His Treasure Seekers

 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)

 I’m a bit late in writing about last week because life got crazy as we approached the weekend.  Between two family parties and then a Sunday morning trip to urgent care with two sick kids, I just couldn’t find time to write about our first week back after the holidays until now.

Bible/Circle Time

As I mentioned last week, I’ve given up trying to do a morning Bible time in addition to what we do in the evenings.  Instead, I’ve been putting on a Bible story video each day while the kids eat breakfast.

We started our school time reading two chapters of Little Pilgrim’s Progress each day that we were home.  On Monday as an introduction, we watched the video The John Bunyan Story from the Torchlighters series.

I’m having Ian put together his own book telling the story, so we first did a page “About the Author,” and then I hope to have him do one for each chapter of the book.  (Some days we combined both chapters on one page.)  Once we’re finished (if we keep it up), he’ll have his own book of the story.  This week he finished four pages:

I’m also requiring Elijah to stay with us while we read the story each day, though he doesn’t have any written assignments for it.

Math

Ian started into multiplication and division this week with lessons 91-95 in Mathematics Enhancement Programme (Year 2).  I was surprised at how quickly he caught on.  It almost seemed easier for him than addition and subtraction.  He’s back to working on xtramath.org each morning to keep trying to master his addition facts.

Literature

We didn’t quite get caught up on our literature selections in Ambleside Online, Year 1, but we did make some good progress.  For the first time, Ian really got into our story in James Herriot’s Treasury for Children.  We were just supposed to read “Blossom Comes Home,” but he wanted to keep reading, so we went a head a little.  He also requested the stories as we were driving since I keep the audiobook CDs in our van.  It’s always hard to win him over to new audio resources at first (he loves his favorites too much to risk branching out), and I think sitting with the book helped him realize what great stories these are.

History Cycle

We finished up learning about Alexander the Great before Christmas, so we started moving on to the ancient Romans this week.  I introduced Rome by reading the story of Romulus and Remus from Story of the World, Vol. 1 by Susan Wise Bauer and Chapter 30: “Picking A Fight” in A Child’s History of the World by V.M. Hillyer.  Then we started Our Little Roman Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles.

Science

In The Human Body we covered lessons 24-26 on the circulatory system.  Ian added the heart to his life-sized chart of the body from the My Body unit from Teacher Created Resources. (I downloaded it from CurrClick, but it’s also available as a book from Amazon).  We also watched two episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy: Blood and Circulation and Heart.

 Whew!  We made it to our Christmas break!  Ian and I are both ready for a break, and I may just have to play it by ear in deciding when to get back to our school work.  Here’s what we finished up with before our break.

Bible/Circle Time

We finished going through  Walk With Me to the Nativity: A Journey to Bethlehem by Karen Harper and read from the books the kids opened for Advent each morning.

Math

I am actually amazed that Ian finished up lessons 86-90 in Mathematics Enhancement Programme (Year 2).  At one point it looked like this year might just be too hard for him, but he’s really risen to the challenge.

The only bit of school work I plan to do over the next few weeks is continuing to practice his addition facts.  I’ve tried so many fun ways to do this, but this week I resorted to good old-fashioned flash cards.  Ian actually really likes them, and I’m writing down how many he gets right each day so he’s enjoying trying to beat his score.

Literature

For poetry this week we read Voices of Christmas by Nikki Grimes.  I was so moved by these poems, each from the perspective of a different person from the Christmas story.  They are beautiful by themselves, but then you add the gorgeous illustrations by Eric Velasquez, and I think I’ve found my new favorite Christmas book.

This year I’ve been trying to include as many of the Ambleside Online, Year 1 books as possible, on top of all the other things I have scheduled.  Gradually I’ve been dropping some of the selections that repeating subjects we’re doing separately, and this week I finally came to the decision to only do the literature selections for now, dropping the AO history books. (We’d already cut the science and nature study books.)  Perhaps we’ll get back into some of them when they fit into our history cycle.

I decided to hold off on history until after our Christmas break, since we just finished up Alexander the great and are getting ready to move onto the Roman Empire.

Science

In The Human Body (part of God’s Design for Life) we covered lessons 19-23 on the digestive system and nutrition, as well as covering the corresponding pages in The Usborne Human Body Sticker Book.  Ian was glad to get back to the My Body unit from Teacher Created Resources, coloring and placing the stomach and intestines on his giant body outline.

We also watched Bill Nye the Science Guy: Digestion and The Magic School Bus: For Lunch.

And that’s it for school in 2014!

 I was planning on letting this be a light week and not worrying about catching up until after Christmas, but somehow we ended up doing more than I planned.  No complaints here!

Bible/Circle Time

For the two weeks before we break for Christmas, we’re going through the ten lessons in Walk With Me to the Nativity: A Journey to Bethlehem by Karen Harper.  This week we covered the time from Isaiah and Micah’s prophecies about Jesus’ birth through Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem.  This was a book I’d added to our library a couple years ago, and I think it’s a good fit for us right now.  It has some great information without going too deep for a first grader.  I also love that most of the lessons incorporate picture study with classic paintings.

We also used our morning circle time to read the Advent books the kids unwrapped each day.

Math

Ian worked through lessons Mathematics Enhancement Programme 81-85 (Year 2).  With Elijah, I switched over to the new version of Year 1, which has less pages in the practice books because the Friday revision lessons are separate.  Since Elijah is really quick at math, I’m going to skip the revision pages unless it looks like he really needs them.  He often wants to complete 2 lessons in a day.  My hope is that eventually he’ll catch up with Ian so we can work together on math.

Literature

We were weeks behind on Ambleside Online, Year 1, but this week we managed to get caught up on most of our books.  (Woohoo!)  I’m hoping by the time we start school again after Christmas break that we’ll be back on track.

History Cycle

I’ve been trying out some of the Magic Tree House books by Mary Pope Osborne.  I’m not entirely comfortable with them (due to the light treatment of magic and elements of pagan religions), but for now I’m willing to give them a chance with a lot of discussion.  We checked out some audiobooks from the library, and Ian is loving listening to them in the car (though I won’t let him take them into his room to listen by himself).

Ian’s a good reader, but he’s usually reluctant to read on his own, so I was pleasantly surprised when he decided to read through Stallion by Starlight, about Alexander the Great (which is next on our schedule for history).  That’s one of the reasons I’m sticking with the books for now, though I think we’ll only use them as related to things were studying for school.

We also read 2 chapters about Alexander the Great in A Child’s History of the World by V.M. Hillyer.  Ian liked knowing so much of what was going on in these chapters since many of the details had been included in the Magic Tree House book.

Science

God’s Design for Life is the one curriculum I’m using that is structured enough to make it hard when we get behind.  This week we did science every day to catch up, making it through lessons 13-21 in The Human Body, covering the brain, reflexes, and the five senses.  Ian completed the pages on the senses in The Usborne Human Body Sticker Book.

The boys really enjoyed these lessons and the activities that went along with them (although Ian keeps asking if any of the lessons will let him build a model, like we did in the animal lessons).  We tasted bitter cacao powder, which wasn’t nearly the treat they thought it would be until we added some sugar.  They also checked out how pupils adjust to let in just the right amount of light.

 

 I debated taking this week off.  Instead I decided to just make our load a little lot lighter.  After all, we’re already a little behind in a few things, and I didn’t want to add math to that list.  So I used this more as a catch-up week, and then I shifted things around on my long-term lesson plans to make sure we don’t end up way behind come the end of the school year.

On Monday, we just did math, games on the MiniLUK, Reading Rainbow videos and a trip to the library.  Elijah turned 5 last week, so he was excited to be able to get his own library card.  Of course, I forgot to bring in my ID so we didn’t actually get his card yet… but I got the form to fill out!  Mommy fail.  Still, I checked his books out on my card, and Ian proudly ran his own pile through the “self check-out” station, and then they happily curled up on the couch and read their books for several hours.  That’s as good a school day as anything I had planned, right?  (Maybe better.)

Math

We doubled up on math this week, completing lessons 71-80 in MEP Year 2.  I’m really torn about what to do with math.  As I look at the lessons ahead, I think this year might get too challenging for Ian.  Lots of people use Year 2 for 2nd grade, so part of me feels like we should set it aside once it gets challenging.  But another part of me thinks Ian would be fine if we just went through it letting him pick up what he can without me expecting mastery.  I’ve been praying about this whole thing for weeks, and I still don’t have a clear answer.  I hope the week off will help me come to a decision about whether or not to print out the next set of practice book pages.

History Cycle

The books we’ve read over the last few weeks have made Ian somewhat familiar with the names of a few Greek gods, but I think it’s important to know some of the basic stories.  We watched several videos from the Greek Mythology for Students series, which says it’s for 4th-8th grade, but both my boys enjoyed them.  I had only checked out 3 from the library, but they wanted me to go back and get the others as well.

• “The Gods of Olympus“
• “The Trojan War“
• “The Journeys of Odysseus“

Science

We kicked off the week a little early with a field trip to Bodies: The Exhibition, a fascinating chance to see what we’ve been learning about in science up close.  I know it’s not for everyone, but I was pretty sure the boys could handle it, and they did really well.  It was a great chance to get out of our books and really see all the different muscles in our bodies, the layout of the nervous system, how blood vessels are all over our bodies, where our organs really are, etc.  Ian’s already asking to go back, but I told him he’d have to wait four years, and then we could go again the next time we study anatomy.

A friend expressed concern that the exhibit showed a lack of respect for human life, but I thought it was carefully done, and if anything, I thought it was a powerful testimony of God’s creative glory.

So that was our week, limping our way to Thanksgiving break!