His Treasure Seekers

Bible

We had accomplished one week in Matthew (week 3 of Bible Road Trip: Year Three) before I got sick, and rather than start week 2 and then take another week off before getting into week 3, I decided to just forgo our BRT lessons this week. It worked out fine, since our evening devotions in Old Story New were covering the baptism of Jesus and kept us in Matthew.

In the mornings we spent some time reading about Jehoshaphat, since boys’ choir is rehearsing a musical about him.  Also, Ian was anxious to get back into Prudence and the Millers, but we only managed to get through one chapter this week.

Math

We’re spending a lot of time counting by 10’s and 5’s in lessons 31-35 in Mathematics Enhancement Programme (Year 2).  Grandma taught the boys a song for counting by 10’s years ago, so all of the activities related to that came really easily to Ian.  He struggled a little more with the 5’s, but we’re practicing a lot, so he’s getting better.

One of his favorite ways to practice was tossing a beanbag back and forth.  Sometimes we just counted by 5’s, alternating between the two of us.  Other times I would say a number as I tossed it to him (something ending in 0 or 5), and then he would tell me 5 more (or less).  Of course the the other kids wanted in on this game, so we practiced with Elijah counting by 2’s, and the boys practiced with Arianna counting from 1 to 20.  Everyone got lots of number practice in this week (and some throwing/catching practice as well)!

Literature/Ambleside Online

This week I realized I was going to need to rely on some audiobooks in order to get caught up on our Ambleside Online, Year 1 reading.  Our book of Aesop’s Fables came with a CD, but it doesn’t have every story, so that didn’t work out as I had hoped.  However, I went to booksshouldbefree.com, and I downloaded mp3s for Just So Stories, the Red Fairy Book, and the King of the Golden River, so I’m hoping we’ll be able to catch up on some of our AO reading while on the road.

I also borrowed the Arkangel dramatic recording of The Tempest from the library, which I’m going to see if Ian can follow.  I remember listening to several Shakespeare recordings this way during a season when I had a long commute, and I really enjoyed them.  Ian loves listening to stories and audio dramas, so I’m hoping he’ll like this, even though we didn’t get a chance to read the shorter version of the story in Tales from Shakespeare (though maybe we can catch up on that after our break).

We finished the D’Aulaires’ Benjamin Franklin, which Ian really enjoyed.  Usually he chooses to build with blocks or other quiet toys while I read, but when we got to the part of about the Revolution, he decided to draw a picture of a battle.  After we finished the book, we watched the Animated Hero Classics DVD on Benjamin Franklin.  Ian was really disappointed in the movie.  There had been so many wonderful details about Franklin’s life in the D’Aulaires’ book, and he asked me, “What about the rest of it?”  I’m glad he liked the book so much, and I think it provided a great introduction to this fascinating historical figure.

Science

We skipped history altogether this week (aside from our AO reading), but I’m a little less flexible when it comes to science.  I really want to try to get through the entire God’s Design for Life series this year, so we read through lessons 20-23 in The World of Animals.  Ian was having a bit of a hard time classifying animals, so I drew a chart showing how there are bigger groups (vertebrates/invertebrates) and then smaller group (mammals/reptiles/etc.)  We’re just getting started on invertebrates, so we talked about what different groups of arthropods (insects, spiders, crustaceans) have in common, as well as what makes them distinct.

To help Ian understand the idea of an exoskeleton (and other features of an insect’s body), we built our own bug:

1. We blew up 3 small balloons and taped them together to represent the head, thorax, and abdomen.
2. Ian used flour and water paste with newspaper to cover the balloons and then set them in the sun to dry.
3. After the paper mache had dried, he cut up a pipe cleaner to make joined legs and antennae, taping them all to the proper parts of the body.

If we’d had more time this week I would have suggested he paint the body after step 2, but he didn’t seem to mind.  He did get tired of the paper mache after a while and I helped him finish that part, but other than that this was a project he was able to work on mostly independently.

Extras

The boys are both continuing to enjoy Ian’s lessons with Middlebury Interactive Languages (Spanish K-2).  This week he finished Unit 1: Greetings and then worked all the way through Unit 2: Numbers.  Both of the boys are already familiar with number 1-10, but they really enjoyed getting to use what they knew to complete the activities quickly.

And now onto… our first “Sabbath” week

As a child, I remember getting to the end of July and feeling like I could handle going back to school.  I always wished I could save the rest of my vacation weeks to use throughout the school year when I really needed them.

Now that we get to set our own schedule, I’ve tried to spread out our weeks of rest rather than taking a long summer break.  We had a couple of odd weeks in August with baseball camp and music camp, so I put off our first Sabbath until now, but unlike during those camp, I intend to let Ian (and myself) fully rest from school.  When I drew up my calendar for this year and looked at when to schedule in our weeks off, it usually worked out to be about every 7th week or so after from this point on.  I’m hoping this rhythm will help us avoid getting burned out or frustrated.  See you in a couple weeks!

Upcoming Reviews

We’re currently getting familiar with the following products.  Watch for reviews soon!

• Preschoolers and Peace: Homeschooling older kids with success while loving the little ones at your feet (e-book) by Kendra Fletcher
• Jesus (Get to Know series) by Nancy I. Sanders
• Old Testament iWitness, New Testament iWitness, and iWitness Biblical Archeology by Doug Powell (from Apologia)
• Middlebury Interactive Languages (Spanish K-2)
• Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls from New Liberty Videos

I don’t know how great my plans were for this week, but what we actually did looked nothing like the notes I’d jotted down last Sunday.  I was just getting my fourth child through a nasty virus that had attacked all my offspring when I started feeling a sore throat coming on.  And with that, our week went down the drain.  We took one day off when my fever was raging, but the rest of the week I pushed myself to help get Ian through at least math and his Spelling You See work.  Then on Thursday I decided to spend some time focusing on 9/11, but that was it for school this week.  Luckily I’ve built some catch up weeks into our schedule, so I don’t think it’s really going to matter much.

Bible

The only Bible time we had this week was our family devotions in Old Story New, in which we talked about John the Baptist’s ministry.  I also had Ian do a worksheet on the Beatitudes to keep them fresh in his mind.

Math

I am so proud of Ian and how far he has come using Mathematics Enhancement Programme (Year 2).  Last year we struggled through some rough parts and I was afraid this curriculum might be too challenging for him, but the beauty of the spiral approach is becoming evident, for he is developing strong thinking skills.  The growth has really been amazing, and I am thankful we stuck it out with MEP.

One night this week Ian was praying about the next day, and he talked to God about having fun with math.  His attitude has made our math lessons something to look forward to, because I love watching things “click” in his mind.  Twice this week we went through 2 lessons in one day, and he never complained, just zipped through them quickly.  It’s really an answer to prayer!

History

Because of my sickness, we took a break from our history cycle, but I did want to spend Thursday focusing on 9/11.

First, I wanted to introduce Ian to the World Trade Center so he would feel a connection to the towers before knowing what happened to them.  We watched part of Man on Wire, and then read along with a video of The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordecai Gerstein, about Philippe Petit, a Frenchman who strung a wire between the two towers and walked across it back in 1974.  The end of the book mentions, “Now the towers are gone,” which provided a good transition into what happened September 11, 2001.

Then we watched Learn Our History: 9/11 and the War on Terror, and because Ian still had some questions, we also watched some of the news footage from that morning, as well as part of The Day the Towers Fell.

Science

We didn’t read any of our lessons in The World of Animals, but while I was sick we did put on two episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy: Invertebrates and Spiders just to keep the subject in the front of Ian’s mind.

Extras

This week we began reviewing Middlebury Interactive Languages (Spanish K-2), so we’re setting aside our regular Salsa lessons for a while.  We got off to a really good start with this program (“It’s like Reading Eggs for Spanish!” was Ian’s first remark), so I’m looking forward to the next few weeks with it.

This was also the first week of the boys’ music/drama classes.  Our Fridays are pretty much taken up with choir, handchimes, drama, and a couple other classes between the older kids.  Even Arianna got to be a part of one, and I think these classes are going to be my favorite thing about this year.  I watched the boys in their drama class getting up on stage, practicing how to stand with poise, project their voices, make eye contact, etc. and I was just so glad they have this opportunity.

Upcoming Reviews

We’re currently getting familiar with the following products.  Watch for reviews soon!

• Preschoolers and Peace: Homeschooling older kids with success while loving the little ones at your feet (e-book) by Kendra Fletcher
• Jesus (Get to Know series) by Nancy I. Sanders
• Old Testament iWitness, New Testament iWitness, and iWitness Biblical Archeology by Doug Powell (from Apologia)
• Middlebury Interactive Languages (Spanish K-2)

Bible

This week in Bible Road Trip: Year Three we started our actual book-by-book study of the New Testament with the first nine chapters of Matthew.  I’m having some trouble finding a good level of time to spend on these lessons.  The amount of reading in the Lower Grammar assignments is a bit much, even with us doing it together, but the preschool/Kindergarten lessons didn’t feel like enough.  (I did end up buying 365 Great Bible Stories, the storybook BRT uses with the younger children, and I do like it, but I felt like Ian needed a bit more “meat.”)

For now, I’m using the Bible storybook with all the children, and then reading shorter passages from the Lower Grammar assignments with Ian.  This week I chose to focus on the Beatitudes (in Matthew 5), and I think we’ll work on memorizing them during the three weeks we spend on Matthew.  To help with that, I made little laminated cards that we went through each morning, as well as letting all the kids do matching coloring pages.  Elijah and Arianna really liked being a part of our school time, so I think I’m going to try to keep including them in as much of our Bible lessons as they can handle.

Math

This week we worked on lessons 21-25 in Year 2 of the Mathematics Enhancement Programme, which surprised me a little by introducing multiplication.  Ian understood it more quickly than he has other new concepts, and we found lots of opportunities to practice as we went about our days.  (“If you, Elijah, and Arianna each have 4 crackers, how could you say that as an addition?” “4+4+4=12,” “As a multiplication?” “3×4=12”)

Literature/Ambleside Online

So far I’ve been sticking pretty closely to the reading schedule for Ambleside Online, Year 1, but this week we couldn’t resist going a little further with Paddle-to-the-Sea.  Ian was fascinated by the description of the logs going through the sawmill, so I went searching for a video to show us more.  Nothing went as in depth as I would have liked, but he did enjoy one that we found.  We’re planning to watch the movie of Paddle-to-the-Sea once we finish the book, and I’m hoping it will show Ian what he wanted to see.

Ian was also really excited to start the D’Aulaires’ Benjamin Franklin.  I think we’ve talked a little about Franklin before, which is probably why Ian was so interested.  Now that we’re spending time talking about him, Ian’s noticing pictures of him and references that used to just slip by him.

History Cycle

This week we really moved away from following the lessons in Mystery of History, Vol.1. Rather than breaking history into specific “episodes,” I want to spend a little more time just focusing on more general topics.  This week we talked about the time the Israelites spent as slaves in Egypt, the Exodus, and the battle of Jericho.

I read the chapter entitled “The Wandering Jews” from A Child’s History of the World by V.M. Hillyer.  It was our first time reading from this book, which I had gotten to use later on with Ambleside Online.  It seemed like a good fit, though I did a little editing as we went since Hillyer names the pharaoh of the Exodus period as Ramses, which isn’t accepted as true by many Egyptologists.  Overall, however, Ian seemed to pay better attention when I read from this book than he has with some others, so I think we’ll probably use it when it fits in with what I want to cover.

Most of what we talked about this week was review, so we just had fun with it.  The boys enjoyed revisiting some of their favorite DVDs: the Wars of Humanity combo pack and Jericho: The Promise Fulfilled from Shatterpoint Entertainment, which use LEGO-style bricks and stop motion animation to tell the very Bible stories we were focusing on.

Science

This week we focused on reptiles in lessons 16-19 in The World of Animals (from God’s Design for Life).  We read the “Beginners” lessons in the book and did an activity comparing a turtle’s flipper with a tortoise’s claw.

Extras

For Spanish, we finished up our time with Salsa video 113 (the Three Billy Goats Gruff).  We’ll be taking a break from Salsa while we review a different Spanish program, but then we’ll jump back into the rest of this unit.

Art lessons have been few and far between this year.  We did manage to get to lesson 14 in ARTistic Pursuits K-3 Vol. 2: Stories of Artists and Their Art this week, but we didn’t do the project yet.

Upcoming Reviews

We’re currently getting familiar with the following products.  Watch for reviews soon!

• Preschoolers and Peace: Homeschooling older kids with success while loving the little ones at your feet (e-book) by Kendra Fletcher
• Jesus (Get to Know series) by Nancy I. Sanders
• Old Testament iWitness, New Testament iWitness, and iWitness Biblical Archeology by Doug Powell (from Apologia)
• Middlebury Interactive Languages (Spanish K-2)

The last time we went to the library, we maxed out my card.  It was a first for us, but now that the boys are both really getting into reading, I could see it was going to be a recurring problem.  The solution?  Get Ian his own library card!  Ever since I mentioned the idea, he’s been begging to go back, so this week he was quite proud of his newest acquisition.  (Elijah won’t be old enough for a few more months, but he’s looking forward to getting his as well.)

Next week my boys will be spending their mornings at music camp, so I wanted to finish on a strong note this week.  I was thankful that we not only covered everything I had hoped to, we even got most of it done in four days, so we were able to take most of Friday off to go swimming and play with cousins!

Bible

We’re on week 2 of Bible Road Trip: Year Three, which was basically an introduction to the New Testament.  Some of the research portion of the lesson had to do with the history of the period after the Old Testament ended.  In addition to the assigned reading, we all watched The Maccabees: The Story of Hanakkuh and Ian colored one of the pages that goes along with the movie for his Bible notebook.

Our family devotions in Old Story New had us talking about the birth of Jesus, so we went into the Christmas closet and dug out the Little People nativity set.  We also watched the last couple scenes of The Nativity Story on DVD.  It was kind of fun having a taste Christmas in August!

We’re still reading just a few verses in Proverbs each morning (finished chapter 15 this week) and working our way through Prudence and the Millers (Chapters 11-14).  In addition to the reading, we usually try to discuss some of the pages in Prudence and Your Health, a workbook designed to go along with it.  For chapter 14 there was a fun game that all three older children enjoyed playing with me.  Wise choices allowed them to move forward, while foolish ones sent them backwards, sometimes all the way to the beginning!  It was the first time Arianna has joined us in this kind of game, and she thought it was great fun being a part of it all.

Math

I’m not always very good at finding ways to have fun with math, but this week that wasn’t a problem.  As we worked through lessons 16-20 in the Mathematics Enhancement Programme (Year 2), we spent quite a bit of time with the “logic set,” (shape cards from MEP) which Ian always enjoys.  We play a game sort of like “Guess Who?”, where one of us picks a shape and the other asks yes or no questions until they figure out which one was picked.  I’ve been trying to teach Ian to think of questions that eliminate as many possibilities as he can in one turn:

• Is your shape black?
• Is it large?
• Does it have more than 3 sides?

He loves playing this game, and we always have to move on to something else before he is ready to stop.

The boys have also been begging Eric to play “The Allowance Game,” which is a fun way to sneak in some math practice.

Literature/Ambleside Online

In A Child’s Garden of Verses we read the poem “The Lamplighter.”  When I asked Ian if he knew what a lamplighter was, he surprised me with a very thorough answer.  I asked him how he knew so much about it, and he reminded me of a book I’d picked up from another homeschool family last year.  We found Peppe the Lamplighter on our shelf and added it to our reading for the week. It’s a charming story with beautiful illustrations (a Caldecott Honor-winning book) about an immigrant boy who takes delight in his work as a lamplighter, even though his father disapproves of the menial job at first.

In our Ambleside Online, Year 1 reading, we loved the story and message of “Cornelia’s Jewels” in Fifty Famous Stories.  Ian didn’t really get the point first, but I explained what it was about and then we reread the last part of the story.  He beamed when I pointed to the wall of pictures of our kids and told them, “Look at my jewels–I’m rich!”

History Cycle

This week we only covered one lesson from Mystery of History, Vol.1, and I realized that the only part I’m really using from MoH is the Table of Contents.  This volume spends so much time on biblical history, which I feel like we’ve already covered in depth.  I definitely want my children to know where biblical events fall in relation to other things we study in history, but I would rather save our precious school hours for things they’re not yet familiar with.

Ancient China (Shang Dynasty)

We read in Story of the World, Vol. 1 about how the ancient Chinese learned to harvest silk from silkworm cocoons and turn it into cloth.  We also read a bit from The Silk Route by John S. Major (just the map and the page on the history of silk in China).  It was a teaser for when we talk about the Silk Road in Year 2 of our history cycle.  Ian loved that the secret of how to make silk was kept for thousands of years.  For his history notebook he did a page from biblestoryprintables.com.

To help understand the process of making silk more, we watched this video from the Science Channel.  I like the style of it, but didn’t cover enough for my taste.

So then we watched “The Story of Silk,” which wasn’t as well narrated, but went through more of the process.

Science

Lessons 14-15 in The World of Animals (from God’s Design for Life) had us learning about amphibians.  For his notebook, Ian did a “Life Cycle of a Frog” worksheet I found online (which was a little more age-appropriate than the one included on the curriculum CD-ROM).  We read About Amphibians by Cathryn Sill and watched Bill Nye the Science Guy: Amphibians (which contains a few evolutionary references we just discussed).  Ian really loves this show, and he’s always asking to do the experiments in the “Try This” segments.  They were really simple this time, so I was happy to be able to say yes for once.

The first experiment shows how amphibian skin works.  We filled a baby food jar with water and food coloring, then covered it with a paper towel held on by a rubber band.  We placed that jar in a larger jar filled with plain water.  Just as an amphibian’s porous skin lets water and oxygen pass in and out of its body, the dyed water was able to pass through the paper towel.

Extras

For Spanish, we started the next unit in Salsa with episode #113.  We spend two weeks on each episode, and there are six in each unit.  All of us were excited about learning some new Spanish words as we began the series on the Three Billy Goats Gruff.  I was excited to hear Ian trying to put together phrases in Spanish in a totally different context using what he had learned during our lesson time.

We finally managed to squeeze in some art!  Ian had a great time creating a torn paper collage to go along with our lesson in ARTistic Pursuits K-3 Vol. 2: Stories of Artists and Their Art.

Upcoming Reviews

We’re currently getting familiar with the following products.  Watch for reviews soon!

• King David (Get to Know series) by Nancy I. Sanders
• Preschoolers and Peace: Homeschooling older kids with success while loving the little ones at your feet (e-book) by Kendra Fletcher