His Treasure Seekers

The closer we get to summer, the less structured school time we’re doing, so I’m not sure if I’ll really write about all 36 weeks of our school year.  I debated whether to write about last week at all since I took Friday afternoon through Sunday morning off for our homeschool group’s retreat, but since I’d already written most of this post I figured I’d go ahead and finish it even if it’s a little late.

Bible/Circle Time

We’re reading about three chapters in Little Pilgrim’s Progress most days.  This week we also got out the Pilgrim’s Progress game for a few rounds.  It was the first time we’ve played since finishing Part 1 of the book (Christian’s journey), so Ian liked that he knew all the people and places mentioned in the game this time around.

(This picture is from the first week when we got out the game, but I wanted show all the little pieces included to set up around the board.  I like to use them with Ian because they’re a good review of different elements of the story, but they’re not really necessary.  This week I played with Elijah without getting it all set up, and it was still just as fun.)

Math

Ian’s math routine has gotten so easy, and I love that he can do it all independently.  I set up the computer by opening a window with three tabs, and once he’s completed the activities in all three, he’s done with math.  Here’s what he sees each morning:

• xtramath.org – Each day’s assignment is already clear.  He signs on, goes through three short flashcard sessions, and then he sees a message like “You’re done for the day!”  He checks to see how well he did (he’s given a green, yellow, or red mark both for the entire day and for each individual section), which tells him if he’s earned any time to play computer games.
• Mathletics – Now that we’re using this for his main math curriculum, I require Ian to earn at least 200 points each day so he’ll reach the weekly goal of 1000.  Depending on how accurate his answers are, he’s usually done with that in 10-15 minutes.  If he finishes earning his points quickly, he has extra time to play the Mathletics games.
• [Edited to remove link as this online curriculum is no longer available] LaLaLogic – this is actually a preschool curriculum we’re reviewing, but I love the critical thinking involved, so I’m letting Ian go through at an accelerated pace so he can get to some of the more challenging activities.  The curriculum is set up with a particular set of activities for each week, but I have Ian complete two weeks worth of “Brain Challenges” each day.  So far it seems to be easy for him without being boring.  I think he likes checking off each “week” and seeing his progress. (Arianna is working through at the suggested pace, while Elijah is doing one level each day.)

Literature

We’re still trying to chip away at the scheduled readings for Ambleside Online, Year 1.  This week we read “Daily Bread” from Leslie Laurio’s paraphrase of Parables from Nature by Margaret Gatty.  While I like the lessons in these stories, this has been our least favorite book this year, mostly because of the length of each story I think.  I saw the book is also on the schedule for AO Year 2, but since I’m already sort of picking and choosing what we’re going to use from that booklist (more on that another time), I’ve decided to drop Parable from Nature.

Science

This week in The World of Plants we moved onto learning about flowers and fruit (lessons 21- 25).  Ian was already somewhat familiar with the concept of pollination, so I tried to build upon what he already knew, since there were a lot of new vocabulary words that he found confusing.

I was hoping to find a Magic School Bus episode to go along with the lesson, but since we already watched one on seeds, we decided to watch The Magic School Bus Gets Planted about photosynthesis, which we covered last week.  (Unfortunately Amazon doesn’t have all the individual episodes available for instant streaming, but we got the complete series on sale a while back, which has been a great resource for our family.)

Spanish

Ian finished the Spanish 1 course from Middlebury Interactive Languages this week.  Unless we get to review a new product, this will be it for it foreign language for this year.

Upcoming Reviews

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

• [Edited to remove link as this online curriculum is no longer available] LaLaLogic preschool curriculum
• The Berenstain Bears: God Bless Our Country by Mike Berenstain

I feel like I’m approaching the finish line of a long race, and it’s just about time to make a final sprint before the end.  We definitely picked up the pace in working through the last few things I want to accomplish before the end of the school year, and Ian felt the satisfaction of completion several times this week as finished several books and put them away.

Bible/Circle Time

We’re still starting our days by reading a few chapters from Part 2 of Little Pilgrim’s Progress.  Ian continues to enjoy the story, especially since he now gets to play quietly while I read rather than working on the notebook pages I had him doing in Part 1.  He often asks me to read more than the two chapters I have planned, and I try to oblige as long as we’re not trying to get through our school work quickly before we have to go somewhere.

Math

After finishing up my review of GPALOVEMATH I decided to give the boys a little more flexibility when it comes to their math lessons.  Since we still have a subscription to Mathletics I told them they could choose between a lesson from GPALOVEMATH or earning 200 points from doing activities on Mathletics.  I don’t know if it’s because they really like the lessons better or just because they wanted some variety, but both boys chose Mathletics every day.

Ian is also still doing facts practice on xtramath.org each day, and this week I had him begin working on subtraction.  The first two days were a little rough, but he made definite improvement over the course of the week, which kept him from getting too discouraged by scores that were lower than he had been getting with addition practice.  I’ve also been trying to encourage Elijah to run through a session each day, though he’s not quite as consistent as Ian since I haven’t really required any school work from him up until this point.  Xtramath has been so helpful for Ian, however, and since Elijah is ready in many ways to advance quickly in math, I want to be sure he masters his facts before moving ahead.

Literature

We finished Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling C. Holling this week, and then watched the movie version on YouTube.  Ian was disappointed by all the things that were left out of the movie (welcome to my world!)  He hadn’t expressed a lot of enthusiasm for this book over the course of the year, but when we reached the end he saw the pictures of other Holling C. Holling books and asked if we could start them.  I’m glad he has that sense of wanting more, and I told him we’d see about going through one in our next school year.

I’m hoping to finish up the literature readings for Ambleside Online, Year 1 before Week 36, so we started reading selections from most of the books, even those not scheduled for this week.  Ian loves Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling and James Herriot’s Treasury for Children, so he had no problem with a few extra stories.  We didn’t quite finish “King Lear” in Tales from Shakespeare, but we only have a couple pages left.

History

Officially we’re done with history for the year, but with St. Patrick’s Day on Tuesday I wanted to take some time to talk about the man behind the holiday.  I had stumbled across The Story of Saint Patrick by James A. Janda while back, and it was the perfect book to have Ian read through this week.  The chapters are all quite short, so we went through several a day.  I love how the book focuses on Patrick’s mission to share Christ with the Irish and goes beyond just the basic biographical facts we’ve read in other books.

Science

We got all the way through Unit 4 on leaves (lessons 16-20) in The World of Plants.  We didn’t do the final project on leaves, but we did take some time to observe the leaves on various trees, and that was enough for both Ian and me to feel like we were done.

Spanish

We finally got back into our Spanish lessons from Middlebury Interactive Languages.  (We’ve been using it sporadically since we reviewed it last fall, but I realized this week that it would be really easy to add it to Ian’s list of “computer school” tasks so he could finish the Spanish 1 course.  This week he  finished up Unit 5 on school-related words and began the final unit, which reviews everything he has learned in the course.  I have been really thankful for this program and how it has helped Ian continue learning without requiring anything from me.  Actually, it’s been great for all the kids, since I have the younger kids watch Ian work through the lessons on the TV hooked up to the computer.  Elijah has gone through several of the activities himself as well.

I’m not sure what we’re going to do for Spanish next year.  I had planned to go back to using the Salsa videos we were using before, but I think the lessons plans are essential for getting the most out of them, and I’m just not sure how much I’m going to be up to once the baby arrives at the end of summer.  I might try to get through at least one unit before that point (since we start our school year in July), but I’m hoping to find something that will help at least my two older kids continue building on what they’ve already learned.

Preschoolers

As I’ve been praying and planning about next year, I’ve decided I want to start working with Elijah and Arianna more intentionally, though they’ve certainly picked up a lot just from the learning environment in our home.  I’ll write a bit more about what that might look like once we’ve wrapped up this school year, but for now, I’m exploring different ways to include them.

I struggle with knowing what to do for Elijah.  On the one hand, he’s a 5-year old boy and needs lots of free time for playing, exploring, and just learning on his own.  On the other hand, I want to be sure I give him a chance to excel as much as he wants.  He’s not due to start Kindergarten until this summer, and yet his reading and math skills are at about a 2nd grade level.  I want to provide challenges for him and slowly start working toward more structured learning over the next year.

For now, I’m trying to work on establishing some structure and expectations with some fun activities.  We’re checking out a curriculum for preschoolers that focuses on critical thinking and problem solving skills, which is giving both Arianna and Elijah some time to do “lessons” like Ian without being too dry and academic.

Upcoming Reviews

Here’s what we’re taking a look at these days.  Watch for reviews soon!

• The Beginner’s Bible: Come Celebrate Easter Sticker & Activity Book from Zonderkidz

 This was supposed to be the week we got fully caught up and back into the swing of things.  Then I got sick (again).  We did manage not to get further behind, and sometimes that just has to be enough, doesn’t it?

Bible/Circle Time

We finished Part One of Little Pilgrim’s Progress this week, which was cause for celebration.  For one thing, I was only requiring Ian to write up pages for our daily reading through the end of Part One.  He ended up with a nice little book about Little Christian’s story.  The other nice thing about finishing was that we can move at a quicker pace through Part Two since Ian’s doesn’t have to keep up.  He often wanted me to read beyond our daily two chapters, but the writing was laborious for him and I didn’t want to make him do more than one page a day.  However, I think we’re going to finish Christiana’s story in Part Two much more quickly now that we’re not limited.  Ian’s even been asking to listen in the car to the dramatic reading of Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan’s original story) from Answers in Genesis so we can keep going with Christiana’s story when we’re not at home, but I think it only has Part One.

Math

Ian is continuing to do well with our online math programs.  We’re almost at the end of our subscription to CTC Math, which I am really going to miss.  We may have to come back to it later.

Literature

Now that we finally read “East of the Sun, and West of the Moon” in The Blue Fairy Book, we are officially caught up with our literature selections from Ambleside Online, Year 1 (woo hoo!).  We also read Pictures at an Exhibition by Anna Harwell Celenza to learn the story of Modest Mussorgsky’s music by the same title, which the kids have been studying in their composer class on Fridays.

History Cycle

This week we pretty much wrapped up all that I had planned to cover in the first year of our history cycle.  We’re still finishing the last few episodes of Friends and Heroes, but we listened to the last few chapters of Story of the World, Vol. 1 by Susan Wise Bauer and discussed the demise of the Roman Empire.  Ian was especially fascinated about the secret burial of Attila the Hun (as was I, since the story was new to me as well).

I also made a rather big decision (and purchase) regarding our history lessons for next year.  I know it’s rather early to be talking about next year’s curriculum, but  I wanted to share about the great sale going on right now in case anyone else wants to take advantage of it ($100 off!).

Last year other members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew had the pleasure of trying out the online self-paced history courses from Veritas Press.  Ian wasn’t old enough for the course at the time so we weren’t on the review, but as I’ve heard people raving about them it made me curious.  After checking out everything I could find online, I decided this would be a great fit for us for next year.  Normally I try to save our curriculum money for things I’ll be able to use with other children in the future, but since I already have a ton of books and resources for Year 2 of our history cycle, I’m not too worried.  With a new baby coming and Nico about to give up his morning nap, I’m planning on a very different sort of school day next year.  Ian learns really well from videos and computer activities, so I think he’s going to get a lot out of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation class.  If you’re at all interested in finding a fun online history curriculum, check out these courses before the sale ends on March 14!  (There are 5 altogether, covering the whole spread of history.)

Science

We covered lessons 10-12 in The World of Plants, as well as talking about George Washington Carver.  I was kind of disappointed we didn’t get to do anything with our sprouts this week, but it looks like we’ll get back to them soon.  If I hadn’t been sick we might have gotten a little more into our study of roots, but all we did was read the lessons in the book and discuss them.  Hopefully next week we can have a little more hands on activity!

Upcoming Reviews

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

• The Beginner’s Bible: Come Celebrate Easter Sticker & Activity Book from Zonderkidz
• Math Analogies, Beginning from Critical Thinking Co. (software)
• GPALOVEMATH from GPA LEARN

This week had lots of ups and downs.  Over the weekend Ian came down with a stomach bug and was miserable, especially when he had to miss his birthday party with our extended family.  Thankfully he had lots of little blessings that came his way over the few days he wasn’t feeling well, which helped make up for his disappointment.  Then just as we were getting back into the swing of things, my husband and I both came down with the bug.  In other words, school didn’t look quite like I had planned this week, but we improvised a bit and still managed a fairly decent week of school.

During our down time we finally got around to listening to the latest Jonathan Park album (The Journey Home?) and were delightfully surprised when the Creation Response Team bumped into the Brinkman family (from one our our other audio favorites, The Brinkman Adventures).

Bible/Circle Time

I don’t usually mention our main Bible lessons, which come from our family devotions in Old Story New , but this week’s lesson fit well with our science lessons.  We’re on Week 18: The Four Soils (a.k.a. the  parable of the sower), which tied in nicely with what we’re learning about seeds.

We only managed to get through four chapters of Little Pilgrim’s Progress this week, but that means we should be able to finish up Part 1 next week, barring any disruptions such as we faced this week.

Math

I was especially thankful for our online math programs this week.  Ian has made great progress with xtramath.org, and I think I’m going to start having him practice subtraction cards now that he has his addition facts pretty much nailed.  Our subscription to CTC Math is going to expire in the next couple weeks, so I tried to have Ian complete a few more lessons there in addition to several lessons in the program we’re currently reviewing, GPALOVEMATH.  I love CTC Math’s straightforward approach, which makes it very easy to see which concepts he needs to work on.  GPALOVEMATH seems to be pretty thorough as well, however, so I don’t see a need to renew our CTC Math subscription at this point.

Literature

Our scheduled reading for Ambleside Online, Year 1 are pretty thin for the next few weeks (mostly because they’re a bit heavier in the history books, which we’re not using), so we didn’t get any farther behind despite our crazy week.  We finally read the story about “The Law of the Wood” in Parable from Nature.  We’ve been using Leslie Laurio’s paraphrase because many moms on the AO Forum had said this book was one of the most challenging for their kids in Year 1.  I’m really glad I made that decision, because even with the paraphrase this book has been difficult for us, I think because the stories tend to be longer than most of our readings.  I’ve pushed through for various reasons, but I think it’s both Ian’s and my least favorite of our literature selections.

I also read Noah’s Wife: The Story of Naamah by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso to connect with our study of seeds.  It’s a beautiful story based on a traditional story from Hebrew midrash (which made for a quick lesson in and of itself).  In the story, Noah’s wife, Naamah (also sometimes called Naomi according to tradition) is tasked with collecting seeds from all the plants on earth to preserve on the ark and scatter after the flood.  Ian really liked the story, and it gave us a chance to review the meaning of alliteration.

History Cycle

We are almost finished with Series 2 of Friends and Heroes.  These episodes have been set during the Roman siege of Jerusalem.  Even though we haven’t quite gotten to it yet, we spent some time talking about the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and its significance.

Science

Somehow in the midst of all the sickness we still managed to get through lessons 4-6 in The World of Plants.  We also watched The Magic School Bus Goes to Seed.

We talked about monocots and dicots, dissecting beans and corn seeds and then putting some in jars to sprout.  Within a couple days we had several sprouts, and I think we’re supposed to be using these in the next few lessons.

We also spent a day at the California Science Center, and Ian enjoyed a lesson on electronics from Daddy as they worked with the set of Snap Circuits he got for his birthday.  Thankfully, Daddy knows a lot about that kind of thing, because I would be pretty useless!  I’ve heard a lot of great things about Snap Circuits, and I’m so glad we gave them a try.  Ian’s already figuring out how to create his own projects, which amazes me since I really don’t have a mind for this kind of thing.  I’m looking forward to seeing what sort of things he comes up with.

Upcoming Reviews

Watch for these reviews in the next few weeks!

• Math Analogies, Beginning from Critical Thinking Co. (software)
• GPALOVEMATH from GPA LEARN

 This week we had fun celebrating Valentine’s Day with some other homeschool families and talked a little bit about the story of St. Valentine.  I’m so thankful to have a wonderful community to share life with as our children grow up together.  Ian especially thrives on lots of time with other kids, so it has been great for us to have other homeschool friends.

Bible/Circle Time

We’re getting close to the end of Part 1 in Little Pilgrim’s Progress, and I’m going to let Ian finish doing his notebook pages once we reach that point.  It’s been a good discipline exercise for him, but we’d both like to move through the book more quickly than it allows.  He’s been doing a good job at narrating to me orally, so I’m ready to let him off the hook when it comes to the writing.  We just have about 5 more days’ worth of reading to finish up.

(As these pictures show, my camera lens has gotten scratched and is ruining all my pictures.  I’m so bummed!)

Math

I’m really happy with our switch over to doing all Ian’s math online.  He has shown significant improvement in his addition facts thanks to xtramath.org, and I think the time on CTC Math and GPALOVEMATH has been really good for him.

One thing that has frustrating me in working with Ian has been how little he cared about getting a good score on a lesson, so I’ve been really pleased to see him repeating lessons on CTC Math to raise his standing (since it takes an average of the last three times).  He’s been totally self-motivated to move from “silver” to “gold” or even up to “platinum.”  I’m so glad he’s developing a sense of pride in doing his best work.

I think we’re both enjoying the independence that this switch has given him.  While I think MEP is a fantastic curriculum, it definitely requires teacher involvement, and with a house full of little ones, I need to prioritize which lessons I’m going to do with Ian.  For now (especially with a new baby coming in September), I think it’s more important that Ian can build a solid foundation and make steady progress at grade level than to push ahead with a rigorous program that’s continually challenging him.

Literature

This week we finished up the poetry of A.A. Milne and moved on to the Ambleside Online, Year 1 third term selection, A Child’s Book of Poems by Gyo Fujikawa.  Ian loved the playful Milne poems and often asked me to go back and read some of his favorites.  I like that this new work has a variety of poets, and I’m hoping Ian enjoys them as well.  He really liked Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, and I caught him telling Nicholas all about them, pointing out his eyes and head and he said the names.  So we’re off to a good start.

The one thing we were still really behind in with was our reading in Tales from Shakespeare.  This week we finally read “The Winter’s Tale” (over the course of three days), and then we watched the story in the Shakespeare: The Animated Tales series.  The story was new to me, so I enjoyed reading it with Ian.  He had an easier time following along than he has with some of the other Shakespeare stories we’ve read, probably because there weren’t a lot of characters.

History Cycle

We’re continuing to focus on the church of the first century.  After we finished the Storykeepers series on Monday we watched The Perpetua Story (from the Torchlighters series), as well as Polycarp and Perpetua, which wasn’t necessarily written for children, but contained many dramatizations and kept Ian’s attention.  I especially appreciated the section taken directly from Perpetua’s writings.  It was powerful to have a primary source and being able to hear the story in Perpetua’s own words (right up to the day before her execution, when someone else took on the task of completing it).

We also started watching the first series of Friends and Heroes, which is set in Alexandria in A.D. 69.  It’s about a group of Jews living under Roman rule during a time of unrest in Judea.  Each episode also contains Bible stories (from the Old and New Testaments) that the characters share to help each other make wise decisions.

(We’re watching the first series on the JellyTelly Roku channel since we already have a subscription, but for the second and third series we’ll subscribe to gMovies, the only place they’re currently available to watch without buying the DVDs, which is beyond our budget right now.)

Science

We read through lessons 4-6 in The World of Plants (part of God’s Design for Life).  We also watched two episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy: Cells and Plants, and Ian and Elijah enjoyed getting our our microscope and looking at various kids of cells (lesson 4).

Upcoming Reviews

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

• The Berenstain Bears and the Biggest Brag (book)
• In Freedom’s Cause (audio drama)
• emu oil products from Koru Naturals
• Math Analogies, Beginning from Critical Thinking Co. (software)
• GPALOVEMATH from GPA LEARN

 This week had one main focus, and pretty much everything else just got squeezed in.  We kept up with Little Pilgrim’s Progress and Ian’s online math programs, as well as our literature from Ambleside Online, Year 1, and we started our final book in the God’s Design for Life series: The World of Plants.  However most of our time was centered around our history/Bible lessons because all the kids loved what we were doing.

History Cycle

As a follow up to what we talked about last week, we kicked off our history lessons by watching Julius Caesar from the Shakespeare: The Animated Tales series.  I wasn’t sure how well it would capture Ian’s attention, but he and Elijah were both into the whole thing.  When it was done he asked me if I had any other movies about Julius Caesar and was disappointed I hadn’t been able to find anything else at the library.

I asked Ian to tell me what he knew about Jesus and the beginning of the church and decided to move on to the persecution of Christians under Nero.  I read to him about Nero in A Child’s History of the World by V.M. Hillyer, and then pulled out The Complete Storykeepers Collection, a book of all the stories in the Storykeepers video series.

The thirteen episodes include stories about Jesus (a nice Bible review!), but mostly they provide a glimpse at life as persecuted Christians living in Rome at the time of Nero.  I don’t remember how I first heard of these stories, but I started trying to track down copies of the videos a couple months ago to get ready for this part of our history cycle.  Amazon had some used copies, but they were all more than I could spend.  Several of the episodes are on YouTube, but I couldn’t find them all.  Finally I tracked down a fabulous clearance sale at happybuys.com, where I was able to get the entire series on 3 DVDs for $8 (plus shipping).  The only problem (as we discovered this week when we went to watch them) was that the DVDs aren’t Region 1 and wouldn’t play in our DVD player.  Luckily they played fine on my computer, so I still think it was worth it.  (It’s hooked up to our TV anyway, so it really didn’t matter except that I couldn’t use my computer while they watched.)

The kids LOVED these videos.  I’m letting them watch two each day (one for our morning Bible movie, and one at lunch time) so we can get through the whole series before I want to move on with our history lessons.  The Complete Storykeepers Collection is easy for Ian to read, and he gets excited about the stories before I let them watch the videos (which have a lot more details).  Then as interesting topics come up we pull out other resources to go into a little more depth.  This week we looked through a book I’d bought in Rome about the catacombs, as well as doing a couple pages in The Storykeepers Activity Book to learn about the ichthus symbol.

It’s going to be hard to go back to our regular routine after spending this week (and weekend) with the Storykeepers.  Secret symbols, underground hideouts, daring adventure… what’s not to love?

Upcoming Reviews

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

• The Berenstain Bears and the Biggest Brag (book)
• In Freedom’s Cause (audio drama)
• emu oil products from Koru Naturals
• Math Analogies, Beginning from Critical Thinking Co. (software)
• GPALOVEMATH from GPA LEARN

 Last week we finished our 2nd term (of three) for school this year, which felt really good!  Along with that came a milestone I’ve been eagerly awaiting.  Ian is a good reader, but he’s never really gotten into it.  He loves books if he’s being read to, but he just couldn’t be convinced that they were equally enjoyable to read himself.  Then this week when we were at the library, he grabbed a Geronimo Stilton book as we were walking out, and for the rest of the day, he had his nose glued to that book.  At home, in the car, in bed… I think he spent about 4 hours total, finishing up that night as Daddy went in to turn out his lights when we went to bed.  That’s how I spent most of my childhood, and I’ve seen my nieces develop a similar love and wondered if Ian would ever get there.  So this mama was celebrating at the sight!

Bible/Circle Time

Our morning Bible videos have become something all the kids look forward to, and I love how familiar they’re becoming with the stories of Jesus.  Ian continued to create pages to go along with the two chapters we read from Little Pilgrim’s Progress each day.

Math

We made some major in changes in math this week!  Last week I shared about how I was thinking of letting Ian take a break from Mathematics Enhancement Programme once we finished Year 2 so Elijah could catch up and I could teach them together.  After praying about it more, however, I felt that we shouldn’t even wait to finish out this year.  It’s not that things seem too hard, but I felt like we should just stop where we were.

Instead, Ian is doing all of his work on the computer using various programs we have subscriptions to thanks to reviews I’ve done in the last year.  We still have a little time left on CTC Math, and I’m using that as his main lesson source since it systematically works through the curriculum without any distracting game options.  Ian really enjoys it and has been completing multiple lessons each day all on his own initiative.  I’m hoping we can finish the 1st grade curriculum before our subscription expires in March.

A couple days I had him do some activities on Mathletics, but since he really enjoys all the “extras” on that site I prefer to save it for a reward.  (He earns time on Mathletics by scoring well on his xtramath.org flashcard work.)  He’s also been enjoying a trial of GPALOVEMATH.  We’re about to start officially reviewing this program, so it will probably become his primary math curriculum in the weeks to come.

Ian is LOVING this change.  He’s thrilled to have time to work on the computer, and it’s no longer a struggle to get through math each day.  I do want to go back to MEP eventually (at least that’s my plan at this point), but I’m hoping that this break will help Ian finish building a really solid math foundation.

Literature

Ian is continuing to love the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling.  This week we read the chapter about the first letter, and he was cracking up at all the confusion.  He’s also really improving at narrating things back to me, particularly the Aesop’s fables.  I’m glad he’s enjoying the literature selections from Ambleside Online, Year 1 so much.

History Cycle

We finished Our Little Roman Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles.  It wasn’t my favorite book in the series, but maybe it was just because the Roman culture didn’t seem quite so distinct as that of Athens and Sparta.  We continued learning about Rome by reading about Roman builders and gladiators in Story of the World, Vol. 1 by Susan Wise Bauer, and we read the chapters about Julius Caesar and Augustus in A Child’s History of the World by V.M. Hillyer.

Then for fun, we started reading See You Later, Gladiator (from the Time Warp Trio series) by Jon Scieszka.  It’s a great one for Ian and I to take turns reading to each other.

Science

With the end of the term, we finished our second book in God’s Design for Life, getting through the last few lessons  The Human Body.  There were several great videos we watched about the immune system:

• Bill Nye the Science Guy: Germs
• Reading Rainbow: Germs Make Me Sick
• Magic School Bus: Inside Ralphie

Ian was an expert by the time we finished all of that!  We also watched Bill Nye the Science Guy: Genes, which both boys found fascinating.  Elijah was rather indignant that he’d never heard about genes before.  (He loves going through See Inside Your Body, and he couldn’t believe it didn’t include a section on genetics.)

As a little extra, we’ve been watching some caterpillars go through metamorphosis, and this was a big week.  On Monday most had already entered the chrysalis stage, though we had one late bloomer who was still crawling around.  By Friday we had several butterflies!  We’ve been wanting to get caterpillars for years so we could watch this whole process up close, so we were excited to get a butterfly habitat from Grandma for Christmas!

Upcoming Reviews

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

• The Berenstain Bears and the Biggest Brag (book)
• In Freedom’s Cause (audio drama)
• emu oil products from Koru Naturals
• Math Analogies, Beginning from Critical Thinking Co. (software)
• GPALOVEMATH from GPA LEARN

This week felt more like we were mostly back into the swing of things after the holidays, and we’ve fallen into a workable routine.

Bible/Circle Time

The kids are making their way through the Animated Stories from the New Testament videos first thing each morning as they eat breakfast.  Then after they’ve gotten through their morning responsibilities we continue reading through two chapters from Little Pilgrim’s Progress each morning, with Ian creating pages for his book.  His pictures were all starting to look alike (two stick people), so I told him he needed to put a little more effort into making sure the pictures helped tell about each chapter.  I did see some improvement after that discussion.  Now we need to work on making sure every word gets written.  (He narrates back to me and then helps me come up with a sentence, which I write down for him to copy.)

Math

This week we worked on learning the 3s on the times table.  While I didn’t push Ian to memorize them at this point (though the lesson plans do suggest it), he was definitely becoming familiar with them.  Since he’s still working on this addition facts on xtramath.org, however, I’d rather he save his multiplication facts for later.  I don’t know of any other curriculum that expects 1st graders to know them, so I’m not too worried about it.

Literature

So far in our readings for Ambleside Online, Year 1, Ian hasn’t been too fond of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, but this week I realized that the problem may have been that I had him listening to an audiobook as we drove.  This week we read about the Armadillos, and he didn’t want me to put the book down.  Kipling does have a unique style of writing, and I think perhaps the accent of the reader made it hard for Ian to understand.

History Cycle

We continued reading Our Little Roman Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles.  Ian enjoyed looking through pictures from my first trip to Rome many years ago, and especially seeing the same places I told him about when we watched the first episode on Imperial Rome from Kid’s Animated History With Pipo and the first episode on ancient Rome from Drive Thru History.

Science

This week we talked about the respiratory system (lessons 27-28 in The Human Body from God’s Design for Life).  Ian like the activity comparing our lung capacities by seeing how big we could blow up a balloon using only one breath.

These lessons sent Ian running to get our copy of one of his favorite books, See Inside Your Body.  He also enjoyed catching up on the pages about circulation and respiration in The Usborne Human Body Sticker Book.

 

Upcoming Reviews

I’m currently reviewing several products, especially now that the Schoolhouse Review Crew is back for 2015.  Watch for more about these soon!

• Theo: God’s Love (video)
• The Berenstain Bears and the Biggest Brag (book)
• In Freedom’s Cause (audio drama)
• products from Koru Naturals
• Math Analogies, Beginning from Critical Thinking Co. (software)