I've set a goal to make a record of our homeschooling as a part of this blog. I think reviewing each week might be the best way to do that; so here I go...
So, this past week, we worked on memorizing this poem (which went along with our nature study on "Feathers as Clothing," from this nature study book):
"How beautiful your feathers be!"The Redbird sang to the Tulip-tree
New garbed in autumn gold.
"Alas!" the bending branches sighed,
"They cannot like your leaves abide
To keep us from the cold!"
-- John B. Tabb
Our scripture study came from The Book of Mormon. It was Alma 32:21 -- "Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore, if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true."
Our hymn study came from a picture book I found while at the library. We studied "America the Beautiful," then practiced singing it. The kids chose children's primary songs to practice the other 4 mornings.
We took a break from the Little House series, which I've been reading aloud since last school year. We finished The Long Winter a couple weeks ago. Now, we're working on this:
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| The kids have really enjoyed it, and Gabe even occasionally stops building Legos or coloring pictures to interject a thought. Opal calling boy twins who harass her "bald-headed babies" is a particularly favorite part for Autumn! |
In math, the kids have all been plugging away on their K12 lessons. At this point, we don't feel quite as frustrated with this year's new curriculum; so I think we'll keep at it for a while longer instead of getting a new program like I had planned.
Jonah read chapters from these books for L.A:
Little Men by Louisa May Alcott, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, The Heroes by Charles Kingsley, The Burgess Bird Book for Children (chapter 7), & Custer's Last Stand by Quentin Reynolds. He also read a couple chapters from the Bible to correlate with our history lesson.
Micah & Autumn read the books that coincided with their K12 Language Arts lessons. Autumn finished another unit in her K12 phonics program (because she's fluently reading now, she breezes through these but they seem to still be a helpful review and we enjoy the lessons together.) Additionally, I had them read some chapters from their Old Testament readers that corresponded with the history lesson too (they read about Abraham, Isaac, Joseph and Moses.) Micah also plugged away at The Journal of James Edmond Pease. It's for his Heroes' Quest group, which is focusing on wars America has participated in. This is one of the Dear America books, which are historical fiction in journal form, and it is a record of the civil war.
Besides this, Jonah did a couple K12 Spanish lessons, four keyboarding lessons,
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| (we're using this outdated book, which is written for a typewriter but is simple enough for him and works just fine) |
narrations from his reading (either telling me what he read about or writing a short synopsis), dictation & copywork (I hand-select poems, verses and quotes so that his handwriting practice is meaningful and inspires great thought; he's keeping them all in a notebook so I'll leave them out).
On Monday, we read a chapter from our history text for the year, A Child's History of the World by Virgil Hillyer.
Tuesday, J, M & A went to choir practice for an hour. They'll be performing at the nursing home at the end of the term.
Wednesday was our beloved science club, with our dear friends. Because it was such a beautiful day, I talked with my friends for an hour while the children ran and played outside with their friends. Finally, we loaded them up and I taught this month's chemistry lesson to Micah and his two buddies after lunch. We studied states of matter, I presented the scientist study on Lavoisier (after which they conducted their own experiment on air and combustion, placing a jar over a lit candle to see that it naturally burned out after the air was gone). Finally, they made a "blob" (solution of cornstarch & water), then experimented to see whether it was a liquid or a solid. I hope this drove home the differences between states of matter.
Here are the links for my chemistry hand-outs this month:
http://files.homeschoolshare.com/docs54478/chemistry/10%20lavoisier%20notebook.pdf
http://files.homeschoolshare.com/docs54478/chemistry/06%20states%20of%20matter%20flap%20book.pdf
http://files.homeschoolshare.com/docs54478/chemistry/06%20states%20of%20matter%20flap%20book.pdf
Thursday, J & M went to Heroes' Quest and enjoyed a nature walk with their group (Micah & his friend covered themselves in burrs on the walk, on a mission to see who could collect the most on their clothing. Another friend was kind enough to help with the mission of removing them all, which he had to before I would let him back in the house!). Autumn went to "kindergarten" with her science club friends. (She's technically in 1st grade, but they're both younger. And does it really matter what it's called?? To her, she's just learning & playing with her girlfriends.)
Friday, we finished early (too early, because M & I completely forgot about taking him to speech at the public school... for the SECOND time this week. Woops!!!).
K, now next week I'll have to work on shortening this. Because there's no way I'm going to want to do this every week! But I hope to have a good record of our learning, and also hope it will benefit someone looking for ideas of what to study!!
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