learning together: AOY3 // AOY0 {week 4}

ok, i know i just got started posting these weekly school roundups and i already skipped one week.  i have no good excuse except that life happens.  on the plus side, there's not really a whole lot you'd miss in one week.  we try to stick to a routine, and these weekly roundups are really for my records so i know these posts aren't very exciting to read.  

maybe one of these days i'll write a nice narrative about our typical week of learning.  one of these days...

EMMA

history (books in brackets):

emma read about france explorers who sailed to the new world, and settled for a little while in florida [this country of ours].  this was an interesting read, particularly because the topic of cannibalism came up at the end of the reading (don't worry, it wasn't graphic).  the french explorers who had settled in florida pretty much didn't want to hang out there anymore (because their captain never returned as he had promised), so they decided to build their own boat to sail back to france.  you can guess how well that turned out...and out of desperation they drew straws to see who would be, umm, dinner.

and then there was king henry and his 6 wives [our island story].  she did very well on her narration, and we had some good discussions on king henry's character. emma was not overly impressed by king henry's choices from this section of reading, and thought he was kind of a selfish guy.

natural history/science:

emma read chapter 4 in Pagoo, and i had her list 4 facts about a hermit crab that she learned from her reading.  she loves that book, so that comprehension activity was pretty easy for her.  but i love that she's excited about her school books, and that she's read the whole thing through already yet is willing to re-read it a little bit at a time for school.

language arts:

i ordered a print practice and cursive practice book for emma through handwriting without tears.  i decided to order the 2nd grade print book for her as a quick refresher course on print writing.  we're breezing through it (she even likes to do extra pages), so we'll be starting cursive soon enough!

emma's been alternating between doing the HWT print book and copywork from her copywork notebook.  her print writing has actually improved just from a few weeks of doing the HWT book.

this year, i doubled the number of spelling words emma has each week.  we are on the second week of spelling, and still using mcguffey's eclectic spelling book to source the weekly word list.  this weeks words are belt, deer, dear, whine, wine, quite, quiet, bear, bare, beer.  we discussed the "qu" sounds, letters that make the long e and the long i sounds, and rule-breaker words for the long e sounds (a.k.a. jail words). 

math:

emma did a couple more chapters from her life of fred book, and i two worksheets from homeschoolmath.net focusing on solving for missing addends and place values (larger numbers).

poetry and literature:

we have been lagging in our daily poem readings.  i suppose i can just have emma read one to herself, but i do enjoy reading it to her.  plus, they're pretty short, and reading them together gives us an opportunity to discuss the poem together afterwards.

she read about pecos bill from her american tall tales book.  i had her tell me 5 questions she would ask pecos bill if she were to interview him.  i wish i had written down the questions, because they were pretty creative, and showed that she understood the reading well.  she also went on and narrated many parts of the story...i think she enjoyed learning about pecos bill.

she read chapters 10 and 11 for the week in The Princess And The Goblin.  she was looking forward to reading more, but we had a pretty busy week so there didn't end up being enough time to read ahead.

she read the mechant of venice from the book Tales From Shakespeare.  she narrated pretty well, but had difficulty remembering everything that happened.  the story was pretty long, and i should have had her spread it out over a few days.  that would have made more sense, and she would have retained more of the reading that way.  oh well.  next time!

ballet (p.e./performing arts):

things are going well, from what emma has told me, and she's halfway done with her 7 week session.  the studio is on the upper level, so there isn't really any space for parents to watch, and i don't think they really like parents peeking either.  i don't blame them.  i usually didn't care for having parents watch during class time, because it can get distracting for the students.  according to emma's latest class update, they practiced tendus, and "ballet" skips (a.k.a. skipping with pointed feet).  she has made a sweet little friend in class, and i'm hoping that they can stay in the same class for the new session.  

GIBSON

so, our printer head for the black ink is a little mucked up, and i couldn't print out the sheets to make his letter of the week notebook page.  booo.

fortunately, that didn't hold us back.  gibson continued a few more pages in his HWT print book.  like emma, he is really enjoying doing his handwriting practice.  the HWT books are different from the typical handwriting books i've seen, and the kids love it.

we also did a little math.  nothing big, just adding some numbers with 10 as the highest sum.  gibson started adding numbers before he could write them, and i came across the best idea online (i wish i could remember which blog it was i saw it on) to encourage kids who can add, but haven't quite mastered writing them yet.  i use little round stickers with the answer to individual addition problems written in each sticker.  all gibson has to do is find the correct number that matches the answer to the addition problem and stick in the blank.  that way, they're not slowed down (or discouraged) by their lack of mastery in writing the numbers.  it's a pretty brilliant idea.

CASH and LANI

these two babies are going to end up starting school at the same time.  they do well playing on their own most days, and sometimes they'll want to join in with big brother and sister so they'll pull out some papers to draw or a coloring book to color in.

lani thinks she can use scissors, so she sneaks in my room and digs around in the school supply box until she can find the scissors to cut things.  so far, she's been trying to cut just paper.  i'm hoping that's as far as she goes right now, and doesn't move on to cutting hair!

ALL KIDS

bible:

this week, we read from Luke 2:1-40, Exodus 2:11-16, Acts 7:23-34, and Hebrews 11:24-28.

our memory verse for the week was Genesis 2:7, and since we're using this system for scripture memorization we also review memory verses from previous weeks.

french:

i've been trying to make sure we do french at least 3 times a week, and we managed to fit a french lesson 4 times this week (we were out and about more than usual this week, and that pimsleur audio cd really came in handy).  some new and old words/phrases that stood out this week include j'e vais bien, comment allez-vous?, tres bien, chaud, merci, bonjour, quest-ce que c'est?

nature walk:

i kept lessons short on thursday, and we spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon exploring volunteer park.  there was some drizzling involved in our stroll, but the kids were totally excited about it because they got to use their umbrellas (which the boys sometimes turned into weapons *ahem*).  the park is quite big, with plenty of places to explore.  i will have to save a more detailed post about volunteer park for next time.

we also took some time to check out the park's conservatory, modeled after a victorian area glass greenhouse.  the building reminded us of the book misss rumphius, which is currently one of the children's favorite books (it was one of mine when i was a kid).  it was actually really neat to come home and look at the illustration of the conservatory in miss rumphius, after experiencing a real-life conservatory.

inside the conservatory, we had the opportunity to observe plants that aren't commonly seen here in the PNW - many unique, tropical plants that thrive best on year-round warm, humid conditions.

it was an excellent nature day.  sometimes, all we need to refresh us is some good, quality time outside, with freedom to explore, run, and experience at your own pace.  i'm glad we played hookie that day!

learning together: AOY3 // AOY0 {week 2}

EMMA

history (books in brackets):

emma was introduced to the Spanish explorers Ponce de Leon, Hernando de Soto, Hernando Cortes, and Pizzaro [child's history of the world], and their discoveries in the new world. we reviewed the places discovered on the map, and also identified some of the native peoples that were already inhabiting those areas (aztecs, incas and maya peoples).

i am still behind in getting things ready for emma's improved timeline.  i'm mostly trying to gather some pictures of people we read about last year, and pinpointing the dates.  i'm not going to print out a picture for every single person we read about last year, just a handful is enough, i think.

geography:

emma read another chunk from marco polo.  according to her narration, marco polo has been introduced in the story as a boy.  i found she was a little distracted during her narration, but maybe it was because i had her do this while we were waiting for gibson's swim class to be done.  next time, i think i'll save this reading for when we aren't going places.

i couldn't resist throwing in a few episodes from travel with kids this week.  they had a couple of episodes in mexico, and one in peru, which tied in nicely to what emma had read in history about the spaniards discovering mexico and peru, and the aztecs, incas and maya peoples.

emma and i had a brief discussion on latitude and longitude lines as we were finding the places the spaniards discovered on the map.  we also talked briefly about time zones, the prime meridian and the equator.  i'm thinking that the next time we buy an orange, i can tie in the discussion on latitude and longitude lines somehow.

natural history/science:

this week's cultivated crop was the pumpkin.  we managed to harvest 1 pumpkin from our little garden, before the rest of the pumpkin leaves got taken over by powdery mildew. boohoo.  this week, emma decided to use the oil pastels to do her drawing, and taped a leaf sample in her nature journal.  she also recorded 5 things she observed from the pumpkin plant.  side note: i only asked for 1-3 observations to record, but she had "too many, so how about 5?" ha!

pagoo came in during the end of week 2, and just as i thought, we are already caught up for week 3.  emma is in love with the story of pagoo the little hermit crab, and reading 2 chapters worth didn't take long.  she also enjoyed narrating what she read, and was very detailed.  you can tell she really likes this book.  i'm looking forward to visiting the beach and the aquarium to observe the tide pools (again), so i can tie in what she's learning from pagoo with real life experiences.

copywork:

it's worth to note this week, that emma did copywork all 5 days.  i ordered the 2nd grade level handwriting without tears workbook for her, and we will alternate between that and regular copywork once the workbook comes in.  she has legible penmanship, but it's been kind of sloppy these past few weeks.  i'm not sure why.  so, i think it's worth investing some extra time to re-examine the basics again.  she'll be starting cursive this year as well, so i'd like her to have a good hold on print writing before she takes on cursive.

math:

emma did another two days of review, which included telling time and putting larger numbers in numerical order.

her life of fred book came in at the end of week 2, and she immediately planted herself on the chair and began reading. she won't officially start the book until this week (week 3), but she likes to read it for the story. have i mentioned how i love life of fred books? i love how the book incorporates math concepts within a fun to read story, and that students have the opportunity to do all the lessons in the book independently.

poetry:

we did better in week 2, and emma read 1 poem each day. on one of the days, we had a great discussion about race, martin luther king, junior, biracial parents (and mixed kids), and how God made each one of us unique, after reading a poem titled "the little black boy." it's moments like those, that are like an encouragement for my heart.  teachable moments can happen at any time, and i'm so glad i get to be a part of it.

literature:

emma read chapters 7-9 from princess and the goblin, and narrated what she read with ease.  did i already mention that she has fallen in love with this book.  i'm pretty sure she's going to go back and re-read this story again, kind of like what she did with the book, the little duke (part of her history reading from last year).

i forgot to mention from week 1, that emma will be continuing pilgrim's progress by john bunyan this year.  it's a lengthy and heavy (in the figurative sense) book, and the kids aren't expected to finish it in one year.  we do an audio version of this book, and she listens to about 10-15 minutes of it each week. i'm actually pretty surprised by how much she understands, but i think it's been helpful to take it in very small chunks.

ballet (p.e./performing arts):

emma started her first week in ballet.  she's actually going to the studio where i sometimes used to take class when i was in college.  it's a funny feeling to come back as a parent and not as a student.

she's now past the pre-ballet age, and she's at the age where a little bit more formal ballet training will be starting.  she had a great first class, and said that it wasn't all review for her (that's a good).

GIBSON

this week's letter is the letter "j." he completed the "j" notebook page to add to his alphabet binder, and he practiced writing both the upper case and lower case "j." i ordered him the kindergarten level of the handwriting without tears workbook, so i can keep all his letter printing practice in one place.  i also like the handwriting without tears method (though we're only using the workbooks at home...no slates, right now), and the lessons are short and simple.

the workbooks have kind of gone by the wayside, and gibson has shifted much of his attention to drawing and coloring. but he did do one activity, which had him identify pictures with a "j" sound.  he seemed to enjoy that one, and actually did pretty well.  i was surprised, because i haven't spent much individual time with him working on letter sounds aside from when he's working on his notebook page.    there was something i read in charlotte mason's volume on home education that talked about how a child will retain whatever information they feel is important to them at that time (isn't that still true for adults too, though?), and that they will naturally make their own connections.  i feel like that idea can be illustrated in how gibson managed to automatically know how the letter "j" sounds like.  i didn't need to spend any extra time working with him on letter sounds, because he was making connections in his head about all these things.

gibson started his first week of swimming class.  despite his sometimes shy disposition, he was not at all shy about being in a new class environment, and happily participated in class.

CASH and LANI

these two "worked" on their letter j coloring sheet, and a dot sheet with pictures that started with the letter "j."  sheets were sourced here and here.

cash has been really into drawing things too, just like gibson.  and his drawings have started going beyond the regular crazy scribbles.  there are specific stories/things/creatures in his drawings, and it's so cute to listen to him explain it to me.

ALL KIDS

bible:

we read exodus 2:1-10, Acts 7:17-22 and Luke 1:26-45.  i printed out a few activity sheets for the kids to do while listening to the scripture reading, but they were more into playing with legos which worked fine too.

memory verse:

our memory verse was genesis 1:27. we are using this system for scripture memorization so we also reviewed last week's memory verse on the odd days.  i am really liking this method of memorization.  it's simple and only takes 5 minutes a day (at the most) to do...which means i'm more likely to do it consistently.

nature walk:

we had a very enjoyable walk/bike ride around our neighborhood this week.  while it was not a nature walk, per se, it was nice to be outside, breathing in the fresh air, seeing the lake and some of the mountains.

we also spent saturday exploring a couple of local farms, which tied in perfectly with this term's nature study them of cultivated crops (that will be saved for a later post).  i love when i don't have to plan things, and they just kind of fall into place.

we also spent some time playing in the beach, and taking a quick stroll while we waited for emma to finish ballet class.  there was lots of sand playing, climbing and running.

french:

we did some lessons from muzzy on our home days, and the pimsleur CD on our "errands/outing" days (we've "graduated" to lesson 2...woohoo!).  words and terms we learned this week (that the kids actually retained!): "qu'est-ce que c'est," "c'est une ___," "bonjour," "est-ce que vous ette american," "merci," "mademoiselle," "oui," "comment allez-vous."

hymn/folksong:

our hymn for the week was actually one we've sang at church, so the kids recognized it immediately: "abide with me" by henry francis lyte.

our folksong this week was "barbara allen," an american folk song, which (from what i read) originated in England and brought over to america early european settlers.  the kids don't seem too interested in this one.  maybe it's because it's a ballad?  i don't know.  i play it daily, but they're just not into this one.

we had a very full week with gibson and emma starting extra-curricular lessons.  i'm sure it will be even more busy once emma starts swimming class again in october.  i will be looking forward to our month long school break in december!

learning together: a new school year (AOY3 and AOY0)

so i've done a horrible job following through on my plan of posting a weekly school recap this past school year.  yes, there was that whole moving across the country thing, but really, that's not an excuse.

with a new school year starting this week, i think it's a good time to reattempt that plan.  the recap's mostly for me.  if i do this consistently, i'm hoping to have a nice record of what we've done for the year.  we'll, though.  we'll see.

we're still following the charlotte mason method (please look here if you're curious about what that is), and will be using the ambleside online curriculum again.  emma will be in year 3, and i'm planning on introducing gibson to year 0 (which he'll be in through part of age 6, or maybe longer if needed).  as a side note, each year doesn't necessarily correspond to grade levels.  if i recall correctly, completing year 10 (the curriculum goes up to year 12) is actually sufficient for high school graduation.

okay, here's a review of what we did for the first week of school...

EMMA

if you're curious to see what year 3 will hold, you can go here and check out the booklist. i tried to keep it a little lighter for the first week back to our school schedule, so we skipped spelling, and only did 2 days worth of copywork (as opposed to 4 days).

history (books in brackets):

she was introduced to henry VIII [our island story], some of the post columbus explorers, including magellan [child's history of the world], martin luther [trial and triumph], and john cabot [this country of ours]. she will also be learning about leonardo da vinci, but i haven't gotten the book yet. we also traced the journey of the ship victoria (the only one of magellan's ships, and the first ship ever, to sail around the world) on our wall map, and found the location of where john cabot possibly landed in north america (either cape breton or the coast of labrador in canada, if you were wondering).  she chose to do oral narrations for all the readings, and was pretty thorough with all of them.

i also did a complete overhaul of her timeline binder.  i was doing terrible at helping her keep up with it, partly because it was so time consuming for me to prepare all the things necessary for her weekly timeline updates. as it turns out, i was making things way more complicated than they needed to be. ha! after doing some research on how charlotte mason actually had her students complete their timeline, i decided to start over.  there will be some catch-up involved, but since the timeline is actually quite simple, i don't think it will be long until we're up to speed.

geography:

she began reading the book marco polo by george makepeace towle, which took her to the city of venice.  again, she chose to do an oral narration of her reading.  we also watched the travel with kids: venice episode, to give her more of an idea what the city was like.  side note: we LOVE the travel with kids show!  it gets us all (as a family) excited to travel and explore the world.  it's aired on some pbs stations, but you can also find episodes on hulu and amazon prime.  sadly, our local pbs stations don't air travel with kids so we often use hulu and amazon to watch them.

natural history/science:

much of the nature study stuff will be covered a little bit further down, since we often do nature studies as a family. she also has the book pagoo to read for the next 2 terms, but i haven't gotten the book yet.  emma is a voracious reader, so i'm not too worried about being behind on some of the reading.  many of holling c. holling's books have short chapters, so i'm pretty sure she can catch up quite easily.

copywork:

i probably won't include updates for copywork every week, since it's pretty straight forward.  i'm trying something different this year, and giving her a comp notebook which will have all her copywork in it.  this week's copywork were excerpts from one of her literature books and a poem from her poetry schedule.

math:

she did 2 days of math this week, and it was a review of telling time. i'll be doing 1 more week of review, and then she'll be starting the next life of fred book.

poetry:

for term 1 (12 weeks), she will be reading poems by william blake once a day.  she only did one poem this week, which was untitled, but about the pied piper.  poetry is pretty straightforward as well. just read one a day!

literature:

she read part 1 from the heroes by charles kingsley, and chapters 1-6 from the princess and the goblin.  for the heroes' narration, i had her write out 5 questions she would ask on a test about this part of the book.  for the princess and the goblin, she verbally narrated chapters 1-5 (narration after every chapter...this wasn't done all in one day, by the way), and sketched out a scene from chapter 6.  she is totally loving this book, and asked to read more. this week's schedule only has her reading chapters 1-3, but if she's asking for more, why not?  and it always feels good to be ahead of schedule.

GIBSON

you can go here and check out what year 0 looks like.  it's actually pretty low-key. in these early years, and there is more focus on helping the child discover the world around him naturally. i think by providing many opportunities for kids to this, especially in their early years, helps prepare them for more formal learning in year 1.  what this looks like for gibs: plenty of time for play, but providing opportunities for more formal learning (i like using the term table work), when i see him express an interest. compared to last year, he has shown an increased desire in doing more formal learning, though i still try to keep it short.

we're continuing our letter of the week theme, and adding pages to his alphabet binder.  i use the alphabet lapbook print outs from here.  they're pretty simple, and only take one up one page.  this week's letter is the letter "G."  he was totally stoked, because (obviously) his name starts with a "G."  he completed his G notebook page to add to his alphabet binder, and practiced writing his upper and lower case Gs.

i didn't plan much for him this week (and i may not need to for the rest of the month), since he's been happy to work out of some workbooks i got him a while ago.  there have been many mornings where i've seen him working out of one of his workbooks (i got him 3) without any prompting.  it's pretty neat to see his interest in them naturally develop.  not that all kids will develop a natural interest in doing workbooks for fun.  i personally think it's genetic...i was that kid who really enjoyed doing workbooks.

CASH and LANI

these two love to be a part of "doing school." while lani is happy to have markers and a sheet of paper to draw on, cash sometimes will insist on getting his own worksheet.  much like last year, i used a "worksheet" from here, and i corresponded the print out to the letter gibson was learning for the week.  cash also enjoys cutting and gluing things, and both cash and lani like to use stickers.  LOTS of stickers.  they're definitely working those fine motor skills.  i have a feeling that i'll probably end up having these two start school at the same time, since they're so close in age.

ALL THE KIDS

bible:

this week we read from exodus chapter 1, and did a short discussion on the reading.  sometimes, i'll have emma do a worksheet to go along with the reading, but since she's already familiar with the chapter, i didn't think it was necessary.

memory verse:

this week's memory verse is genesis 1:1.  i'm trying something new with verse memorization this year, and implementing this system.  we have been fairly inconsistent the past few years in verse memorization, and that's really my fault.  i don't think i had a good system, and i was inconsistent in having us review the verse every day (probably because i didn't have a good system!).

nature study/walk:

we are going to try and follow ambleside online's nature study schedule, plus a weekly, weather permitting, nature walk.  for the fall, AO has cultivated crops on their nature study schedule, and this week's crop was the green bean.  emma did a lovely sketch and watercolor of some the handful of green beans we harvested from the garden.  and then that night, we cooked them for dinner! we'll probably focus on as many crops from our garden first, and then continue to things we find at the grocery store.

we went to seahurst park for our nature walk this week.  heading to the beach is one of our kids' favorite things to do, and thanks to some amazing weather, we were able to do a pleasant stroll along the water.

french:

we're using the pimsleur language program to learn conversational french, and a free, online language course through our public library called muzzy.  like last year, we listen to the pimsleur cds in our car when we're running errands, and watch a few video lessons from muzzy on our home days (a.k.a. the days we don't need to use the car in the morning).  this week, was review since i did not do any french lessons over the summer.

composer study:

for term 1, we will be listening to music by hildegard von bingen.  this week and the next, we're listening to antiphon, o quam mirabilis.  this music sounded much different from the music we studied last year.  emma observed that there were no instruments, just a voice singing, but it didn't feel like you were just listening to a singing voice.

aaaannnd...that's a wrap! thanks for hanging out until the end!

learning together: W16Y01 and Y0

tax season! tax season! this means i'm gonna give you a rundown of week 16 as quickly as possible.  if you noticed, i added year 0 to the title for gibson.  he has been so responsive to learning letters and doing copywork these past weeks that i think it's time we make it "official."

you can go here to find out what year 0 is all about, and here to check out the booklist. we've read many of the books on this list (though there are still more we have yet to read), and all the kids enjoy listening to the stories.

bible:

we read 1 samuel 31 and emma tried her hand at a crossword puzzle (lesson 81 from the calvary curriculum site) for the first time.

our scripture memory verse was john 3:16.  this was easy-peasy for emma since we've had this as our memory verse before.  but reviewing it was nice, because it gave gibson a chance to try and memorize it.  we also watched the rizers video for this particular verse and the kids liked it a lot.

french:

the kids watched lessons 1-3 from youlearnfrench on youtube.  bonjour!

language arts:

copywork for emma was our memory verse for 1 day and an excerpt from the poem us two by a. a. milne for 2 days.

we went through mcguffey lessons 57 and 60.

spelling words this week were on, ox, lot, got and snot (this one got a laugh).  we only spent 3 days on these words.

similar to emma's letter of the month when she was younger, i will be doing a letter a week for gibson.  all of his activity sheets pertaining to that letter will be kept in a folder for easy access, and to allow him to work independently if he chooses to.

this week we did the letter g (i plan on going through all the letters in his name).  i'm primarily using these sites to put his folder together: tot school printables (also for cash when he wants to join in), raising rockstars and homeschool creations.

he has been so into doing his own school and wanting to trace and learn his letters.  i love it. and i'm thankful that this transition was low-key and painless (which i think it should be).  it was just 6 months (or so) ago that he was uninterested in learning letters or numbers...it's funny to see the change.

math:

we are almost done with the life of fred book so we only did one chapter (17)  this week to stretch it out longer.

history:

we read hengist's treachery from our island story.  new vocab word: treachery.  i forgot to read inchcape rock from fifty famous stories so that will have to be tacked on to week 17.

art and music study were the same as last week's.

literature:

we read the leap at rhodes and the wild boar and the fox from the aesop for children.  the kids listened to the sing-song of old man kangaroo from just so stories.  from beautiful stories from shakespeare we read as you like it.

we didn't read any poems from a. a. milne's book because emma had misplaced it somewhere.  we found it in the car hidden underneath a bunch of stuff on sunday.  yay!

science/nature study:

mammal of the week was a pig.  we read over some brief information about domestic and wild pigs, and emma drew her rendition of a domesticated piggy.  oink, oink.

we read peter learns something about spooky from the burgess bird book, and looked up some information about screech owls.  we listened to their sound and watched a couple of short video clips on them.

life skill:

emma continues to be a natural helper (for the most part) around the house.  she has been promoted to putting away the clean plates from the dishwasher so that gibson can take over her old job of putting away utensils.  now i just have to make sure to give them more opportunities to practice their new skills.

other things:

it snowed last week so the kids had some time enjoying the snow.

inside the kids busied themselves with books, games, and playing together and independently.

cash has been wanting to join in the table work fun, so i've been giving him his own sheet to complete. i think he is quite proud of his work.

more next week!  a bientot!

learning together: W15Y01

so it looks like the next few weekly updates are going to have to be a condensed version.  i'm preparing to do our tax return, and it is impossible to do that and maintain these updates on top of all the other stuff we have going.  i also like to have a clean home and clean clothes to wear every once in a while, so it's time for me to prioritize, friends.  once our tax returns are done, there will be plenty of words added back to these posts.

but before i start, let me just say our week started off like this...

bible:

we read through 1 samuel 23:14-24:22.  our memory verse for the week was from psalm 25:4-5.

french:

we went through youlearnfrench lessons 1-3.  it was very cute listening to the kids repeating back the words in french.

language arts:

emma did 3 days of copywork from our memory verse. spelling words for the week were is, sip, tip, lip, slip.  we only did them for 3 days.  in mcguffey's first reader we did lessons 47 and 55.

gibson did his own "copywork" again.  i think i'll probably start him on a little bit of daily table work pretty soon.  he seems ready for it (as long as it's not too long).

i cannot recall what she did for her free reading...she read a whole lot of books though.  a.lot.

math:

we did life of fred chapters 15 and 16.

we had a good discussion on pricing products, which stemmed from her plans of opening up a shop where she was going to sell bookmarks.  we discussed how to price items in groups versus just a single item.

we also had a brief discussion on sale and clearance prices during our trip to target, and why stores do that.

history:

we read whitington and his cat from fifty famous stories retold over the course of 2 days.

emma worked on her timeline and we are caught up to week 14.

art study:

jacob van ruisdael's view of haarlem with bleaching grounds, circa 1665.

music appreciation:

we're still on passion of st. matthew, and i still can't get into this one...pretty intense and lengthy piece of work.

geography:

no paddle again, but as emma was doing her timeline we used the atlas to locate some of the countries mentioned.

literature:

we read the ass and the load of salt and the lion and the gnat from the aesop for children.  then we read prince hyacinth and the dear little princess from the blue fairy book, which i spread out over two days.

science/nature study:

the mammal of the week was a horse.  emma filled out the basic information sheet, which listed the horse's habitat, diet and an interesting fact (or facts), and did her best drawing of a horse in her nature journal.

life skill:

i had her address a package i am planning to send out to salty not sweet.  now we just have to purchase postage and stick it in the mail.

other things:

there was snow this week, so the kids played in it quite a few times.

the boys and emma built themselves a "house" in the corner of the dining room.  they shoved that house full of stuff...all essential things for the home, of course.

the older two continue to do well in habitually taking their plates to the kitchen once they're done eating.  i have even caught cash putting his cup in the sink once he's done with it.  clean up after play has been going well too, and it's nice to see them working together as a team to get it done.  i'm highlighting these things in this post, because i feel that these are important habits to develop which will be helpful for them down the road as they get older.

the boys found the jar of coins and really enjoyed dumping them out and putting them back in.  i did some coin ID with gibson while he was putting them back in the jar, but it didn't last too long.

that's it from our schoolhouse!

learning together: W14Y01

did i already say how nice it feels to get back into our routine?  AND we bought more black printer ink (thanks, ibu for the staples gift card) so that we can continue forward with our art study for week 15.  yeah!

bible:

we read through 1 Samuel 20 over the course of a few days, using lesson 80 from the calvary curriculum site.  both gibson and emma did the coloring sheet, and emma did the fill-in-the blank sheet at the end of the week.  in case anyone cares, we use the esv translation for reading the passages.  the kids do quite well following along, though we do need to stop after about 10-20 verses and have emma (or sometimes it's me) narrate. 

our memory verse for the week was from deuteronomy 31:6.  now that gibson is in the same class as emma on sunday (sniff, sniff...my boy is getting big), we have been reciting it orally more often than usual.  i like that, since it helps memorize the scripture too.

french:

we will be using this free site i came across to learn some basic french.  i like that it's just audio, but it does show the words/phrases used on the screen.  since emma can read already, she is able to see the word while hearing it being pronounced at the same time.  we went through lesson 3 for the week, and then i tried using some of the words and phrases here and there through out the week.

language arts:

for copywork, we did 2 days of our memory verse and 1 day of the poem a thought by a.a. milne (it would have been 2 days, but the printer ran out of ink).

we went through lessons 40 and 41 in mcguffey and discussed some sight words, words that have "ight," "ould,"and how to add "ing" to words like "bike," "hike," etc..  i think i'll be skipping quite a bit ahead for the next few weeks and finish out this book.  i'd like to move on the the second reader soon.

spelling words for the week were sent, went, melt, felt, and belt.  emma did well spelling out the words so we only did 4 days of practice.  i've been using each of the words in a sentence, and emma and gibson will occasionally join in and do their own versions. 

science/nature study:

our mammal for the week was a squirrel.  we didn't do anything too fancy-schmancy with our mammal.  i printed out a simple fact sheet i made up on the computer (i'll have to post it in case anyone cares to use it too) so that she could record some basic information she gathered about squirrels.  we also watched a couple of videos on squirrels.  one was about the flying squirrel and the other was about a white squirrel (i can't find the one we watched for some reason).

i found a few pictures of squirrels on my phone to help emma draw a picture of one in her nature journal.  she finally decided on one of a red squirrel.  we also talked about the squirrels that we've seen in our backyard, and she came to the conclusion that those ones were more likely gray squirrels than the red variety.

math:

we did fred chapters 13 and 14 this week.  i am drawing a blank at what we read through right now...i know there was adding two numbers to make 9 and discussion on orthogonal lines, but i can't remember what else!  i do know that we didn't need to supplement on anything since emma did well with the lessons.

history:

we had a lot of history reading this week, but i finally managed to sort of catch up on the timeline.  i finally got up to week 13 finished and all we have to do is cut and paste in emma's timeline/book of centuries.

we read the story of the coming of hengist and horsa from our island story.  it tells about vortigern (who was now king of the britons) calling on the germans for help and the arrival of the saxons around 400 AD.  i thought this story was a bit more challenging for emma to narrate.  i think it may be due to the story itself.  personally, it was not one of the more exciting stories we've read so even i didn't retain a whole lot of it either.

we read the black douglas from fifty famous stories retold.  that one was a bit more exciting, and told the story of james douglas, a good friend of robert the bruce.  narration was much easier for emma after this one, although i did break it up into 2 chunks to make it more digestible :).

last, we read about athanasius from trial and triumph.  this one was a good story, but another challenging narration.  i did have her do short narrations after a few paragraphs or so, but for some reason it was still challenging for her to narrate parts of it.  maybe the interest level of this particular story was just not there (much like hengist and horsa)?

art study:

we did another week of Ruisdael's Two Watermills.  I had planned on doing a painting project with an outlined drawing of his work, but alas the printer was out of black ink!

music appreciation:

this week we listened to part of Bach's Passion of St. Matthew.  i like classical music, but DANG!  this one's a long one.  we listened to part one and it was an hour long!  played it mostly during eating and play times, but because of the length i don't know that the kids heard all parts of part one.  no matter though, we are planning to stay with this piece for the next 4 weeks so they'll be hearing it a lot.

in other music news, we went to guitar center and the kids had fun trying out the drums and pianos.  emma tried to figure out how to play twinkle, twinkle little star after i showed her where middle c was.

geography:

no paddle this week, but we did use our new atlas to look at some of the locations from our history stories.  afterward, emma went off and read through the book on her own and told me a few tidbits of information she gathered from her reading.  i count that as a good week in geography!

literature:

we read the elephant child from just so stories.  for some reason, the kids kept giggling every time the elephant got spanked, which was a lot.  i had emma do a drawing of what she read for her narration.  the girl likes to draw, but when she's not into it she does a rush job and sacrifices quality.  oh well...i guess she prefers talking (that doesn't surprise me).

from the aesop for children we read a raven and a swan and the two goats.  these were nice and short and narration went very well.

she had some free reading on friday (though she does read on her own everyday), and i had her narrate after she was done reading.  she chose to read the sandman from our hans christian anderson fairy tale book. she read many other books through out the week - ones that she's read before. the ones that i noticed in particular were her magic tree house books.  i think that girl has re-read those books at least 3-4 times since she got them last month.

other things:

we went out again on friday to do some bike riding (emma and gibson) and a stroll around the block.  it was cold, but sunny so the time out wasn't so bad.

emma offered to wash the dishes for me everyday.  isn't that sweet?  except it lasted one day.  haha.  i've been trying to focus on keeping neat, organized rooms for the older two this week.  they do pretty good at picking up after themselves downstairs (even cash is a champ at cleaning up...he's very detail oriented), but not as much when it comes to their rooms.  ideally, i'd like to have them develop a habit of picking up and straightening up their rooms on a daily basis. not anything time consuming, just spending 5 minutes to straighten up in the morning and after nap/quiet time so that the mess doesn't pile up and get overwhelming (which is kind of where we are at right now).

gibson did a few copywork sheets again like last week.  he's doing pretty good as long as he doesn't have to sit in one place for longer than 10 minutes.  he is one active dude!

on one of the days, i found the oldest two busy working on dragon land.  almost every sticker on the page had a background story to go with it.  they had quite a time riding around the house on their broom horses.  gibson, especially, was on a knight/warrior dude kick last week, and decked himself out with his shield, battle axe, helmet and his broom horse.

i think that's about it for week 14.

learning together: W13Y01

school is "back in session!"  here's our AO learning round-up from last week...

bible:

we studied 1 samuel 17:1-52, using some of the activity sheets from calvary curriculum.  we are using the memory verse assigned to the kids from sunday school, so for week 13 we did isaiah 41:10.

french:

we did a brief review of greetings, what is your name, and how are you?  i had to return the french book we were using back to the library, and i'm not quite sure if i want to continue using that or just working on a simple phrase a week.

language arts:

emma did 2 days of copywork using the week's memory verse and 1 day of copywork using an excerpt from the poem now we are six by a.a. milne.

gibson has expressed more interest in doing his own "copywork" these last few months, and this week requested 3 (not all in one day).  i just print out preschool handwriting practice sheets for him to do. he likes the ones on here (especially the football ones) and i've done a few from here too.  he is loving it, as long as he doesn't have to sit for longer than 10 minutes.  ha!

we went through lessons 38 and 39 in mcguffey's first eclectic reader.  i'm considering skipping more towards the end of this book after week 14 because it's still so easy for her to read.  she is getting better at slowing down her reading though.  the other option is just jumping to the next book (second eclectic reader).  she's really very much like me when it comes to reading stuff, especially when it's very exciting.  i tend to skim and skip words so that i can get to the end :).  while i suppose that's not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes you can miss out on the full effects of what you're reading (errr, does that even make sense?).  sometimes, you aren't able to fully digest the content and experience all the glorious words (and the pictures they help form in your head) when you read too fast...at least that's my personal experience.

emma got the first 4 books from the magic treehouse series (thanks, auntie michelle) which were devoured within a few days.  but thankfully, she likes re-reading them so she's been reading them over and over and over again.  that's pretty much what she's been reading during her independent reading time.  i have her narrate the story to me for each book she completes, and she seems to have a good grasp on the story.  we ended up getting her book 5 and a fact book to complement book 1.  she was halfway done with book 5 before we even paid for the book and finished it on the way home.  i don't even know why we bought it!

history:

we read vortigern and king constans from our island story and bruce and the spider from fifty famous stories.  it seems like we've moved on from roman history and into british history now.  now here's a cool homeschool moment: bruce and the spider is about robert the bruce, the first king of scotland.  we did a scotland lapbook a while back as part of teaching emma some of her family heritage.  she recognized the name immediately.  also, aaron's side of the family comes from the line (somewhere) of robert the bruce.  that is why her pap is named robert bruce, and why daddy's kilt uses the bruce tartan. we talked briefly about scottish clans (our family would be part of the bruce clan) and differing tartans based on which clan you were part of.  i absolutely love these little connections.  it's so cool!

i am SO behind on making up the timeline sheets for emma's history timeline folder.  i'm almost caught up and hoping that we can put all of them in this week.

we also watched an episode from a show called scotland revealed on youtube.  there are 4 episodes, except that when we went to watch another one on a different day we couldn't view it anymore.  sad.

art study:

following AO's schedule, the artist for this term is jacob van ruisdael.  we are observing two watermills and an open sluice at singraven for weeks 13 and 14.  i made a little bio sheet of the artist, which i'll try and share on here for week 14.

music appreciation:

this term's composer is johann sebastian bach.  the week's music selection was brandenburg concerto no. 2 in f major.  nothing fancy with music appreciation except for listening to it.  i usually tried to play it at least twice a day...mostly during play time or meal time.  i forgot how much i like bach.

geography:

we read chapter 12 in paddle.  he has finally reached the end of lake superior.  the chapter had commercial fishermen in the story so we went in search of a couple of videos of commercial fishermen in action.  we also found a video on how to clean a fish (also talked about in the chapter).  that was very interesting...good to know if i ever want to clean my own fish!

literature:

we read the ants and the grasshopper and the ass carrying the image from the aesop for children.  they were quite short and narration for them were very easy for emma.  i went over again how the word ass was a common word back in the old days for donkey, but that it's now used as a bad word.  i just don't want her to be going around calling people asses thinking that she's calling them donkeys...haha.

we read beauty and the beast from the blue fairy book, which was quite a lengthy story.  we spread the story out over 2 days, and narration was about every paragraph or so.  she didn't do too bad on narration, despite the high vocabulary used.  but i think it does help to have her narrate every couple of paragraphs.  she loved the story, and i loved her reaction when she found out that the prince in beauty's dream was actually the beast.  i guess she didn't see that coming.

math:

we did chapter 12 in fred.  this lesson covered a dozen, numbers that add to 9, and right angles.  it was pretty straight forward, so we didn't do any supplementing the rest of the week.

science/nature study:

we got james herriot's treasury for children for christmas (thanks, ibu and grandpa!) and read bonny's big day.  emma has already read through many of the stories in the book when we first got it, but since we're following AO's reading schedule we are sticking to their reading plan.  plus, she doesn't having mama read her some of the stories, and i like being able to read them too.

term 2 animal study is on mammals, so we are planning to pick a mammal a week to study...starting week 14.

poetry:

this term we will be using a.a. milne's when we were very young and now we are six.  emma got this book for christmas last year, so we didn't have to purchase this book for the school year.  i can't remember all the poems we read, but one was brian botany.  gibson picked that one out in particular because the dude has a battle axe.  haha.

other things:

we had a dry day and warm(er) day on thursday so we took a nice stroll around the block.  emma and gibson rode their bikes and cash walked the whole time.  i was very impressed (we have very long blocks in our neighborhood). 

emma has been busy making bookmarks to sell for her shop.  there have been a lot of strips of construction paper with fancy designs on them laying about the house in piles.

the boys have been fighting over playing with their new wooden trains and cars quite a bit.  they've also put together a few puzzles.  well, cash tries to put pieces together, but still needs help finding ones that actually fit.

leilani has rolled over here and there and is generally a content little girl.  she likes to sit through stories sometimes, and really likes when mommy holds and rocks her to sleep.

everyone has been learning and it feels good to be back into our routine...my brain feels a little less frazzled.

learning together: W10Y01

argh! i'm two weeks behind!  time for some catch-up.  we finished week 10 in our AO year 1 curriculum 2 weeks ago.

literature:

last week we read the travelers and the purse and the lion and the [ahem] ass (that was a nice discussion on the history and current usage of that particular word) from the aesop for children.  the narrations for both went quite well.

we read more poems from a child's garden of verses.  many were repeats of ones we've read in weeks past-the kids have their favorites!

language arts:

spelling words for last week were hid, lid, sip rip and trip.  we spent four days on the words.

we went through lessens 32 and 33 in the mcguffey first reader.  we talked about syllables and she practiced finding one and two syllable words from her reading.

for copywork she used her memory verse from sunday school (3 days) and an excerpt from the poem the gardener by robert louis stevenson.  gibson also did his own copywork again this week.  i love that he's been getting into more table work stuff.

independent reading:

emma was very into reading some of the stories in the hans christian andersen fairy tales book (it was mine and my sisters' when we were little).  she spent the week reading the snow queen, the tinderbox and the shepherdess and the chimney sweep.  i will say that it has been nice to own a good fairy tale book, and one with language that hasn't been "dumbed" down for kids.  eventually, i'd like to acquire another one full of the brothers grimm's fairy tales.
bible and scripture memorization:

we read through and discussed 1 samuel 14:1-46 this week.  our memory verse was the second part of matthew 10:8.

math:

we completed chapter 10 in life of fred.  questions at the end of the chapter covered problem solving exercises for numbers that added to 9 and total nickels needed to make 45 cents, an addition problem and reinforcing days of the week.

a couple of times during the week, she took out the measuring tape to measure various objects (and people) around the house.  this was just something she was interested in doing on her own, which was cool :).

history:

we listened to the audio reading of king alfred and the beggar from fifty famous stories.  she did okay for the narration.  the downside to the audio readings is that sometimes it's hard for me to pay attention to the whole story so i don't always know the whole story.  maybe i should be doing narration exercises too.  ha!

we worked on her benjamin franklin lapbook the rest of the week.  it was nice to be able to gather some of the information we learned in the book and break it down in chunks.  there's a lot to know about ben!  i'll have to share the specifics on the lapbook in a different post.

handicraft/life skill:

more breakfast prep awesomeness!  she made toast for herself and her siblings one of the days.  another day she doctored up some leftover pumpkin pancakes (after i heated them up for her).

we took a short trip to a nearby grocery store.  we talked about the basics of money management after they asked to buy a few extra items that were not on the list: while sometimes mom and dad will pick up an extra non-list item as a treat, we can't do that all the time or we will quickly go over our budget and run out of money.


folk song:

we moved on from hymn study to learning and listening to a new folk song each week.  for week 10 we listened to gypsy rover (or also known as the whistling gypsy).  i'm not quite certain of the origin.  some sources say english while others say irish.  anyone know for sure?  this one didn't interest the kids much for some reason.  maybe it was too slow for them?  or maybe they just couldn't relate to the words?

geography:

we read chapter 9 in paddle.  he was stuck in a marsh in this chapter so there wasn't a whole lot of action.  we did identify some of the animals pictured in the book and went over the names of the great lakes.

art:

we did not study a new piece from camille pissaro's work, because our printer is running low on ink (again!).  but i did turn his the market at gisor into an outline picture for emma and gibson to color in.  we used oil pastels and they were encouraged to try and mimic the colors in the original work.

emma also did plenty of self-initiated paper art (many paper chains and little collages from construction paper) while gibson enjoyed wielding the scissors to "make stuff" out of paper.  cash has recently shown more interest when big brother and sister are crafting so he's gotten his fair share of crayons, colored pencils and stickers.  these crafting moments don't last long with him though.  before long the box of crayons have usually been dumped out or he's using the colored pencils for drumsticks.

science/nature study:

we read peter discovers two old friends from the burgess bird book for children.  afterward, the kids looked through the bird cards (i made them from here)to find all the birds mentioned in the story.

emma caught a bug inside the house and put it into her gibson's bug box for observation.  i have no idea what it was since i've never seen that kind of bug inside our house before.  it looked like an ant with wings and orange stripes on the back of the abdomen.  it didn't look like a wasp but i have not been able to identify it.

there were a couple of other science related things we did but it ties in with the benjamin franklin lapbook so i'll save those for later.

other things:

emma got a little impromptu music lesson from her dad.  they played amazing grace together: dad on guitar and emma on the toy xylophone.  it sounded good pretty good.

ballet continues to be the highlight of emma's weekend.  she showed me some chasses which she learned in class this week.  and speaking of ballet, the kids requested that they watch the nutcracker on video.  how could i say no to ballet??  they like to act out the story with emma usually being clara and gibson as the nutcracker.  it's cute to watch.