Between a week of sickness, a week of prepping for vacation, and then being gone, we had fallen behind on some schoolwork and lost our rhythm, so this week my main goal was to get caught up and back into our routine. It made for a full week!
Bible
We finally got back into 
Bible Road Trip: Year Three, picking up with the second week of lessons on Matthew. I leaned more heavily on the Preschool/Kindergarten assignments this week so I could include the little ones in our morning Bible lesson. I think it’s a good fit, but I’d like to integrate a bit more of the “Researching the Word” from the Lower Grammar lessons with Ian, so we’ll still play around with it a bit. (This is the main reason I prefer to use a free curriculum whenever possible–I ALWAYS end up tweaking it at least a little, and I’d feel really irritated if I had paid a lot of money for someone else’s plans only to change them!)
It’s been really good have the little ones join us in the mornings as part of what we’ve been inclusively calling “worship” (the first part of our couch time/circle time/whatever we’re going to end up naming it). Before Nicholas goes down for his morning nap, we all gather around the piano to sing a combination of hymns, worship songs from church, and fun kids’ praise songs. Ian likes to get out his guitar and strum along (even though he only knows 4 chords and can’t change his fingering fast enough to keep up yet), and sometimes some of them dance. When we first started everyone seemed a little reluctant to drop what they were doing to join me in the living room, but now they all look forward to it, and on the rare morning that we skip it for some reason I hear about it!
After singing, I put Nicholas to bed and we read one of the scheduled stories in 365 Great Bible Stories (according to the BRT lesson plan). These are pretty short, and sometimes I’ll read more than one if I still have everyone’s attention.
One thing I’m not as consistent about but I’m working on is praying togeher after this. As I was reading through Circle Time by Kendra Fletcher (of Preschoolers and Peace) I liked her suggestions of praying through the ACTS model together (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication). I’d like to work toward that, but I think it’s a bit too much of a stretch for my kids right now. I chose to focus this week on just the A and S. We went around and each of us came up with a word to praise God: “God you are [patient, kind, loving, merciful, etc.].” Then I told them to think of one thing they wanted God to help them with that day, whether with schoolwork, attitudes, relationships, or anything else they could think of.
The first day I realized that God had answered those prayers for each one of us, and I pointed it out to the boys that night during Bible time. It was really neat to see what a difference it had made in our days, and I want to make sure I remember to include prayer time each morning before Arianna’s attention span reaches its limit, and I let her wander off.
After prayer the older boys go through memory verses with me. (We use the Scripture Memory System from Simply Charlotte Mason, which is great for reviewing verses we’ve already learned as well as practicing new ones.) This is new to Elijah, but he’s starting to pick up several of the verses Ian has already learned, and it’s helping Ian learn new ones more quickly having someone else there. (Right now we’re working on the Beatitudes).
Our lessons from BRT tied right in with our evening devotions in Old Story New this week, and I’m really pleased with how well they are complementing each other. By the time we read with Daddy in the evening, the boys have heard the story and talked about it with me, so they’re much quicker to answer questions and get more about of our time with him. I think the repetition is really good for them.
The last thing we do before moving on to other subjects is read from Prudence and the Millers, which Ian still really enjoys. Almost every day he begs me to read an extra chapter, but I’m trying to stretch it out.
Math
Every day Ian has been asking God to help him get through his math quickly and easily, and things have never gone so smoothly for us. This week he finished lessons 36-40 in Year 2 of MEP, and he did more independently than he’s ever been able (or willing) to try in the past. It’s so great to see him enjoying a subject that he struggled with for a while.
Elijah also joined us for math this week. He loves numbers, and he’s started asking to do math almost every day when he sees Ian settling down to work. I’ve slowly been starting to go through MEP Year 1 with him, but this week it became obvious we’re going to pick up the pace a bit.
With MEP it’s usually really important to go through the activities in the lesson plans, and I’ve found that especially true with Ian. With Elijah right now, however, most of what’s covered in the lesson plans is already really easy for him. I’m focusing more on the practice book pages just so he can get used to the way concepts are presented there. Eventually I’m sure I’ll need to do the complete lessons, and I’m hoping it doesn’t make our mornings drag out too much.
Actually, since he’s been happily completing more than one page per day, I may try to help him catch up with Ian by next year so I can just have them working at the same level. (I wouldn’t try accelerating any of the other children so quickly, but Elijah is definitely gifted in math, so I think it might end up being a good option for our family.) I told him he doesn’t have to do any schoolwork until after he turns 5 next month, but most days he begs to do math (both during our normal school time and then in the later afternoon as well!)
Literature/Ambleside Online
The main place we had fallen behind over the last few weeks was in our Ambleside Online, Year 1 reading, and it felt good to get almost all the way caught up. I’ve decided to drop the Burgess Bird Book unless Ian asks for it or we have a little extra time. I don’t know enough about the birds in our area to choose chapters relevant to us, and since we’re doing a lot outside of AO, I wanted to cut some of what I consider lower priority books.
One of our favorite things this week was reading about William Tell in Fifty Famous Stories Retold. I had found a couple related audio dramas from ArtsReformation.com, and Ian really enjoyed the one from Mercury Storyteller (part of “St. George and the Dragon & William Tell“). I preferred “William Tell” from Tale Spinners for Children because it incorporated music from the familiar William Tell Overture, but it was a little too long for Ian.
History Cycle
I’ve said several times over the last few weeks that I’m moving away from using Mystery of History, Vol.1, and this week I made that official by actually erasing the chapter titles from my lesson plan book for the rest of the year. I just want to focus less on biblical history (which we cover in depth in our Bible lessons) and more on other ancient civilizations this year. I think I’m going to turn to Story of the World, Vol. 1 by Susan Wise Bauer to be our “spine” (at least I’ve written those chapters into my book), but we’ll see how it goes.
I really wanted to start getting into the Greeks, so this week after touching on the division of Israel after Solomon’s death, we started Greek history with the story of the Trojan horse. (Chronologically they should have been in reverse order, but I wanted a clean start to our study of Ancient Greece.)
Israel Divided
To cover the division of the kingdom, we used the Day By Day Kid’s Bible by Karen Henley. First I read “Enemies” about King Solomon turning away from God and Ahijah’s message to Jeroboam (pages 269-270), and then Ian read aloud “One Nation Turns into Two Nations” (pages 271-272) about Solomon’s son Rehoboam’s foolish decision that drove ten tribes to reject him as their King and form the new northern kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam.
I don’t often have Ian do reading assignments, but I’d like to start trying to having him take some on, even if he’s still just reading to me. Eventually I’ll work toward having him read independently and then come and narrate to me.
For his history notebook, he used this page from biblestoryprintables.com.
Trojan Horse
I read the account of the legend of the Trojan Horse in A Child’s History of the World by V.M. Hillyer (Chapter 11: “A Fairy-Tale War”). Ambleside Online uses this book starting in Year 2, so I wanted to get a feel for it, and I’ll probably use it fairly regularly this year whenever it lines up with the topics in Story of the World, Vol. 1. Once again, biblestoryprintables.com had a quick, eye-catching page for Ian’s notebook.
Science
Science was the other place I felt really behind, but we managed to get through lessons 24-28 in The World of Animals (covering arachnids, crustaceans, myriapods, mollusks, and cnidarians). A lot of these animals live in the ocean, so it fit in well with Finding Nemo, which we watched the last night of our vacation. (As we read about jellyfish and how their tentacles sting most animals but not clownfish, Ian looked at me in exasperation and said, “Mom! I already know that!” I bet he didn’t before the movie though!)
We didn’t get to do a lot of extras for these lessons because we were rushing through them, but Ian did make a couple arachnid models according to the directions in the book (which, thankfully, were easy enough for him to read and follow all on his own). He really wanted to do more models (the next lesson had instructions for making one with clay), but I wasn’t up to the mess. (Just being honest!)
We watched Bill Nye the Science Guy: Animal Locomotion and read several related books together:
Ian also really wanted me to read
The Life Cycle of a Spider by Bobbie Kalman, but I didn’t want to pack too much more into our mornings. (I always try to finish up our schoolwork by 12:30.) He did read part of the book on his own, picking it up several times throughout the week. I really like this series, and I’m glad to have them as part of our family library so Ian can go through them on his own.
Extras
We’re still enjoying going through the K-2 Spanish course from Middlebury Interactive Languages. This week Ian was working on Unit 3 on Family. Some of this was review for him, but it’s presented very differently than the lessons we’ve done with Salsa, so I think it’s still really good for him.
Upcoming Reviews
We’re currently getting familiar with the following products. Watch for reviews soon!
This week Ian got through lessons 46-50. As I’ve said in the past few weeks, he’s starting to get frustrated by some of the concepts we’re working on, primarily adding and subtracting 2 digit numbers. To help him visualize the numbers he’s working with I tried having him use math blocks this week. It was really helpful for adding 10’s and 1’s, and I think we’ll keep using these until he’s better able to keep the place values straight in his mind.
We started term two of Ambleside Online, Year 1, which meant new poetry selections. This term we’re reading the poems of A. A. Milne. We started through When We Were Very Young this week, and if we have time in the next few months we’ll move onto Now We Are Six. (If we don’t get through both books during this term, I think I’ll save it for summertime because I don’t want to rush through these delightful poems.) I’ve owned copies of these books since my childhood, but I’ve only ever read a few scattered poems over the years. I really enjoyed getting into them this week, and they’re especially fun for my boys because the poems occasionally mention Christopher Robin.
We finished up The World of Animals this week, reading about microscopic creatures like protists and bacteria, (which aren’t really considered animals, but neither are they plants, so this was as good a time as any to talk about them). It was a great week for getting out our microscope to look at both prepared slides and homemade ones with water from the stream at our local park.
