His Treasure Seekers

 I debated taking this week off.  Instead I decided to just make our load a little lot lighter.  After all, we’re already a little behind in a few things, and I didn’t want to add math to that list.  So I used this more as a catch-up week, and then I shifted things around on my long-term lesson plans to make sure we don’t end up way behind come the end of the school year.

On Monday, we just did math, games on the MiniLUK, Reading Rainbow videos and a trip to the library.  Elijah turned 5 last week, so he was excited to be able to get his own library card.  Of course, I forgot to bring in my ID so we didn’t actually get his card yet… but I got the form to fill out!  Mommy fail.  Still, I checked his books out on my card, and Ian proudly ran his own pile through the “self check-out” station, and then they happily curled up on the couch and read their books for several hours.  That’s as good a school day as anything I had planned, right?  (Maybe better.)

Math

We doubled up on math this week, completing lessons 71-80 in MEP Year 2.  I’m really torn about what to do with math.  As I look at the lessons ahead, I think this year might get too challenging for Ian.  Lots of people use Year 2 for 2nd grade, so part of me feels like we should set it aside once it gets challenging.  But another part of me thinks Ian would be fine if we just went through it letting him pick up what he can without me expecting mastery.  I’ve been praying about this whole thing for weeks, and I still don’t have a clear answer.  I hope the week off will help me come to a decision about whether or not to print out the next set of practice book pages.

History Cycle

The books we’ve read over the last few weeks have made Ian somewhat familiar with the names of a few Greek gods, but I think it’s important to know some of the basic stories.  We watched several videos from the Greek Mythology for Students series, which says it’s for 4th-8th grade, but both my boys enjoyed them.  I had only checked out 3 from the library, but they wanted me to go back and get the others as well.

• “The Gods of Olympus“
• “The Trojan War“
• “The Journeys of Odysseus“

Science

We kicked off the week a little early with a field trip to Bodies: The Exhibition, a fascinating chance to see what we’ve been learning about in science up close.  I know it’s not for everyone, but I was pretty sure the boys could handle it, and they did really well.  It was a great chance to get out of our books and really see all the different muscles in our bodies, the layout of the nervous system, how blood vessels are all over our bodies, where our organs really are, etc.  Ian’s already asking to go back, but I told him he’d have to wait four years, and then we could go again the next time we study anatomy.

A friend expressed concern that the exhibit showed a lack of respect for human life, but I thought it was carefully done, and if anything, I thought it was a powerful testimony of God’s creative glory.

So that was our week, limping our way to Thanksgiving break!

 I love writing lesson plans.  I get great satisfaction from having my ideas organized on paper.  Yet I also try to stay flexible so I can bend and not break when things don’t work out as I plan.

Elijah turned 5 this week, and between the school holiday for his birthday, Nicholas fighting a cold for the third week, and Arianna coming down with something as well, school looked a little lighter than usual.  I’ve realized, however, that even when we don’t accomplish everything in my lesson plans, we still manage to do quite a bit.  As long as I keep an attitude of flexibility, I can see weeks like this one as successful, even if they bear little resemblance to my written plans.

Bible/Circle Time

This week in Old Story New we covered the early days of Jesus’ ministry as he proclaimed the good news in his hometown of Nazareth and other cities in Galilee.

We continued reading in Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember by Barbara Rainey.  I’m try to keep our Thanksgiving focus very simple this year.  Ian has already heard so many of the details, so I’m trying to help him think a little more deeply about the Pilgrims’ experience.

To support what we’ve been reading about Thanksgiving, we watched The Mayflower and the First Thanksgiving from Learn Our History and “The Mayflower Voyagers”  (part of the This is America, Charlie Brown series).

Math

It was with a great sigh of relief on my part that we moved on to lessons 66-70 in  MEP (Year 2).  Ian was really starting to struggle with the complex double-digit equations, so it was nice to move onto measurement.  He still had a chance to practice the addition and subtraction concepts, but the problems were much simpler, and there were other things that he found easy, so math was not such a battle this week.

I remember getting into a struggle with some difficult material with Year 1, and I tried to make it easier on Ian by breaking down the lessons and doing them over several days.  I finally ended up taking a break from MEP, coming back to it a month later and realizing that we were actually just at the point of moving on to something new.  When those hard concepts came up again later, Ian did surprisingly well with them.

I tried to keep that experience in mind this year when we hit a difficult patch.  I looked ahead and realized that if we could just plow through one or two more lessons, we reach something easier.  So I offered Ian a little extra support, walked through the hard problems with him without expecting him to master them, and this week we were rewarded with a change in subject matter.  I know we’ll come back to those concepts, but I’m confident that with a little time Ian will be able to sort them all out in his mind and have a better understanding that next time they come around.

Literature/Ambleside Online

We’re a little behind on two books in Ambleside Online, Year 1, but that’s because we’ve been focusing a lot on our history cycle and science over the last couple weeks.  I’m sure we’ll be caught up soon.

History Cycle

We finished Our Little Spartan Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles this week, which led neatly into a discussion of the Greco-Persian wars.  That’s what we would have been talking about if we had stuck with Story of the World, Vol. 1 as I had planned after dropping Mystery of History.  I think using the “Little Cousin” books is actually working really well for Ian.  He’s learning a lot through the stories, and he seems to be enjoying them.

This week I introduced the boys to the UK television series Horrible Histories (based on the books by Terry Deary).  We’ve only watched episodes that feature a “Groovy Greeks” segment, and it’s been a fun way to reinforce some of the things we’ve read about in our books about Athens and Sparta.  (The boys LOVE these shows, and I know we’ll come back to them when we study other periods of history.)

We also watched Kids’ Animated History With Pipo (Classical Greece, Part 1), which gave a good overview of everything we’ve learned about Greece over the last few weeks.

  

Science

In The Human Body we covered lessons 11-12 on the nervous system and the brain.  Ian completed pages 12-13 in The Usborne Human Body Sticker Book and we watched Bill Nye the Science Guy: Brain.

 Like I said, it was a bit lighter than usual, and I think we’re all looking forward to some time off over the holidays!

I love this time of year as we approach my two favorite holidays.  Somehow I made it to Sunday night before I realized we could start focusing Thanksgiving with some of our school work.  My plan was to keep things simple this year, just reading through Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember by Barbara Rainey, but Ian remembered some books by Kate Waters that he enjoyed reading when we talked about the Pilgrims last year, and we ended up pulling those out as well.  He read through Samuel Eaton’s Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy on his own, and then read Tapenum’s Day: A Wampanoag Indian Boy in Pilgrim Times with Daddy.

Bible

Our family devotions in Old Story New had us learning about the nighttime conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.  To reinforce the story during our school day, I decided to try a lesson from Draw to Learn: The Life of Jesus by Charlene Notgrass.  Ian really enjoys art, and I’m trying to give him lots of hands-on assignments he can do while I read to him in the mornings.

Ian immediately decided that he wanted to use a technique we learned from a lesson in ARTistic Pursuits where he covered a page in black pastels and then used a paper clip to etch a drawing.  It wasn’t exactly following the directions in the book, but I wanted to encourage his initiative and creativity so I told him to go for it.  I love the details in his night sky and the men with torches guarding the buildings while Jesus and Nicodemus talk.

We had gotten out of the habit of morning worship during our crazy October, but the kids have really missed it and I finally managed to start back up again.  This week we worked on learning the hymn “I Sing the Mighty Power of God.”  (I recently bought Singing the Great Hymns from Simply Charlotte Mason with the hopes of it taking care of our hymn study.  I love the selections, but I was disappointed to find that it didn’t have any information about the hymns beyond the music and lyrics.)  It was fun to hear the kids singing a hymn so enthusiastically.

Math

As I’ve been sharing, I’m determined to find fun ways for Ian to master his addition facts, so I’m trying to have him spend a little bit of time practicing them each day using various fun methods.  This week he continued enjoying extra screen time to play Medieval Math and the math section on More Starfall.

We also did activities from several videos in the “Addition and Subtraction to 10” section on Education Unboxed.  Ian enjoyed building Number Bonds Towers, and Elijah had fun being a part of our math time playing What’s in the Box? with Ian.

 

Using base ten blocks has really helped Ian this week as lessons 60-65 of MEP (Year 2) have a lot of adding and subtracting of double-digits crossing tens.  (The set of blocks we use is no longer sold, but I really it because it uses different colors for ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands.  Now it seems like I can only find one made of foam if I don’t want all blue blocks.)

MEP has the students work through multiple steps to solve the problems, which Ian has found really confusing until we used the blocks.  They are supposed to break up ones in order to complete a ten, and then add the tens together before finally adding the remaining ones. For example:

48+24=

48+(20+2+2)=

(48+2)+(20+2)=

50+20+2=

70+2=72

It seems so much more complicated than simply writing the numbers on top of each other and adding them up the way I learned to do, but it definitely is helping Ian develop greater number sense rather than simply working through a formula.  (Plus, until he is quicker at his math facts, that way still takes a while.)  With subtraction, Ian caught on to the idea of “borrowing” right away, which I don’t think would have happened without the blocks.

Literature/Ambleside Online

This week in Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin we read about Inchcape Rock, a reef which sank many ships before a buoy with a bell was finally placed to mark it.  A pirate thought he’d be sneaky and cut off the bell just for spite, but of course then his ship ended up running into the rock in a fog later on and he received his just rewards.  While looking for pictures of the rock (which now has a lighthouse on it), I found a poem by Robert Southey which told the story in rhyme.  Ian enjoyed listening to it again that way.

This week we started As You Like It.  Ian was drawn in immediately by the description of the wrestling match.  I don’t think I’ve ever read the story before, so I’m enjoying it as well.  I love how Ambleside Online introduces stories from Shakespeare at such an early age.  I’m looking forward to filling in some gaps in my own education.

History Cycle

We’re still learning about Ancient Greece, and we read a little further in Our Little Spartan Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles.  While I read, I had Ian color a blank map of Greece and gave him a list of cities we’ve talked about (Athens, Sparta, Olympia, Troy, Corinth, and Ephesus) to label with the help of a more detailed map in a book.

Science

We read through lessons 8-10 (on muscles and the design of hands and feet) in The Human Body, and read a little more about muscles in The Usborne Human Body Sticker Book.

Then we did the pages on muscles from the My Body unit from Teacher Created Resources (available as a download from CurrClick or a book from Amazon).  Ian was not happy last week when we only put bones on one leg of our life-size outline of his body (he wanted to do a whole skeleton), but he was a bit mollified this week when he understood what I’d been trying to tell him about adding more.

This unit has probably been Ian’s favorite thing we’ve done in school so far.  He can’t seem to learn enough about the body, and I’m looking forward to the rest of our study this term.

Is it just me, or was October the longest month ever?  I can’t begin to describe how thankful I am to be in November at last.  We ended October with a great week of school.  I normally try to do a little history and science twice a week, but Ian was so into what we were doing that we ended up spending one long day on science and then one long day on history.  I don’t know if we’ll adjust our schedule permanently, but it was great to see him enjoying our subjects so much.

Bible

This week in Old Story New we looked at the story of Jesus clearing the temple.  Since we’re not doing a separate program in the morning anymore I’d like to find a way to do some notebooking related to our evening devotions, but I haven’t figured that out yet.

We finished Prudence and the Millers.  Ian has really enjoyed these books, and we still have one more, but I think I’m going to save it for later while I figure out how I want to use our morning Bible time.

Math

This week in Ian’s MEP lessons (Year 2, #56-60) we worked on double-digit addition crossing tens.  Ian’s main struggle seems to be related to not knowing his basic addition facts.  We have tried several methods to help with these (all basically fancy flashcards on the computer) that just have not worked for him because they were missing an element of fun.  So I went searching for some sort of game that could help his addition facts become more automatic.  I found Medieval Math, a free game he can play on my Kindle Fire, and so far it seems to be a hit.  That is, he really likes it, but only time will tell if it helps fulfill its purpose.

Literature/Ambleside Online

In addition to our regular Ambleside Online, Year 1 reading for Week 15, we read the d’Aulaires’ Pocahontas (one of the free reads we need to get to this week).  Ian and I were both fascinated by the story, so then we watched Animated Hero Classics: Pocahontas, which went along with the book really well. (Ian also wants to watch the Disney Pocahontas, so we’re saving that for our next family movie night.  I’ve never seen Pocahontas II, but since they’re both available on Netflix right now we may watch that one as well to see how it compares to the details of her life that we read about.)

History Cycle

This week for our study of Ancient Greece we finished Our Little Athenian Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles and began Our Little Spartan Cousin of Long Ago (also part of the original e-book bundle from Yesterday’s Classics.)

While I read, Ian worked on two notebook pages using lapbook elements from Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus (PreK-K unit) and Homeschool Share.  I’ve never wanted to venture into the world of lapbooks because I didn’t want to have to figure out what to do with them afterward, but Ian does love creating a notebook, so this seemed like a fun way to incorporate the learning aspects of lapbooking.  He loved having pages with things to open and flip through.

We were reading a chapter about Hiero competing in the Olympics so the page on events in the ancient Olympics was perfect.  He pasted on the appropriate figure from the History Through the Ages-Collection CD so there would be dates on the page.

Also, because we finished the book on Athens, I had him write about what he remembered about Athenian life (using a page from biblestoryprintables.com).  I thought it was interesting that the details that stood out to him most were about how girls were rarely allowed to leave the house but just stayed home to spin and sew.

Science

Ian is really getting into our lessons in The Human Body from God’s Design for Life.  This week we read lessons 4-7 covering the skeletal system.  Ian cut out “Sandy Skeleton” (from the curriculum CD-ROM) and put it together with brads.

Then we read pages 4-5 in The Usborne Human Body Sticker Book and Ian placed all the stickers.

That alone would have been enough, but I decided to get out the My Body unit from Teacher Created Resources (available on CurrClick or Amazon).  We used part of it before (when we rowed Madeline), but now it’s right at Ian’s level.  I’m going to try to do the whole book (or most of it anyway, as I can tie it into our lessons).

The first thing we had to do was trace an outline of his body on a large paper.  We’ll use it for each lesson in the unit, adding different parts of the body as we learn about them.  This week we did the pages on the skeleton.  I had Ian read aloud the page “My Skeleton” (which was mostly a review of things I’d read to him from our textbook and the sticker book so he was able to make out even words like “ligaments” and “cartilage”), and put it in his science notebook along with his “Sandy Skeleton.”  Then he cut out the bones on the other pages and glued them onto the body tracing we had made earlier.