His Treasure Seekers

 I love writing lesson plans.  I get great satisfaction from having my ideas organized on paper.  Yet I also try to stay flexible so I can bend and not break when things don’t work out as I plan.

Elijah turned 5 this week, and between the school holiday for his birthday, Nicholas fighting a cold for the third week, and Arianna coming down with something as well, school looked a little lighter than usual.  I’ve realized, however, that even when we don’t accomplish everything in my lesson plans, we still manage to do quite a bit.  As long as I keep an attitude of flexibility, I can see weeks like this one as successful, even if they bear little resemblance to my written plans.

Bible/Circle Time

This week in Old Story New we covered the early days of Jesus’ ministry as he proclaimed the good news in his hometown of Nazareth and other cities in Galilee.

We continued reading in Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember by Barbara Rainey.  I’m try to keep our Thanksgiving focus very simple this year.  Ian has already heard so many of the details, so I’m trying to help him think a little more deeply about the Pilgrims’ experience.

To support what we’ve been reading about Thanksgiving, we watched The Mayflower and the First Thanksgiving from Learn Our History and “The Mayflower Voyagers”  (part of the This is America, Charlie Brown series).

Math

It was with a great sigh of relief on my part that we moved on to lessons 66-70 in  MEP (Year 2).  Ian was really starting to struggle with the complex double-digit equations, so it was nice to move onto measurement.  He still had a chance to practice the addition and subtraction concepts, but the problems were much simpler, and there were other things that he found easy, so math was not such a battle this week.

I remember getting into a struggle with some difficult material with Year 1, and I tried to make it easier on Ian by breaking down the lessons and doing them over several days.  I finally ended up taking a break from MEP, coming back to it a month later and realizing that we were actually just at the point of moving on to something new.  When those hard concepts came up again later, Ian did surprisingly well with them.

I tried to keep that experience in mind this year when we hit a difficult patch.  I looked ahead and realized that if we could just plow through one or two more lessons, we reach something easier.  So I offered Ian a little extra support, walked through the hard problems with him without expecting him to master them, and this week we were rewarded with a change in subject matter.  I know we’ll come back to those concepts, but I’m confident that with a little time Ian will be able to sort them all out in his mind and have a better understanding that next time they come around.

Literature/Ambleside Online

We’re a little behind on two books in Ambleside Online, Year 1, but that’s because we’ve been focusing a lot on our history cycle and science over the last couple weeks.  I’m sure we’ll be caught up soon.

History Cycle

We finished Our Little Spartan Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles this week, which led neatly into a discussion of the Greco-Persian wars.  That’s what we would have been talking about if we had stuck with Story of the World, Vol. 1 as I had planned after dropping Mystery of History.  I think using the “Little Cousin” books is actually working really well for Ian.  He’s learning a lot through the stories, and he seems to be enjoying them.

This week I introduced the boys to the UK television series Horrible Histories (based on the books by Terry Deary).  We’ve only watched episodes that feature a “Groovy Greeks” segment, and it’s been a fun way to reinforce some of the things we’ve read about in our books about Athens and Sparta.  (The boys LOVE these shows, and I know we’ll come back to them when we study other periods of history.)

We also watched Kids’ Animated History With Pipo (Classical Greece, Part 1), which gave a good overview of everything we’ve learned about Greece over the last few weeks.

  

Science

In The Human Body we covered lessons 11-12 on the nervous system and the brain.  Ian completed pages 12-13 in The Usborne Human Body Sticker Book and we watched Bill Nye the Science Guy: Brain.

 Like I said, it was a bit lighter than usual, and I think we’re all looking forward to some time off over the holidays!

I love this time of year as we approach my two favorite holidays.  Somehow I made it to Sunday night before I realized we could start focusing Thanksgiving with some of our school work.  My plan was to keep things simple this year, just reading through Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember by Barbara Rainey, but Ian remembered some books by Kate Waters that he enjoyed reading when we talked about the Pilgrims last year, and we ended up pulling those out as well.  He read through Samuel Eaton’s Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy on his own, and then read Tapenum’s Day: A Wampanoag Indian Boy in Pilgrim Times with Daddy.

Bible

Our family devotions in Old Story New had us learning about the nighttime conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.  To reinforce the story during our school day, I decided to try a lesson from Draw to Learn: The Life of Jesus by Charlene Notgrass.  Ian really enjoys art, and I’m trying to give him lots of hands-on assignments he can do while I read to him in the mornings.

Ian immediately decided that he wanted to use a technique we learned from a lesson in ARTistic Pursuits where he covered a page in black pastels and then used a paper clip to etch a drawing.  It wasn’t exactly following the directions in the book, but I wanted to encourage his initiative and creativity so I told him to go for it.  I love the details in his night sky and the men with torches guarding the buildings while Jesus and Nicodemus talk.

We had gotten out of the habit of morning worship during our crazy October, but the kids have really missed it and I finally managed to start back up again.  This week we worked on learning the hymn “I Sing the Mighty Power of God.”  (I recently bought Singing the Great Hymns from Simply Charlotte Mason with the hopes of it taking care of our hymn study.  I love the selections, but I was disappointed to find that it didn’t have any information about the hymns beyond the music and lyrics.)  It was fun to hear the kids singing a hymn so enthusiastically.

Math

As I’ve been sharing, I’m determined to find fun ways for Ian to master his addition facts, so I’m trying to have him spend a little bit of time practicing them each day using various fun methods.  This week he continued enjoying extra screen time to play Medieval Math and the math section on More Starfall.

We also did activities from several videos in the “Addition and Subtraction to 10” section on Education Unboxed.  Ian enjoyed building Number Bonds Towers, and Elijah had fun being a part of our math time playing What’s in the Box? with Ian.

 

Using base ten blocks has really helped Ian this week as lessons 60-65 of MEP (Year 2) have a lot of adding and subtracting of double-digits crossing tens.  (The set of blocks we use is no longer sold, but I really it because it uses different colors for ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands.  Now it seems like I can only find one made of foam if I don’t want all blue blocks.)

MEP has the students work through multiple steps to solve the problems, which Ian has found really confusing until we used the blocks.  They are supposed to break up ones in order to complete a ten, and then add the tens together before finally adding the remaining ones. For example:

48+24=

48+(20+2+2)=

(48+2)+(20+2)=

50+20+2=

70+2=72

It seems so much more complicated than simply writing the numbers on top of each other and adding them up the way I learned to do, but it definitely is helping Ian develop greater number sense rather than simply working through a formula.  (Plus, until he is quicker at his math facts, that way still takes a while.)  With subtraction, Ian caught on to the idea of “borrowing” right away, which I don’t think would have happened without the blocks.

Literature/Ambleside Online

This week in Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin we read about Inchcape Rock, a reef which sank many ships before a buoy with a bell was finally placed to mark it.  A pirate thought he’d be sneaky and cut off the bell just for spite, but of course then his ship ended up running into the rock in a fog later on and he received his just rewards.  While looking for pictures of the rock (which now has a lighthouse on it), I found a poem by Robert Southey which told the story in rhyme.  Ian enjoyed listening to it again that way.

This week we started As You Like It.  Ian was drawn in immediately by the description of the wrestling match.  I don’t think I’ve ever read the story before, so I’m enjoying it as well.  I love how Ambleside Online introduces stories from Shakespeare at such an early age.  I’m looking forward to filling in some gaps in my own education.

History Cycle

We’re still learning about Ancient Greece, and we read a little further in Our Little Spartan Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles.  While I read, I had Ian color a blank map of Greece and gave him a list of cities we’ve talked about (Athens, Sparta, Olympia, Troy, Corinth, and Ephesus) to label with the help of a more detailed map in a book.

Science

We read through lessons 8-10 (on muscles and the design of hands and feet) in The Human Body, and read a little more about muscles in The Usborne Human Body Sticker Book.

Then we did the pages on muscles from the My Body unit from Teacher Created Resources (available as a download from CurrClick or a book from Amazon).  Ian was not happy last week when we only put bones on one leg of our life-size outline of his body (he wanted to do a whole skeleton), but he was a bit mollified this week when he understood what I’d been trying to tell him about adding more.

This unit has probably been Ian’s favorite thing we’ve done in school so far.  He can’t seem to learn enough about the body, and I’m looking forward to the rest of our study this term.

Is it just me, or was October the longest month ever?  I can’t begin to describe how thankful I am to be in November at last.  We ended October with a great week of school.  I normally try to do a little history and science twice a week, but Ian was so into what we were doing that we ended up spending one long day on science and then one long day on history.  I don’t know if we’ll adjust our schedule permanently, but it was great to see him enjoying our subjects so much.

Bible

This week in Old Story New we looked at the story of Jesus clearing the temple.  Since we’re not doing a separate program in the morning anymore I’d like to find a way to do some notebooking related to our evening devotions, but I haven’t figured that out yet.

We finished Prudence and the Millers.  Ian has really enjoyed these books, and we still have one more, but I think I’m going to save it for later while I figure out how I want to use our morning Bible time.

Math

This week in Ian’s MEP lessons (Year 2, #56-60) we worked on double-digit addition crossing tens.  Ian’s main struggle seems to be related to not knowing his basic addition facts.  We have tried several methods to help with these (all basically fancy flashcards on the computer) that just have not worked for him because they were missing an element of fun.  So I went searching for some sort of game that could help his addition facts become more automatic.  I found Medieval Math, a free game he can play on my Kindle Fire, and so far it seems to be a hit.  That is, he really likes it, but only time will tell if it helps fulfill its purpose.

Literature/Ambleside Online

In addition to our regular Ambleside Online, Year 1 reading for Week 15, we read the d’Aulaires’ Pocahontas (one of the free reads we need to get to this week).  Ian and I were both fascinated by the story, so then we watched Animated Hero Classics: Pocahontas, which went along with the book really well. (Ian also wants to watch the Disney Pocahontas, so we’re saving that for our next family movie night.  I’ve never seen Pocahontas II, but since they’re both available on Netflix right now we may watch that one as well to see how it compares to the details of her life that we read about.)

History Cycle

This week for our study of Ancient Greece we finished Our Little Athenian Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles and began Our Little Spartan Cousin of Long Ago (also part of the original e-book bundle from Yesterday’s Classics.)

While I read, Ian worked on two notebook pages using lapbook elements from Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus (PreK-K unit) and Homeschool Share.  I’ve never wanted to venture into the world of lapbooks because I didn’t want to have to figure out what to do with them afterward, but Ian does love creating a notebook, so this seemed like a fun way to incorporate the learning aspects of lapbooking.  He loved having pages with things to open and flip through.

We were reading a chapter about Hiero competing in the Olympics so the page on events in the ancient Olympics was perfect.  He pasted on the appropriate figure from the History Through the Ages-Collection CD so there would be dates on the page.

Also, because we finished the book on Athens, I had him write about what he remembered about Athenian life (using a page from biblestoryprintables.com).  I thought it was interesting that the details that stood out to him most were about how girls were rarely allowed to leave the house but just stayed home to spin and sew.

Science

Ian is really getting into our lessons in The Human Body from God’s Design for Life.  This week we read lessons 4-7 covering the skeletal system.  Ian cut out “Sandy Skeleton” (from the curriculum CD-ROM) and put it together with brads.

Then we read pages 4-5 in The Usborne Human Body Sticker Book and Ian placed all the stickers.

That alone would have been enough, but I decided to get out the My Body unit from Teacher Created Resources (available on CurrClick or Amazon).  We used part of it before (when we rowed Madeline), but now it’s right at Ian’s level.  I’m going to try to do the whole book (or most of it anyway, as I can tie it into our lessons).

The first thing we had to do was trace an outline of his body on a large paper.  We’ll use it for each lesson in the unit, adding different parts of the body as we learn about them.  This week we did the pages on the skeleton.  I had Ian read aloud the page “My Skeleton” (which was mostly a review of things I’d read to him from our textbook and the sticker book so he was able to make out even words like “ligaments” and “cartilage”), and put it in his science notebook along with his “Sandy Skeleton.”  Then he cut out the bones on the other pages and glued them onto the body tracing we had made earlier.

 

As I look back at this week I realize that what we didn’t do is almost as significant to me as what we did do, so I’m reflecting a little on some of the adjustments I’m going to be making to our curriculum/schedule.

Bible

This week I tried to get back into Bible Road Trip: Year Three (we’re on Mark), but I found myself dragging my feet and had to take a look at what was going on.  I decided that it’s just not a great fit for us right now.  There is so much that I love about this curriculum, but I think we’ll get a lot more out of it in a few years.  We’ve been been trying the Lower Grammar lessons, but they’re still just a bit too advanced for Ian, and I’d rather use the preschool/Kindergarten level as part of a multi-age family Bible program than a stand alone curriculum.

I have a couple ideas for what we’ll do for our morning Bible times, but things may be hit and miss for a while, especially with the holidays coming up.  We’re still going through Old Story New by Marty Machowski as a family in the evenings (this week we were on Week 7, which talks about the wedding feast at Cana and Jesus turning water into wine), so I’m trying not to feel like I’m neglecting anyone’s spiritual education too much.

(We also set aside Prudence and the Millers when vacation, sickness, and baby woes disrupted our schedule.  We’re pretty close to the end, so I want to get back to that as well.)

Math

We had a field trip on Monday, but I really didn’t want to get behind in math, so we plowed through lessons 51-55 (Mathematics Enhancement Programme (Year 2) and just didn’t do any sort of extras.  Ian seems to be catching on a little more, though he still gets confused sometimes when we’re adding double digit numbers.  I’m not worried, however.  He’s really close to getting it, and I think MEP’s spiral approach will do exactly what it’s designed to do.  In a few months, I’m confident he will have a solid, lasting understanding of everything we’re working on now.

Literature/Ambleside Online

We finally got completely caught up with our reading from Ambleside Online, Year 1.  (Yay!)  When we read in Our Island Story about Hengist and Horst cutting a leather thong so long it encircled a large piece of land, Ian enjoyed cutting a paper in a spiral and seeing how the thinner we made the strip, the longer it ended up being.

History Cycle

We didn’t do anything in our history cycle besides reading chapters 9-12 in Our Little Athenian Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles.

Science

Ever since he was very small, Ian has had a fascination with all things related to the human body, so I’ve been looking forward to the science I scheduled for this term. This week we started The Human Body, our second of the three books in God’s Design for Life.

We read through lessons 1-3 and did a couple of the suggested activities for Ian’s notebook.  For lesson 1 Ian drew a self-portrait as he looked at his face in the mirror.  I love the details he noticed (like freckles, various parts of his eyes, and his uvula).  We read Psalm 138:13-18, and I pray that as we study the body this term, he will gain a new understanding that he really is “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

The activity for Lesson 2 involved creating a “Body Wheel” that describes the various systems of the body.  Most of the terms don’t mean much to Ian yet, but we read through all the descriptions just to start building familiarity.

For lesson 3 on cells, I decided to skip the suggested worksheet. Instead Ian enjoyed examining several new slides on our microscope.  We also watched Bill Nye the Science Guy: Cells and went through pages 16-17 in The Usborne Human Body Sticker Book.  Ian really likes sticker books and carefully put all the stickers in the correct places after I had read the pages to him.

Extras

The highlight of our week was definitely our field trip to Legoland on Monday.  In addition to having fun on the rides and admiring the amazing Lego brick creations throughout the park, both boys really enjoyed the class we attended (Simple Machines 1).  They worked through a book building specific models and then had a chance to use what they learned to create their own “ride.”  I was impressed by the class and really glad we took the time to attend in the midst of a day of fun.

Upcoming Reviews

Our Schoolhouse Review Crew season is wrapping up, so while I may do a few book reviews over the next few months, that will be about it.

 

The emotional and physical toll of my miscarriage affected our whole week, especially when it came to school.  We limped through and did manage to do something every day, but never even touched on our Bible lessons outside of family devotions in the evening.  (What?  Whatever happened to Bible first?  What sort of priorities does that show?  Believe me, I needed a lot of grace for myself.)  The week flew by quickly, however, and here’s what we did.

Math

Math is the one subject I tend to stress about getting behind in, mostly because we started Year 2 of the Mathematics Enhancement Programme a few weeks after all our other subjects for first grade.  Last year I had taken some time off from Year 1 when Ian was struggling, which meant we ended working on it all the way through our summer break and then into the first few weeks of this year.  I’d really like to finish up Year 2 when we finish the rest of our school year, but that means we don’t have a lot of wiggle room.

This week Ian got through lessons 46-50.  As I’ve said in the past few weeks, he’s starting to get frustrated by some of the concepts we’re working on, primarily adding and subtracting 2 digit numbers.  To help him visualize the numbers he’s working with I tried having him use math blocks this week.  It was really helpful for adding 10’s and 1’s, and I think we’ll keep using these until he’s better able to keep the place values straight in his mind.

Literature/Ambleside Online

We started term two of Ambleside Online, Year 1, which meant new poetry selections.  This term we’re reading the poems of A. A. Milne. We started through When We Were Very Young this week, and if we have time in the next few months we’ll move onto Now We Are Six.  (If we don’t get through both books during this term, I think I’ll save it for summertime because I don’t want to rush through these delightful poems.)  I’ve owned copies of these books since my childhood, but I’ve only ever read a few scattered poems over the years.  I really enjoyed getting into them this week, and they’re especially fun for my boys because the poems occasionally mention Christopher Robin.

History Cycle

This week for our study of ancient Greece we continued to read through Our Little Athenian Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles.  One day while I read, Ian worked through the drawing instructions for the Parthenon from Draw and Write Through History: Greece and Rome and added that to his history notebook.

Science

We finished up The World of Animals this week, reading about microscopic creatures like protists and bacteria, (which aren’t really considered animals, but neither are they plants, so this was as good a time as any to talk about them).  It was a great week for getting out our microscope to look at both prepared slides and homemade ones with water from the stream at our local park.

Ian made a picture of a paramecium for his science notebook (although my fuzzy brain couldn’t remember where I had put my yarn, so he just drew the cilia rather than cutting little pieces of yarn as the book suggested).

Extras

This was our last week reviewing Middlebury Interactive Languages (Spanish K-2), so Ian completed a few more lessons.  He has really enjoyed this program, so I intend to finish the rest of the units in the semester he’s working on before we go back to our Salsa lessons for Spanish.

We took school pictures one morning this week, and since that spoiled our regular schedule for the day I decided to take the kids to our local Children’s Museum.  They’ve been begging to go back, and everyone enjoyed the current exhibit on space (as well as all our other favorite permanent exhibits).

Upcoming Reviews

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

• Middlebury Interactive Languages (Spanish K-2)
• Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls from New Liberty Videos
• The Legend of St. Nicholas by Dandi Daley Mackall

This week looked a bit different for us than previous weeks.  In addition to some planned changes, we ended up having several family matters that needed my attention, so things were rather irregular. (In other words we watched a lot of videos and didn’t manage to do any notebooking.)  Here’s what we did manage to spend time on this week:

Bible

Somehow I forgot to take out my lesson plans for Bible Road Trip before the week started, and then when life happened I never got around to it.  We read a couple stories from Matthew in 365 Great Bible Stories at the beginning of the week, but then our only other morning Bible time was watching Built Upon the Rock (from Nest Entertainment’s Animated Stories from the New Testament).

Math

Ian got through lessons 41-45 of Mathematics Enhancement Programme (Year 2) this week, but it wasn’t as easy for him as the previous lessons have been.  Adding whole tens went fine, but now that he’s adding double digits including 5’s he’s having to think a bit more, which I’ve noticed affects his entire attitude.  When everything is easy, he flies through the lessons, but as soon as just one part starts feeling challenging, he gets frustrated and starts to shut down.  He has trouble focusing even on the easy parts, and it takes a lot longer to get through math each day.

Literature/Ambleside Online

This week we finished our first term of Ambleside Online, Year 1!  I’ve been drooling over the AO curriculum for years, so it feels really good to have finally accomplished some of it!  We’ve enjoyed all the reading, though Ian definitely had some favorites.  We didn’t quite finish all the poems in A Child’s Garden of Verses, but we’re going to put in back on the shelf and move onto next term’s poetry selection anyway.

History Cycle

History is where I made the biggest intentional changes to the way we’ve been doing school.  Mystery of History and Story of the World both go through history using a series of separate stories, but I wanted to try a slightly different approach for a while.  Rather than discussing specific episodes in history, I want to help Ian develop a sense of the era.

So this week we began our study of Ancient Greece by reading Our Little Athenian Cousin of Long Ago by Julia Darrow Cowles, a classic novel about two boys in Athens.  (It’s part of the original e-book bundle from Yesterday’s Classics.)  Ian enjoyed it, asking for me to read more each day when I’d reached the end of a chapter.  We talked about the Parthenon, the statue of Athena, and a bit about Greek culture.  It also introduced him to some of the characters in Greek mythology, and I plan to read a few myths to him once we finish (hopefully next week).

We also watched 2 Episodes of Drive Thru History: “Ancient History: Greece” and “Ancient History: Athens and Paul” (also available through the TBN Roku channel).

Science

For some reason when I wrote out our schedule of science lessons for the year I didn’t have us finishing up our first of the three books in God’s Design for Life until next week, even though this is officially the end of our first term.  This week we read through lessons 29-31 in The World of Animals.  Because of our circumstances this week we weren’t able to do any extra projects, but the kids did enjoy watching Wild Kratts Season 1, Episode 5 “Mystery of the Squirmy Wormy.”

Extras

Ian did several more lessons in Middlebury Interactive Languages, and I was really thankful that he was able to do them independently, because otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten to Spanish at all this week.

Upcoming Reviews

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

• Old Testament iWitness, New Testament iWitness, and iWitness Biblical Archeology by Doug Powell (from Apologia)
• Middlebury Interactive Languages (Spanish K-2)
• Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls from New Liberty Videos
• The Legend of St. Nicholas by Dandi Daley Mackall

Between a week of sickness, a week of prepping for vacation, and then being gone, we had fallen behind on some schoolwork and lost our rhythm, so this week my main goal was to get caught up and back into our routine.  It made for a full week!

Bible

We finally got back into Bible Road Trip: Year Three, picking up with the second week of lessons on Matthew.  I leaned more heavily on the Preschool/Kindergarten assignments this week so I could include the little ones in our morning Bible lesson.  I think it’s a good fit, but I’d like to integrate a bit more of the “Researching the Word” from the Lower Grammar lessons with Ian, so we’ll still play around with it a bit. (This is the main reason I prefer to use a free curriculum whenever possible–I ALWAYS end up tweaking it at least a little, and I’d feel really irritated if I had paid a lot of money for someone else’s plans only to change them!)

It’s been really good have the little ones join us in the mornings as part of what we’ve been inclusively calling “worship” (the first part of our couch time/circle time/whatever we’re going to end up naming it).  Before Nicholas goes down for his morning nap, we all gather around the piano to sing a combination of hymns, worship songs from church, and fun kids’ praise songs.  Ian likes to get out his guitar and strum along (even though he only knows 4 chords and can’t change his fingering fast enough to keep up yet), and sometimes some of them dance.  When we first started everyone seemed a little reluctant to drop what they were doing to join me in the living room, but now they all look forward to it, and on the rare morning that we skip it for some reason I hear about it!

After singing, I put Nicholas to bed and we read one of the scheduled stories in 365 Great Bible Stories (according to the BRT lesson plan).   These are pretty short, and sometimes I’ll read more than one if I still have everyone’s attention.

One thing I’m not as consistent about but I’m working on is praying togeher after this.  As I was reading through Circle Time by Kendra Fletcher (of Preschoolers and Peace) I liked her suggestions of praying through the ACTS model together (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication).  I’d like to work toward that, but I think it’s a bit too much of a stretch for my kids right now.  I chose to focus this week on just the A and S.  We went around and each of us came up with a word to praise God: “God you are [patient, kind, loving, merciful, etc.].”  Then I told them to think of one thing they wanted God to help them with that day, whether with schoolwork, attitudes, relationships, or anything else they could think of.

The first day I realized that God had answered those prayers for each one of us, and I pointed it out to the boys that night during Bible time.  It was really neat to see what a difference it had made in our days, and I want to make sure I remember to include prayer time each morning before Arianna’s attention span reaches its limit, and I let her wander off.

After prayer the older boys go through memory verses with me.  (We use the Scripture Memory System from Simply Charlotte Mason, which is great for reviewing verses we’ve already learned as well as practicing new ones.)  This is new to Elijah, but he’s starting to pick up several of the verses Ian has already learned, and it’s helping Ian learn new ones more quickly having someone else there.  (Right now we’re working on the Beatitudes).

Our lessons from BRT tied right in with our evening devotions in Old Story New this week, and I’m really pleased with how well they are complementing each other.  By the time we read with Daddy in the evening, the boys have heard the story and talked about it with me, so they’re much quicker to answer questions and get more about of our time with him.  I think the repetition is really good for them.

The last thing we do before moving on to other subjects is read from Prudence and the Millers, which Ian still really enjoys.  Almost every day he begs me to read an extra chapter, but I’m trying to stretch it out.

Math

Every day Ian has been asking God to help him get through his math quickly and easily, and things have never gone so smoothly for us.  This week he finished lessons 36-40 in Year 2 of MEP, and he did more independently than he’s ever been able (or willing) to try in the past.  It’s so great to see him enjoying a subject that he struggled with for a while.

Elijah also joined us for math this week.  He loves numbers, and he’s started asking to do math almost every day when he sees Ian settling down to work.  I’ve slowly been starting to go through MEP Year 1 with him, but this week it became obvious we’re going to pick up the pace a bit.

With MEP it’s usually really important to go through the activities in the lesson plans, and I’ve found that especially true with Ian.  With Elijah right now, however, most of what’s covered in the lesson plans is already really easy for him.  I’m focusing more on the practice book pages just so he can get used to the way concepts are presented there.  Eventually I’m sure I’ll need to do the complete lessons, and I’m hoping it doesn’t make our mornings drag out too much.

Actually, since he’s been happily completing more than one page per day, I may try to help him catch up with Ian by next year so I can just have them working at the same level.  (I wouldn’t try accelerating any of the other children so quickly, but Elijah is definitely gifted in math, so I think it might end up being a good option for our family.)  I told him he doesn’t have to do any schoolwork until after he turns 5 next month, but most days he begs to do math (both during our normal school time and then in the later afternoon as well!)

Literature/Ambleside Online

The main place we had fallen behind over the last few weeks was in our Ambleside Online, Year 1 reading, and it felt good to get almost all the way caught up.  I’ve decided to drop the Burgess Bird Book unless Ian asks for it or we have a little extra time.  I don’t know enough about the birds in our area to choose chapters relevant to us, and since we’re doing a lot outside of AO, I wanted to cut some of what I consider lower priority books.

One of our favorite things this week was reading about William Tell in Fifty Famous Stories Retold. I had found a couple related audio dramas from ArtsReformation.com, and Ian really enjoyed the one from Mercury Storyteller (part of “St. George and the Dragon & William Tell“).  I preferred “William Tell” from Tale Spinners for Children because it incorporated music from the familiar William Tell Overture, but it was a little too long for Ian.

History Cycle

I’ve said several times over the last few weeks that I’m moving away from using Mystery of History, Vol.1, and this week I made that official by actually erasing the chapter titles from my lesson plan book for the rest of the year.  I just want to focus less on biblical history (which we cover in depth in our Bible lessons) and more on other ancient civilizations this year.  I think I’m going to turn to Story of the World, Vol. 1 by Susan Wise Bauer to be our “spine” (at least I’ve written those chapters into my book), but we’ll see how it goes.

I really wanted to start getting into the Greeks, so this week after touching on the division of Israel after Solomon’s death, we started Greek history with the story of the Trojan horse. (Chronologically they should have been in reverse order, but I wanted a clean start to our study of Ancient Greece.)

Israel Divided

To cover the division of the kingdom, we used the Day By Day Kid’s Bible by Karen Henley.  First I read “Enemies” about King Solomon turning away from God and Ahijah’s message to Jeroboam (pages 269-270), and then Ian read aloud “One Nation Turns into Two Nations” (pages 271-272) about Solomon’s son Rehoboam’s foolish decision that drove ten tribes to reject him as their King and form the new northern kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam.

I don’t often have Ian do reading assignments, but I’d like to start trying to having him take some on, even if he’s still just reading to me.  Eventually I’ll work toward having him read independently and then come and narrate to me.

For his history notebook, he used this page from biblestoryprintables.com.

Trojan Horse

I read the account of the legend of the Trojan Horse in A Child’s History of the World by V.M. Hillyer (Chapter 11: “A Fairy-Tale War”).  Ambleside Online uses this book starting in Year 2, so I wanted to get a feel for it, and I’ll probably use it fairly regularly this year whenever it lines up with the topics in Story of the World, Vol. 1.  Once again, biblestoryprintables.com had a quick, eye-catching page for Ian’s notebook.

Science

Science was the other place I felt really behind, but we managed to get through lessons 24-28 in The World of Animals (covering arachnids, crustaceans, myriapods, mollusks, and cnidarians).  A lot of these animals live in the ocean, so it fit in well with Finding Nemo, which we watched the last night of our vacation.  (As we read about jellyfish and how their tentacles sting most animals but not clownfish, Ian looked at me in exasperation and said, “Mom!  I already know that!”  I bet he didn’t before the movie though!)

We didn’t get to do a lot of extras for these lessons because we were rushing through them, but Ian did make a couple arachnid models according to the directions in the book (which, thankfully, were easy enough for him to read and follow all on his own).  He really wanted to do more models (the next lesson had instructions for making one with clay), but I wasn’t up to the mess.  (Just being honest!)

We watched Bill Nye the Science Guy: Animal Locomotion and read several related books together:

    Ian also really wanted me to read The Life Cycle of a Spider by Bobbie Kalman, but I didn’t want to pack too much more into our mornings.  (I always try to finish up our schoolwork by 12:30.)  He did read part of the book on his own, picking it up several times throughout the week.  I really like this series, and I’m glad to have them as part of our family library so Ian can go through them on his own.

Extras

We’re still enjoying going through the K-2 Spanish course from Middlebury Interactive Languages.  This week Ian was working on Unit 3 on Family.  Some of this was review for him, but it’s presented very differently than the lessons we’ve done with Salsa, so I think it’s still really good for him.

Upcoming Reviews

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

• Old Testament iWitness, New Testament iWitness, and iWitness Biblical Archeology by Doug Powell (from Apologia)
• Middlebury Interactive Languages (Spanish K-2)
• Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls from New Liberty Videos
• If He Had Not Come retold by David Nicholson

This was a crazy week.  We missed a lot last week due to me being sick, so part of me wanted to do a ton of work this week to get caught up.  However, I was still recovering, and laryngitis is not conducive to the kind of school we’ve been doing, with lots of reading aloud.  Plus we’re getting ready for our first official week off next week, so I didn’t necessarily want to start into anything new. Then throw in a school holiday for Nico’s first birthday, and this week was definitely a lesson in flexibility.

Bible

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

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

Math

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

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

Literature/Ambleside Online

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

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

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

Science

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

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

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

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

Extras

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

And now onto… our first “Sabbath” week

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

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

Upcoming Reviews

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

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

“The greatest plans of mice and men sometimes go astray.”

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

Bible

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

Math

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

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

History

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

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

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

Science

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

Extras

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

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

Upcoming Reviews

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

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

Holidays always throw me for a loop when it comes to school.  I would rather take off days for family birthdays than things like Labor Day, but since Daddy had the day off, we didn’t want to do school as usual.  However, it worked out well this time, since he did go into work on Saturday, so we just shifted our 5-day school week back a day.

Bible

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

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

 

Math

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

Literature/Ambleside Online

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

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

History Cycle

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

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

For his history notebook, we used a couple pages from biblestoryprintables.com.  We talked through the ten plagues and numbered the pictures.  Then I had him tell me the story of the Exodus and I wrote down his words.  (I wanted him to focus more on getting the ideas out than on the task of writing.)

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

Science

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

Ian also made a collage of various reptiles for his notebook, and we watched a couple videos: Bill Nye the Science Guy: Reptiles: and Wild Kratts Season 2, Episode 5 “Walk on the Wet Side” (about the Basilisk lizard).

Extras

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

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

Upcoming Reviews

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

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