Our field trip last Saturday to the Bennett Place to see a reenactment of camp life for Civil War soldiers was a great kickoff for our history this week. An added bonus was that my dad was part of the reenactment! This was the first one he has participated in and it's great that the girls were able to see him and even wear their old fashioned dresses made by their great-great-grandmother for me when I was a little girl. Click the picture to see more of our trip!

I wasn't certain how this introduction to war would go over. Rose is very factually oriented, but can also be very sensitive to the evils of the world like slavery. She didn't ask many questions, but did ask if a lot of peopled died. I'm glad she feels free to ask about these things. I love being able to be completely in tune with Rose's education so I am able to address any questions or worries she may feel when studying various aspects of history. It would be easy for me to avoid some of the more difficult aspects of our history. I'm very grateful for Heart of Dakota once again which gently introduces even the harsh aspects of history in a way which is age appropriate, engaging, and leaving her wanting to learn more.

We learned more about fractions and Rose is very anxious to move on to multiplication! She asks nearly every day how soon she can move onto third grade math. I've told her she can move forward once she finishes and she can't wait!

This is a diorama Rose made in her homeschool class of a cave. We don't follow the science plan in our curriculum since she takes this outside class. I do intend to cover the science we're skipping this summer because she loves science so much!


Even though we don't do a lot of science during the school-year outside of her class, we did take time to review a neat unit study for the Review Crew! Click the picture to learn about this fun Astronomy Unit from A Journey Through Learning that my girl couldn't get enough of!

To end on a really fun note, I have a question: How many of you have pets who enjoy joining in on the learning? Meet Zoe, our sweet kitty who loves Beth and can typically be found sitting right by her during lesson time!