March

Maybe we'll just start doing a "monthly wrap up" as I don't seem to be able to remember to do this every week. We covered weeks 23-26. Lots of things happened in March that have kept us hopping!!

History: The last few weeks have been focusing on the events leading up to the Revolutionary War and then the war itself. We actually covered the events of the Revolution much more in-depth last year. This year was more of an overview, specifically focusing on stories of children during the time of the war. There was a lot of uncertainty for kids left behind while their brothers or fathers went to war. This week we studied George Washington, our first president, though we have been talking about him off and on for the last few weeks anyway.

History Reading: Hannah has been working on Five Smooth Stones which is the diary of a little girl during the Revolution.

Storytime: We have still been reading through Pagoo. We probably should have been done by now but it is often the thing that gets left on on a busy day! We are enjoying reading about the adventures of the little hermit crab Pagoo as he grows up.

Science: We've been booking it through the body! We've covered the nervous system, including the brain, spine and the five senses, the circulatory system including blood, heart,and muscles, digestive system including teeth and stomach, and finally the excretory system including kidneys and bladder. We are slowly working on coloring parts of the body and we will eventually glue them onto outlines of our bodies!

Field Trips: We've had a few field trips this month. We attended Charlotte's Web at the theater which the kids really enjoyed. We also went to a presentation on exotic animals...that includes animals like a boa constrictor, an African turtle (that grows up to 150 lbs!), two different types of lizards, and a cockatoo. The presenter was very informative and the kids enjoyed this a lot! We also got to visit Henning's Cheese where the kids got to watch them make cheese curds and then take a tour of the coolers. They enjoyed getting to sample the different types of cheeses made there and especially enjoyed the Blueberry cobbler variety!

Family News:
We are transitioning from Eric having a flexible position where hew as able to work at home and cover for me as often as needed for field trips to him having a new job where he will have to work in the office. This will ultimately be a good move for our family, but still a bit of an adjustment. We've also been spending a lot of time the last month working on our basement and preparing to have new carpet installed (thank you very much to our sassy cat who made it necessary). We are also getting ready for spring! Who isn't? We fled the house on the very first day above 50 of the year last weekend:

Can't wait until it is warm enough to do school on the deck and spend our afternoons cleaning up the yard!!

Week 21-22

I'm going to combine the next couple weeks just for the ease.

History: In week 21 we learned about the settlement of Detroit. We actually covered this last year so it was mainly review. For week 22 we've moved into Colonial history and we learned about Ben Franklin inventing the Franklin stove, along with the building of Fanueil Hall in Boston.

History Reading: Hannah finished up the book Growing Up In A New World and started The Scarlet Stocking Spy.

Storytime: We read Phoeby the Spy together, which is the story of a little girl who is employed in the house of General Washington in order to discover a plot to murder the general. It was a very interesting story and the girls enjoyed it. Week 22 we began the book from our nonfiction genre, Pagoo.

Science: We finished up the Respitory System with our study of the lungs and alveoli. Week 22 we moved into the study of the Nervous System beginning with the brain and reflexes. We took turn banging on each other's knees to watch our knees jerk up!

Reading: 
Grace moved into working through the book Reading Pathways. It seemed like the perfect fit since it works primarily on reading fluency. Grace spent one week working through the book and announced to Eric that she felt like she could really read now. And while she has a long way to go, I have noticed that she is suddenly attempting to read more things in everyday life.

Family News:
In between weeks 21 and 22, we took a vacation from school and work. We took a trip to Wisconsin Dells. And while it was a far cry from Florida, it was still nice to hibernate inside the resort for a few days and not have to face the cold winter weather!

 Enjoying the jacuzzi after a chilly walk back to the room from the waterpark.

They didn't want to go home!

At the end of this last week we had the blessing to celebrate Elaina's 5th birthday. She is a true joy and we enjoy her so much!

Week 20

This time I have a good excuse, I promise. I had two take a couple weeks while my computer was being updated and I had little access to my desktop or its pictures. But it is back and up and running now and so I can update on week 20.

History Reading: Hannah has been reading the book Growing Up In A New World which is just an overview of life in America.

History: This week we studied schools in early America.

Science: We have now moved into our study of the Respiratory System. Each system receives two weeks worth, so this week we studied breathing. We did an experiment where the girls found their resting breath rate, their mild activity rate, and then their active breath rate. They had a lot of fun doing jumping jacks until they had to do them for a straight 2 minutes!

Reading:  Hannah continues to work on reading Ginger Pye. This is a pretty long book so it will probably take her awhile. In her fun time she has started reading a series by E.D. Baker which is good to see since those books are closer to the 5th grade reading level and challenge her a bit more. She will sit for hours with her nose planted in a book, busy exploring another world.

Grace spent this week finishing up Hooked on Phonics. Apparently we had less left than I realized. She does really well reading the words during the lesson and also while watching the video. But when those words are put into paragraph form she finds it to be more of a struggle. I think after this we will just start working on fluency.

Gym: Still working on the ice skating. Hannah is thriving and really taking to the ice. She's able to skate a little bit by herself now and she's growing in confidence. Grace isn't enjoying it quite as much. She finds that her feet get cold and she's chilled easily. I've wondered if a bigger pair of skates wouldn't work so that she could put some thermal socks on.

Family News:
This week was the Daddy/Daughter dance. The girls look forward to this all year. It is the event for them. Eric takes them out to dinner and then they go to the dance. Next year Elaina will be old enough to attend and then it will be just Mommy and Sean left at home.

Catching Up

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: 

 Thanksgiving

 Sledding

Elaina and Uncle Calvin heading down the trail.

Heading Home

Moving Into a Big Boy Bed!

 9 years old!!

Family Workout Night (Sean was working out before he pulled up a chair!)

Family Movie Night

Eric's Birthday

Enjoying Daddy's Birthday Cheesecake!

That about sums it up! Looking forward to the next month--we're one month nearer to spring!!

Weeks Eight & Nine

Falling behind yet again...we've been busy!

History: The Pilgrims have finally arrived in America! Of course they didn't find Plymouth Rock straight off the bat. They had actually intended to land further south and so were not prepared for the cold and it took them awhile to locate a place that provided all the things they needed. We have not yet covered them actually settling, that will come next week.

Hannah is reading through the book "Our America...The Pilgrim Adventure" for her history extension reading. She's enjoying it so far. It is a story of a twin boy and girl who have to travel through time to save their parents who are lost in time. And, of course, they wind up with the Pilgrims. 

 

Science: We covered the Amazon rainforest. Sloths an toucans were the focus. The next week we covered frogs and butterflies and their differing processes of metamorphosis.

Reading: Hannah began to read "Charlotte's Web". Her last two reading books have been Pilgrim-themed so she was ready for a change. It seems like she has been enjoying the book so far.


Grace moved back into her First Start Reading curriculm from last year. We had completed most of it last year but left the last book for later as she was struggling with it at the time. But she is breezing right through it now. She's still got a way to go before she's really reading on her own but she is so much closer. She really loves this curriculum as it allows her to draw a picture of the story she just read, illustrating her own story. She gets so excited and makes such detailed drawings.

The other subject under discussion lately has been spelling.  I believe we are going to make a switch soon. We are currently doing Christian Liberty Press's spelling program but we are finding that the words are difficult for Hannah and she is not retaining them very well. So I think we're going to try something else.

Field Trip: We got to go to a field trip to the Barlow Planetarium and Weis Earth Science Museum. Eric actually was able to accompany us so he took Hannah and Sean on the older child field trip while I took Grace and Elaina on the younger. Much of the material was lost on the younger girls but apparently Hannah loved it. That is not surprising since Hannah likes science. Grace leaned over half way and whispered that she was bored. Fortunately for her shortly after that they started to play "mind games" with the kids and put a roller coaster up on the screen and explained how our eyes can interpret movement even if we are not moving. The kids loved that--I closed my eyes! Elaina laughed and squealed--it was too precious! She kept saying "How are they moving me?!" It was a concept lost on her!

Weeks Six & Seven

What a hectic couple of weeks! I decided to cheat a little and combine two weeks into one post because, really, that's what they were. We knew that Eric would be gone last week and that my parents were coming down to help us with a work project, and so we worked ahead the week before so that I would be free to help with the work project and not have to worry about history and science (which I sit and read aloud to them).

And it was worth it! We worked on our kitchen and we love it. And even though the girls still had to do all their other subjects they still had plenty of down time.

History: We studied how the Pilgrims came to make the decision about moving to America. I did not realize that they had lived in Holland for twelve years before they made the decision to America. I don't know that I ever understood their reasons for coming to America other than wanting the freedom to worship as they pleased--and while that is true, it was also that they did not like to see their children essentially becoming Dutch and losing their English roots.

Science: This week our Sassafras studies took us to Canada where we studied the farm habitat. We focused primarily on cows, chickens, honey bees, and spiders. I wasn't sure how I felt about this science when we began it but I really like it now. I decided to begin a binder for each of the girls and they can compile each animals picture and their projects. I like to be able to see progress!

Reading: Hannah is finishing up her pilgrim adventure book finally. We did have to do some remedial work on her Reading Comprehension assignment this week. She was rather dismayed when I read her answers and burst out laughing. The questions were something like "What makes tornadoes so dangerous?" She is supposed to read the story about tornadoes and answer the question. Which she did. But she simply wrote "It sucks". And that was it. Oh, dear...so she will have to redo that assignment!

For Grace she is still working through her Bob books but since we moved into the Word families book (which focuses on similar sounds like start, bart, mark, car, barb, etc). She fails to see the connection between the words and instead gets hung up on how long they are. I think we'll be trying something different next week...with Grace I feel like it always two steps forward and one step back...we make forward progress but it is always followed by some backward progress. I do not enjoy teaching beginning reading...it is a very challenging prospect!

Next week life should return to normal and Eric doesn't have any more trips scheduled that we are aware of. I am ready for a little bit of normalcy in our homeschooling. And the Pilgrims are finally boarding the Mayflower so woohoo, adventures to come!

Week Five

I'm getting a little behind already! So this week I'm going to combine two weeks into one...and technically speaking "week 5" is still an accurate title because according to our Heart of Dakota curriculum we are on week 5 (though actually week 6 of school).

We took a "light" week which is usually a good way of letting Mommy refresh. The girls continue with math and reading and quite often we do "catch up" for any projects we may have not had time for in the previous week. But we don't do our full curriculum which means no history, science, art, etc. I try to do this every 6-7 weeks though it was earlier this time.

We started our week with a camping trip at Peninsula State Park...a "living field trip"? It was a good time for our entire family as we got to spend time in God's wonderful world and explore nature a bit. The girls took a rigorous hike one day that they thoroughly enjoyed though we were all a bit surprised that they did so well with it.

 Eric and Sean getting ready to hike!

 

The girls enjoying the scenic view of Lake Michigan. I do not know why Hannah looks so unenthusiastic

On our way home we stopped and took in a corn maze. The kids loved that--they'd never been in one before!.

Unfortunately the rest of our week wasn't any less busy--this week was truly a pathetic attempt at a "light week". We did get some math and reading accomplished--but not much. And that's okay--so long as we get our 34 weeks of "full weeks" in we are fine-the light weeks are just there for my sanity but certainly not for necessity.

We took a couple days to have a rummage sale with some other homeschooling friends. The girls did help sell cookies at the sale so I suppose that counts as economics?

Week 5 (per HOD) was a lot busier.

History: We continued to study the Pilgrims' stay in Holland. Life was very different for them in Holland vs. England and so we've been reading about the many ways this was true.

Science: We continued our study of the desert habitat. We studied cobras and spiny lizards. 

Bible: This week we worked on memorizing  Psalms 139:13-14 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;your works are wonderful,I know that full well. The girls are not very good at memorizing but we work on it everyday nevertheless!

Field Trip: This week we enjoyed a trip to Little Farmer Apple Orchard. It was a very fun field trip. The kids got to learn about how bees pollinate the apples and more about the honeybee itself including watching an active hive. They learned about pests and then got to walk into a giant cooler and see how they store, clean, and sort the apples. This was followed by picking their own apple and a hayride to pick their pumpkin. They even got to enjoy caramel apples on the way home--with sprinkles, score!

 

And that was the highlight of our week! Next week we prepare for Daddy to be away for work again the following week so we are going to work ahead so that we can do some fun things while he's gone and not sacrifice school to do them! It will mean a busier week but it will be worth it!