His Treasure Seekers

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.

 

As I look back at this week I realize that what we didn’t do is almost as significant to me as what we did do, so I’m reflecting a little on some of the adjustments I’m going to be making to our curriculum/schedule.

Bible

This week I tried to get back into Bible Road Trip: Year Three (we’re on Mark), but I found myself dragging my feet and had to take a look at what was going on.  I decided that it’s just not a great fit for us right now.  There is so much that I love about this curriculum, but I think we’ll get a lot more out of it in a few years.  We’ve been been trying the Lower Grammar lessons, but they’re still just a bit too advanced for Ian, and I’d rather use the preschool/Kindergarten level as part of a multi-age family Bible program than a stand alone curriculum.

I have a couple ideas for what we’ll do for our morning Bible times, but things may be hit and miss for a while, especially with the holidays coming up.  We’re still going through Old Story New by Marty Machowski as a family in the evenings (this week we were on Week 7, which talks about the wedding feast at Cana and Jesus turning water into wine), so I’m trying not to feel like I’m neglecting anyone’s spiritual education too much.

(We also set aside Prudence and the Millers when vacation, sickness, and baby woes disrupted our schedule.  We’re pretty close to the end, so I want to get back to that as well.)

Math

We had a field trip on Monday, but I really didn’t want to get behind in math, so we plowed through lessons 51-55 (Mathematics Enhancement Programme (Year 2) and just didn’t do any sort of extras.  Ian seems to be catching on a little more, though he still gets confused sometimes when we’re adding double digit numbers.  I’m not worried, however.  He’s really close to getting it, and I think MEP’s spiral approach will do exactly what it’s designed to do.  In a few months, I’m confident he will have a solid, lasting understanding of everything we’re working on now.

Literature/Ambleside Online

We finally got completely caught up with our reading from Ambleside Online, Year 1.  (Yay!)  When we read in Our Island Story about Hengist and Horst cutting a leather thong so long it encircled a large piece of land, Ian enjoyed cutting a paper in a spiral and seeing how the thinner we made the strip, the longer it ended up being.

History Cycle

We didn’t do anything in our history cycle besides reading chapters 9-12 in Our Little Athenian Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles.

Science

Ever since he was very small, Ian has had a fascination with all things related to the human body, so I’ve been looking forward to the science I scheduled for this term. This week we started The Human Body, our second of the three books in God’s Design for Life.

We read through lessons 1-3 and did a couple of the suggested activities for Ian’s notebook.  For lesson 1 Ian drew a self-portrait as he looked at his face in the mirror.  I love the details he noticed (like freckles, various parts of his eyes, and his uvula).  We read Psalm 138:13-18, and I pray that as we study the body this term, he will gain a new understanding that he really is “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

The activity for Lesson 2 involved creating a “Body Wheel” that describes the various systems of the body.  Most of the terms don’t mean much to Ian yet, but we read through all the descriptions just to start building familiarity.

For lesson 3 on cells, I decided to skip the suggested worksheet. Instead Ian enjoyed examining several new slides on our microscope.  We also watched Bill Nye the Science Guy: Cells and went through pages 16-17 in The Usborne Human Body Sticker Book.  Ian really likes sticker books and carefully put all the stickers in the correct places after I had read the pages to him.

Extras

The highlight of our week was definitely our field trip to Legoland on Monday.  In addition to having fun on the rides and admiring the amazing Lego brick creations throughout the park, both boys really enjoyed the class we attended (Simple Machines 1).  They worked through a book building specific models and then had a chance to use what they learned to create their own “ride.”  I was impressed by the class and really glad we took the time to attend in the midst of a day of fun.

Upcoming Reviews

Our Schoolhouse Review Crew season is wrapping up, so while I may do a few book reviews over the next few months, that will be about it.