Category Archives: Weekly Wrap Up

Wrapping Up Weeks 19 and 20

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
Our last two weeks of school before Christmas were mostly about reaching the milestones I had in my yearly lesson plan book.  In addition to finishing our regular math and history lessons, we learned about several holidays and did a lot of memory work (times tables and history time line) as we drove about town, enjoying several “field trips” before the schools let out for the holiday.

Our family has enjoyed learning about Hanakkuh over the last couple years, and the kids always look forward to a night of celebration with friends at church.

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On St. Lucia Day (December 13) we read about the Swedish traditional celebrations (part of my heritage), and Arianna dressed up.

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On one unusually warm day we headed to the beach with Grandma and Grandpa (throwing in some lessons on erosion and gravity while we were there).

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We also spent a few hours at one of our favorite children’s museums.

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The kids had fun putting on their own “Christmas pageant” and acting out the visit of the wise men.

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And after our 100th day of school (woohoo!) we joined some friends and headed “Back to Bethlehem,” enjoying a fun family evening at a church that recreates the setting of Jesus’ birth, complete with animals, a town market, dancing, and of course, Baby Jesus.

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So the last two weeks may not have looked like our typical school schedule, but we’ve had a lot of fun learning opportunities, and I’m thankful once again for the flexibility of homeschooling.  Now we’re looking forward to a week visiting with cousins, celebrating Christ’s birth, and hopefully resting and recharging.

Merry Christmas!

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Wrapping Up Week 18 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 Don’t you love those weeks when everything actually goes according to your plans?  I have a natural tendency to try to pack too much into our days/weeks, and it’s really hard for me to ease up or take a day off.  Yet I really want to minimize the time we spend on academics over the next few weeks, so I battled with the side of myself this week.  And won.

At the start of the week I sat down with Ian and showed him my lesson plan book for December.  We looked at what needed to be done (basically two weeks worth of lessons in his Veritas Press Self-Paced History Course, and five math lessons with lots of additional facts practice).  I told him once those things were completed, I wouldn’t ask him to do any more official schoolwork until after Christmas.

To be honest, I wanted him to dive in and get through it all this week.  He didn’t.  And so I just bit my tongue, took a deep breath, and let him go at his own pace.  We took a day off for Arianna’s birthday and he still managed to get in a solid week’s worth of work, so I can’t complain.  In addition to his history and math work on the computer, he’s reading through Robin Hood (A Stepping Stone Book), the assigned literature for his history course.  Ian loves being read to, but he’s usually reluctant to read on his own, so I was surprised at how enthusiastically he picked up the book each day.  He even asked if we could get some of the other Stepping Stone books, intrigued by the titles like Man in the Iron Mask and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  I told him I’d rather he wait a couple years and just read the “real” books, but I’d help him look at the library for the Stepping Stone versions.

DSCN0913xAs far as Elijah goes, I didn’t demand much from him this week.  Instead of doing regular lessons, I set him to work systematically going through his Architecto Gameand the Equilibrio book that uses the same blocks.  I like giving him something to do besides flying through grade levels on CTCMath.com, and since he’s fascinated by building things, I figure his time is well spent developing his spatial visualization skills.  After Christmas I’ll have him go back to lessons too, but for these light weeks I think this is a great Kindergarten activity.

Read Alouds

One of my goals over the next few weeks is to read with my children as much as possible , and we got off to a great start.  They spent a lot of time pawing through our collection of Christmas books, sometimes just flipping through them quietly on their own, and sometimes bringing them to me to read.  Here are the ones we read this week(for my most complete list of Christmas picture books, see my post Christmas Book Countdown):

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Best Christmas Pageant

I also had the pleasure of introducing the boys to The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson, one of my childhood favorites.  From the first page, Ian was hooked, and within a few chapters we had drawn Elijah in as well.  They kept begging for more and we ended reading the book in one sitting (well, with a few interruptions from the little ones).  It was such a hit I went searching for the movie, which I’d never seen.

So all in all we had a delightful week of snuggling up with books and enjoying lots of family time in the glow of the Christmas tree with the iPod serenading us with Christmas carols pretty much all day every day.  Bliss!

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Wrapping Up Week 17 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 

It’s amazing how much a little structure can change things.  When we moved back in June, we took down our Accountable Kids pegboards, and they’ve sat in a box ever since, just waiting to be put back to use.  Two weeks ago we finally got around to mounting them on the wall, and consequently the kids accomplished an amazing amount of things they’d neglected in the last few months, like practicing the piano, getting laundry regularly, and helping with the dishwasher.

I used some of the time that allowed me to get back into the DVDs from IEW’s Teaching Writing: Structure and Style seminar.  As the boys have progressed in their writing class (using Fables, Myths and Fairy Tales: Writing Lessons in Structure & Style) I find that I really need to know how the IEW system works to be able to help them.  They are both young to be attempting this material, and they definitely need some “scaffolding” to get through it, but I think they’re both getting a lot out of the class, and we’re just trying to introduce the ideas this year.  We find ourselves having lots of conversations about finding interesting words to describe the world around us.

“Conversational” is probably the best word to describe our whole week.  We got caught up through lesson 14 in Our Planet Earth (from God’s Design for Heaven and Earth), just reading the text and talking through the different kinds of rocks.

In math, I only had Ian do two lessons in Teaching Textbooks Math 3 and we spent a lot of time playing games to help the boys learn their multiplication facts (excluding 7’s, 8’s, and 9’s).

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We finished reading Marianna Mayer’s adaptation of Ivanhoe.  I think I’m going to quit on Pinocchio though.  I remember really enjoying it as a child, and perhaps if I’d been more intentional about finding time to read it we’d be more enthusiastic, but as it is, Ian’s not thrilled with it and we’re not terribly motivated to pick it up.  Perhaps I’ll come back to it with the younger children in a few years.  There are just so many wonderful books I want to read with all of the kids during Advent, so it’s time to just put Pinocchio away.

A few final thoughts

The older three children had their final choir performance for the semester on the Friday before Thanksgiving, which helped me really feel ready for the holidays to begin.  We wrapped up a few loose ends in history and writing this week (which is why I’m posting a week late), but now we’re just enjoying the holiday break and looking forward to the joyous anticipation of Advent.

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Wrapping Up Week 16 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 Last week it finally felt like we were back to our routine (though since it’s taken me a couple extra days to write about it, I’m obviously not quite as top of things as I like to think).  Still, I was happy with what we managed to get through, especially since we took a day off for Elijah’s sixth birthday.  He takes great delight in building things, so most of his gifts followed that interest.  I may decide to have him work through the designs in Architecto as part of his school work.

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Preschool

Arianna is back into Reading Eggs and is doing really well as she repeats the first couple dozen lessons.  I’m really glad I set her progress back, because she has so much more confidence this time around and is working much more independently.  She really wants to be doing work on the computer like the boys, so I let her spend time both with Reading Eggs and with La La Logic [Edited to remove link as this online curriculum is no longer available] . which we’d taken a break from when we moved at the beginning of the summer and never started back up again.  Both she and Elijah spent quite a bit of time on it this past week.

Read Alouds

We finished up our King Arthur stories by reading The Kitchen Knight as retold by Margaret Hodges.  I had planned on reading more, but it just felt like time to stop.  I’m sure at some point in years to come, we’ll go back and read more stories about the knights of the round table, but the weeks we’ve spent on it this year have definitely given Ian (and Elijah, to the extent that he was following along) a good introduction.

  We started reading an adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe by Marianna Mayer with beautiful illustrations by John Rush.  This version is highly simplified, but Ian enjoyed the story and spent a long time admiring the pictures.  It fit well with his history lessons as well.

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We also read a few more chapters in Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, though not as much as Ian would like.  (Since we’re taking turns choosing our non-history related chapter books, he’s anxious to get through my selection and onto his next choice.

Independent (Computer) Lessons

Math

Ian has reached multiplication in his Teaching Textbooks Math 3 lessons.  I’m not quite ready to start him on practicing his multiplication facts on xtramath.org, just because he’s got a few more subtraction facts to master.  Instead I’m slowing down our pace with Teaching Textbooks, doing just a couple lessons a week, and spending time with some fun games to help him (and Elijah) practice the facts as they’re introduced.  (So far aside from learning the rule for 0’s and 1’s he’s done the 10’s, 2’s, 5’s, and 4’s.)

For dessert one night I split the kids into teams: Ian and Nico vs. Elijah and Arianna.  (The little ones love shouting out numbers, even if they have no clue what the point is, but since Ian and Elijah are pretty evenly matched, the teams are as fair as I could make them).  We went through flashcards with all those fact families, giving M&M’s to each member of the team who got the correct answer first.  They got in some good practice and everyone ended up with a handful of candy by the time we finished.

History

I continue to be amazed by how much Ian is enjoying the Veritas Press Self-Paced History Course on the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation.  We had taken a week off for our road trip, so we’re behind where I had planned to be.  Still, I wanted to enjoy our week on cathedrals.  It was a bit of a review since we discussed them last year during a unit study, so I didn’t go too in depth.  I have Ian a choice of which video he wanted to re-watch, and he chose Building the Great Cathedrals, which my Kindergarten architect enjoyed a lot as well.

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Ian actually finished all the lessons for the week early, and then we I told him he didn’t have any more history to do, he dived into the next week’s lessons on the Crusades.  I’m hoping we’ll get caught up and back on schedule without doing history all the way up to Christmas.  It’s wonderful that he loves the program so much.  Elijah keeps asking me when he’ll be old enough to do history as well.  (He already watches Ian do his lessons every day and has the song memorized.)  I wish there were a way to purchase the Veritas Press online courses to use over and over again, because I just don’t see this being something we can afford every year, especially for multiple students.

A few final thoughts

I can’t believe how quickly this year is flying by.  On Friday the kids had their final music classes with the exception of choir, which will wrap up with a final performance this week.  Before we know it, Christmas will be upon us!

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Wrapping Up Week 15 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 

Last week was mostly spent recovering from our road trip.  At home we focused mostly on math and history.  The boys also had their IEW class and all the kids were happy to be back to their Friday music classes.  I’m both looking forward to and dreading the holidays, because while a break is always nice, it’s hard for us to get back in the swing of things!

Sir GawainWe continued enjoying King Arthur stories by reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as told by Michael Morpurgo and beautifully illustrated by Michael Foreman.  Ian enjoyed the book, though I found myself wondering if I should have skipped this one.  During part of the story, Gawain is tempted by the wife of his host, and I became a little uncomfortable.  We talked about the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, comparing the wisdom Joseph showed by fleeing with Gawain’s foolishness in allowing someone else’s wife to spend time alone with him and accepting her kisses.  It wasn’t exactly a discussion I would have planned for my 2nd grader, but once it had come up I didn’t want to just ignore the situation and give the impression that I was okay with such behavior.

Elijah really enjoyed mapping our trip and keeping track of which states we passed through, so I tried to give him time to practice the geography he had learned.  He really enjoyed looking at maps of the US and putting together a wooden puzzle of the states.  I love that we were able to make the map come alive for him, and I’m looking forward to exploring more of the country in the years to come!

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Upcoming Reviews

Our review season is almost wrapped up!  Watch for these last couple reviews in the next few days:

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Wrapping Up Week 13 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 We really eased back into school as we started up our second term, mostly because we decided to head out on a road trip for the next week and I didn’t want to get in too deep before that.

The only big change we had for this term was in science, as we moved onto Our Planet Earth, another of the three books in God’s Design for Heaven and Earth.  Ian read the first two lessons out loud to me as we drove, and then we had a great discussion about how everything we see originally came from materials God put on the earth.  Ian wanted to try to make his own cement (I wasn’t quite up to that), and we learned about how glass is made (with a clip from Some Assembly Required).

We got through a pretty normal week of school without any extras because we were getting ready for our trip.  Then we drove overnight from Southern California to Albuquerque, where we had a blast at the ABQ BioPark Zoo.  I was so impressed with the animals at the zoo (zoos that size around us don’t have any of the big feature animals, so I was pleasantly surprised to find elephants, giraffes, tigers, and so much more), and the kids were all SO excited to get so close them, especially Nico, who hasn’t been to a zoo since he was a tiny baby.  Then we walked through the aquarium marveling over more of God’s wonders, and finally wrapped up the day by exploring the amazing Children’s Fantasy Garden (part of the Botanic Garden).  It was an awesome day of learning all around, so I don’t feel too badly that I didn’t pack much school work for next week.  I’m anticipating lots of sun learning days.

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Wrapping Up Week 12 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 We are one third of the way through our school year!  This week wrapped up our first 12-week term, and we celebrated by starting our fall break a little early and heading to a local indoor playground on Friday to stay out of the triple digit heat that’s stealing autumn’s glory.  We still have the boys’ writing class next Tuesday, but other than that we’ll be taking next week off from our usual school subjects.

This week in our Preschool

This week we were able to do more of what I had planned on for this year as far as preschool time with Arianna.  I got out our autumn books and we spent time enjoying activities related on The Little Scarecrow Boy by Margaret Wise Brown (see my last post for more details).

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(In the story, the little scarecrow boy practices making scary faces.  Hence the tongue.)

Science

We finished reading the last few lessons in Our Weather & Water, then spent some time discussing coral reefs and examining some pieces of coral with a magnifying glass.

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Then we watched The Magic School Bus Goes to Mussel Beach to wrap up this unit.  It feels so good to have completed something!  The book is now back on the shelf waiting to be pulled out again next time around if I decide to stick with a four year science cycle.  (That’s my plan at least for the elementary years, and we’ll be in those for at least another decade or so.)

Read Alouds

We continued reading King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green to supplement our history of the Middle Ages, and finished Mary Poppins, by P.L. Travers for our fun reading this week.

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Independent Learning

I’m really thankful that we gave Teaching Textbooks Math 3 a try this year.  Both boys are thriving on it, and it’s freed me up to spend more time with the little ones while they work through their lessons, though I’m usually watching on the big TV screen out of the corner of my eye.  I like it so much I went ahead and purchased Math 4 for when they finish up these lessons.

The one frustration I’ve had with the program, however, is that it doesn’t emphasize the importance of adding the ones column first when doing multiple digit addition (or subtraction).  At first it didn’t matter that Ian was starting with the numbers on the left because he didn’t have to carry (or borrow), but once he started getting into bigger numbers it obviously became an issue.  I’ve been trying to encourage him to write down the problems but he has been really resistant.  This week, however, I stumbled upon an idea that he really liked, and now he doesn’t complain at all about it.  I folded the paper up into sixteenths, intending just to help him make good use of the whole sheet, but he preferred leaving it folded up like a little book, and he got such a kick out of it that suddenly his stubbornness melted away and he enthusiastically jotted down each problem in his little “notebook.”  Whatever makes things fun, right?

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Upcoming Reviews

We’re got a whole bunch of reviews to watch for in the next few weeks:

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Wrapping Up Week 11 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 I love that we’ve gotten into such a good groove this year that every week feels productive.  I think it’s mostly due to the fact that the boys are working independently on so much, freeing me to stay on top of the household and the little ones for a good portion of the day.  Of course, a big part of it is that I have SO much more energy now that I’m no longer pregnant.  Maybe I’m odd, but I find life with a newborn far less tiring than pregnancy.

This week in our Preschool

Arianna and Nico had a fun week doing purposeful activities while the boys did their schoolwork each morning.  I’ve set up this little table for them on the far side of our school room, and it’s close enough that they feel like they’re with us, yet separate enough that they’re not a distraction.  This week they kept busy playing with unifix cubes, painting with watercolors, and doing lots of coloring.

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I also gave Arianna a few simple alphabet dot-to-dots, and she was quite tickled to be doing “real” school work.

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We finished the week doing nature study with Daddy, spending a few hours at a local nature center.  Nicholas loved discovering acorns, and especially liked the ones with “hats” that he could take off.  All the boys had fun collecting them, and Ian was fascinated when I told him about how the Native Americans ground them to use the flour for cooking.  We’ll have to go back and gather more to try out a recipe or two.

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Read Alouds

For history we continued reading King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table.   I’m really glad we’re going through these.  I’ve read many modern variations of the Arthur stories, and reading an older one is helping me figure out a lot.  Ian’s enjoying them as well.

For fun, we continued James Howe’s “Bunnicula and Friends” series with Return to Howliday Inn.  We also started Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers, in an attempt to get through most of the books from Ambleside Online “free reads” for Year 2.

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Writing

Fables, Myths, and Fairy TalesThe boys are really enjoying the writing class they’re a part of this year.  We’re going through Fables, Myths and Fairy Tales: Writing Lessons in Structure & Style from the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW).  The book itself is geared toward 3rd-5th grade, but since many of the kids in the class are younger, we’re going through it at a pace the boys can follow pretty well (though I let Elijah dictate a lot to me since he’s still working on learning to actually write).

I think Ian’s favorite part is just being there with his friends and getting to feel like he’s in “real school.”  He loves participating in class, but he’d be perfectly happy to skip the homework.  Elijah, however, loves the whole idea of writing the stories, and ever since we introduced adjectives, he’s been getting great delight from finding the perfect wordsmad libs to use as he retells the stories.

To help the boys remember the various parts of speech I let Ian pick out a book of Mad Libs, and we’re having fun practicing our nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs (plus more!)with DC Comics Super Hero Mad Libs.

Independent Learning

The boys are continuing to go through their Spanish lessons from Middlebury Interactive Languages, and Ian just finished the tenth week of lessons in his Veritas Press history course.  Both courses have been a big hit, and I’m thankful that they’re working independently and learning so much!

Language Skills

I’m currently requiring the boys to spend time on Reading Eggs twice a week, but I’ve been giving them a lot of freedom as to what they did each time.  This past week Elijah got started on Reading Eggspress, and I realized that both of the boys would really benefit from the reading comprehension lessons, so now I’m having them go through at least one of those each week.

Math

Elijah started working through Teaching Textbooks Math 3 this week, and so far he’s doing well.  The only problem it’s created is that both boys now have to use the one computer it’s installed on to do their math lessons, so I have to make sure they each have something else to work on when the other one is on the computer.

Upcoming Reviews

We’re enjoying several products right now, so watch for these reviews in the next few weeks:

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Wrapping Up Week 10 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
I love the feeling of a week well done.  We were still finishing up school at 4:00 Friday afternoon (unexpected circumstances wiped out most of Thursday), but we got through everything I had hoped to complete, and the boys were still working with a good attitude right up to the very end.  That right there just made my week.  Everything they accomplished was just icing on the cake.

Preschool

After last week’s emphasis on blocks, we moved on to play dough this week.  All the kids found a spot at the table at some point during the week, but Elijah and Arianna put in the most hours for sure.

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Arianna really wanted to spend time on Reading Eggs this week, and to my surprise she specifically requested to do lessons she’d already done.  Since I’ve been concerned that she was flying through lessons without really absorbing what was being taught, I decided to reset her lessons all the way back to the beginning.  She really liked going through them again with the extra boost of confidence that comes from knowing what to expect.  I felt a little bad at erasing the progress she had made, but I think it was the right decision.

Science

Our lessons this week in Our Weather & Water (from God’s Design for Heaven and Earth) had to do with exploring the ocean.  This is a topic that has fascinated Ian in the past, so much of it was review.  Elijah joined us in reading the lessons, and then all the kids enjoyed watching Bill Nye the Science Guy: Ocean Exploration.  We also talked again about Dr. Robert Ballard, probably best known for finding the wreck of Titanic, who is one of the world’s leading ocean explorers.  He happens to be an old friend of my dad’s, so we’ve enjoyed following his work over the years and checking in with his Nautilus Live website to see what’s currently being explored and studied.

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Read Alouds

We’ve continued doing a lot of reading over the last couple weeks.  Ian’s Veritas Press Self-Paced History Course had him scheduled to read The Minstrel in the Tower by Gloria Skurzynski over the past two weeks, but he enjoyed it so much we flew through it in a couple days.  Then we moved on to some of my own historical literature selections.

We started with The Little Duke by Charlotte Mary Yonge.  I was unfamiliar with this classic, but it is one of the books scheduled for Ambleside Online Year 2 and it fit with the time period so I thought we’d give it a try.  Ian surprised me with how much he enjoyed the book, and we finished it early as well, moving on to King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green.  We only got through the first part of the first chapter this week, but that was a perfect intro and led us to watch The Sword in the Stone for family movie night, which all the kids enjoyed.

minstrel   Little Duke   King Arthur
For fun reading, we continued in James Howe’s Bunnicula and Friends series with The Celery Stalks at Midnight and Nighty-Nightmare.

Celery Stalks at Midnight   Nighty Nightmare

Independent Learning

Both boys continue daily drills on xtramath.org, and this week Elijah finished up the first grade lessons on CTCMath.com.  I debated several options for what to do with him at this point.

  • Stick with CTCMath and move on to 2nd grade?
  • Go back to lessons and practice book pages from MEP?
  • Take a “break” by switching to Life of Fred?
  • or let him do what Ian’s doing for 2nd grade and dive into Teaching Textbooks Math 3?

I narrowed it down to the first and last options just because the other two would require more from me than I can consistently give in this season and then asked him what he would prefer.  He decided to join Ian on Teaching Textbooks.  Since that’s my long-term curriculum plan at this point anyway I decided there wasn’t much point in trying to put it off just because technically he’s only in Kindergarten.  I doubt he’ll have any trouble based on what Ian’s done so far, but if at some point it gets too hard we still have other options.

Upcoming Reviews

We’ve got a lot products we’re checking out right now, so watch for these reviews coming soon:

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Wrapping Up Week 9 (2015-16)

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 Whew!  What a crazy five days we had last week!  I really needed the weekend to recover.  Several of the kids’ activities started up, and it may take us a while to feel settled with the schedule for this fall:

  • Writing class
  • Music classes (choir, handchimes, composer study, and more)
  • Wrestling twice a week for the older boys
  • Ballet/tap for Arianna
  • Trail Life USA for the older boys
  • the last few weeks of swimming lessons

Add to that a beach day (turned park day) with homeschool friends, and it’s amazing we got anything done at all over the course of the week!  For the last few years I’ve been very deliberate about keeping our schedule light, but we’re testing the waters this fall to see how we do with so much going on.

This week in our Preschool

It seems like many schools have gotten so focused on academics these days, that they’re neglecting classic early childhood activities.  No such problems here!  Arianna and Elijah spent HOURS this past week playing with blocks.  I was amazed at some of the structures Elijah built.  (You’d think I’d have a nice picture here to show off my future engineer’s genius, wouldn’t you?  There goes that Mom of the week award.)

Science

In Our Weather & Water (our first term’s book in God’s Design for Heaven and Earth) we read about tsunamis.  I remember as a kid having a mental picture of tsunamis that must have come from Hollywood, so I wanted my children to have a more realistic idea of what a tsunami looked like and how much damage it could cause even if it didn’t look like the movies.  We watched a couple YouTube videos of actual tsunamis, which really made an impression.  (Then we watched one of those crazy fictional accounts, talking about how different it was.)

Crazily enough, we had a beach day planned with our homeschool friends on Thursday, and we had to cancel it because of a tsunami advisory for our part of the California coast following a major earthquake in Chile.  It really brought our lesson home!  I think the disappointment my kids would normally have felt was actually lessened by the cool factor of the possibility of an actual tsunami.  Thankfully there was little to report after the day had come and gone, but it helped make science an exciting subject for the week.

A few final thoughts

I’m so thankful for the weeks we spent earlier in the summer trying to establish routines for the boys to work through their lessons independently.  That was the only reason they were able to get through 99% of their scheduled work for the week.

Elijah beltI’m also really thankful for the chance to get the boys involved in wrestling.  It’s a great sport for our family because their smaller size doesn’t put them at an automatic disadvantage, and it gives them a positive outlet for all that “boy energy” that threatens to drive this mama crazy at times.  They absolutely love it, and it was wonderful to see the gleam in their eyes as they set about trying to get the best of their opponents.

Upcoming Reviews

We’re enjoying several products right now, so watch for these reviews in the next few weeks:

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