Nov. 7-11
Missions to Modern Marvels
Unit 8
Reading about History and Independent History…
This week was all about entertainment in the Gilded Age, rebellion, and missions in China. Riley’s written narration was about Lottie Moon, a missionary in China who fought against the practice of foot-binding (praise the Lord)! You can also see the rest of his notebook entries, with timelines, quotes, and the political cartoon depiction of the division of China, as well as the entertainment of Vaudeville shows. He had a typed narration about the exposition in 1876…
Storytime…
More laughs with “Mama’s Bank Account” this week! Things never seem to go quite as planned, and yet they do turn out as they should. Riley is enjoying the variety of creative responses he gets to choose from on the bookmark prompts…
History Project…
Riley made a flipbook of the Titanic sinking this week for his history project. He LOVED making it and flipped through it for everyone in the family multiple times!
President Study/State Study…
Riley researched John Tyler, who was the Vice President who became the President very quickly after President William Henry Harrison gave the longest inaugural speech ever without a coat to prove he was healthier than everyone thought he was (but then he died from that exposure). ?!? Riley thought that ironic, and I did too. He also enjoyed listening to our SD State Song for his State Study…
Rotating History…
For Riley’s economic principle entry, I encouraged him to look at the MTMM guide’s key idea and utilize the new vocabulary mentioned there in his writing of his economic principle (i.e. velocity, depression, skyrockets)…
Nature Journal/Biblical Self-Image…
For Riley’s Nature Journal, he drew some lovely leaves, and it goes well with our current changing leaves for the fall here…
For Biblical Self-Image, Riley read Bible verses about God. They were inspiring! Then he chose a facet of God to write his own Psalm about. I told him it didn’t have to be long, but it did have to be from the heart.
Bible Quiet Time…
We have been talking about transformation and the renewing of one’s mind in Romans this week. Our Pastor recently did a sermon about this, and I showed Riley how I had just written those very Scripture verses out in my own journal. They are a theme I am embracing this year! One of our sons’ favorite songs right now is “Transformed” by Toby Mac. Then we learned about our spiritual gifts from the Lord, and how we can share them with others. We then talked about that in church this recent Sunday! Isn’t it amazing how the Lord puts all of these amazing connections in our lives when we homeschool in a Christian way with HOD?!?
Language Arts…
A favorite project this week was for the mystery genre of DITHOR! Emmett and Riley made a mystery game, similar to Candyland or Chutes and Ladders, for the book Scripture Sleuth. They always choose to do a project together, and this one was especially fun! It is a good learning experience for Riley to be a leader. His tendency is to do it all himself, but I’m encouraging him to make Emmett a part of all of it too. They are getting to be a better ‘team’ this way. Next year, when Riley will be a 9th grader and done with DITHOR, he has already volunteered to continue to lead the projects. At that point though, Emmett will probably need to lead, and Riley/Wyatt will follow more but still participate as able.
Moving along in dictation and studying present/past/past participle forms of verbs in grammar…
Math Exploration…
Riley is learning to solve for inequalities and unknowns in Principles of Mathematics this week. He is starting to understand how to move portions of equations from left to right of the equal sign and solve for ‘x’ now. Hooray!
Science Exploration…
Riley performed a ‘magic’ experiment for us. He called all of us to mix his chemicals in front of us, showing how carbon dioxide can change the color of litmus solutions…
In Christ,
Julie