Lighthearted Living: January 2014

Oops. I guess with the holidays keeping up with the blog fell off the radar. We are now 10 weeks later in our school year—just finished week 19! So I will have to do a bit of summarizing and hope I keep up better!

History: We are finishing up with the Pilgrims finally. We studied their early struggles with illness and lack of food. What amazed me was that they had a continuous period of peace with the local Indians. That was due mainly to the peace treaty made with Chief Massosoit and he kept that peace and enforced it amongst other tribes for the remainder of his life which was fifty more years. What an amazing blessing that was for the Pilgrims—to have helpful and peaceful neighbors long enough to become well established. During those fifty years the Pilgrims were joined (to the north, in their own Massachusetts Bay Colony) by the Puritans. I think they are often merged into the same lump, but they are actually two different groups. Many of those Puritans, and also the Pilgrims, purchased land from the Indians for whatever the Indians asked for (which was usually trade goods, not money). When those good wore out over the years the Indians began to feel that they had not gotten the better end of the deal—the pilgrims still had their land. Years of discontent built up and when Massosoit died, his son did not uphold the peace and King Philip’s War took place. We are now studying the time period directly following this moving into the colonial period.

History Reading: Hannah has been working through the “Our America…” series by Susan Kilbride. She finished up the Pilgrim Adventures, read one about King Philip’s War, and this week completed the third book in the series about the Salem Witch Trials.

Science: We completed our Sassafras Zoology in week 16 and have now started Sassafras Anatomy. Hannah loves this and always has. We’ve been studying the Skeletal System the last couple weeks. Hannah asked (and has been asking for a long time!) for a skeleton with squishy insides at Hobby Lobby. It is meant to take apart and put back together. She’s been in Heaven since we bought it for her.

Yes, that is a bag of innards she was proud to show off.

Reading:

Hannah has spent the last couple months reading through The Castle in The Attic and The Indian In the Cupboard. She loved these books and is eager to read the sequels. This week she began Ginger Pye, which is a mystery book following the adventures of the family dog. Right up Hannah’s alley so I hope she enjoys it.

Grace has finished up her First Start Reading and now we’ve gone to Hooked on Phonics 1^st Grade. She enjoys this program but it has mixed results with her. While watching the videos she does very well reading the words but when it comes time for application, reading the words in paragraphs, she struggles. I am not sure where we’ll go with her next…we’ll follow through with this program, she has about a month left. After that we’ll assess. She’s reading and progressing but still is far from fluent. We also added in MCP Plaid Phonics which is essentially a workbook that she does to accompany the other curriculum. She really likes this workbook and it is good practice for her.

After Christmas I began working through books by Memoria Press for Alphabet and Numbers. Elaina is excited to have her own school. We still need to work on making room in the schedule for a dedicated time but she loves it. She tends to be a bit of a perfectionist, though--she doesn't like to do it if she can't write it right.

Spelling: Tired of fighting with Hannah about spelling every day, we decided to go ahead and try Spellwell. A really good decision, I think. The words are easier and more relevant to her life. She has actually been feeling successful when she gets a 100% as she has the last couple weeks. I think the workbooks themselves are actually more challenging--the exercises they have her do are different day-to-day and week-to-week and they make her stretch her mind beyond just memorizing the spelling words. At first I wasn't sure how I felt about it since they did spend less time on the actual words, but she's being challenged in a good way and is happier to do her work and the results speak for themselves.

Gym: We decided that for physical education this winter we would try something other than the gym classes we've been taking at the Kroc. Starting in January Hannah and Grace would've been in separate classes which would have resulted in one of them sitting for an hour while the other did gym. They did not offer other classes for the appropriate ages during the gym time, so we opted to try ice skating instead. So far they really enjoying this. I am hopeful that they will really learn to enjoy this as we have a free rink a block from our house!

Family News:

Aside from being busy with school we've been busy with life since last I wrote here. We celebrated Thanksgiving, enjoyed a visit from Eric's family where we got to take a field trip to Heritage Hill (which the kids loved) with them, shared Christmas with my family, had our first family sledding adventure, celebrated a couple birthdays, enjoyed family nights and general winter hibernating! The girls got go attend a tour of the CP Center recently which was really educational for them. It also convinced me to pursue speech therapy for Sean so we'll see where that takes us.

Two Months in Pictures: