Week-In Review 2-8-10 to 2-12-10

[my3sons]

Ok Girls,

What was YOUR week Like?

You can post:

a- A picture
b- A blog Link
c- A written synopsis
d- Your favorite memory
e- Anything you want that shares your HOD excitement!

Important Note: If you are linking us to your blog, please make sure it's not just a general link, but to your specific post of HOD. That way if someone reads through these a year from now they can find your share without needing to hunt!

[my3sons]

Creation to Christ:
For science, Wyatt's animal tracks, birds, and plants book continues to grow each week. He has worked hard on it and is proud of the results. I am so glad for HOD's open-ended notebooking type assignments. I like that we have a balance between using beautiful Student Book pages and using blank paper for notebooking. I think there is a place for both, and that he learns different things from each. Here are some of his plant book pages he did:


We've enjoyed watching Wyatt's watercolor painting book of poetry grow each week. I like that his painting will look somewhat different than another student's painting. After 15 years of teaching, I've really learned to love individuality in work rather than worksheet produced things that often produce the same results for each child.


We've been reading about papyrus paper and enjoyed making it for our history project. Wyatt also made his map on it for his project, and I love that he does all of this independently and doesn't have to check back with me for every little detail:


For history, he is fascinated by Streams of History: Ancient Rome, and we are thoroughly enjoying reading our Storytime Diane Stanley's Cleopatra book. The book selections are awesome! I like to see him all engrossed in a book by the fireplace - he didn't even notice me snapping his picture!


Wyatt is doing estimation, large number multiplication, and long division with ease in Singapore. I credit it to Singapore's way of teaching mental math. He also knows all of his oral question answers in R & S now. A big improvement from when he first began with it. A great week with CTC!

In Christ,
Julie

[my3sons]

Bigger Hearts for His Glory:
Riley just finished his first week of BHFHG half-speed. He is doing well, but I am very glad we are going half-speed for him, as he is young and this is just the right pace. He was very proud of his map he made for notebooking showing Columbus' voyage from Spain to North America:


He liked putting the continents and oceans where they belonged on his balloon earth:


We are doing just 1 vocabulary card to begin with. He did "standard" here. This vocabulary activity teaches a TON of awesome skills: using contextual clues (from the history book) to guess the meaning of unknown words, using the dictionary to look up the word and find the correct definition, copywork of the definition, properly using the word in a sentence of their own, drawing a picture showing the meaning of the word, and finally alphabetizing the word in a card file or notebook. WOW! This activity really packs a punch - I can really see the fruits of doing it this way!!! Here is his first card, front and back:


Riley drew a neat picture for his poetry this week - he was so happy with the end product:


I wanted to show the copywork of his Bible verse from a few months ago to now - he's improved a lot :

Drawing lines on the index card helped him at first, and I liked making them as wide as I wanted.

We loved our first week with BHFHG!
In Christ,
Julie

[my3sons]

Little Hands to Heaven:
Emmett is loving Baby Moses so much! The activity where he got to diaper his baby (teddy bear), feed it, etc. was a bit hit!


He continues to love the Fingerplay - especially the "baby in the basket, float, float, float" part. His numbers book is up to "7" now, and here he is cutting and gluing his shoes to symbolize Moses taking his shoes off when he was standing on Holy ground speaking with the Lord in the burning bush:


Emmett loves to sing "And Pharaoh told them NO!". He played forever in the warm suds we made in the sink that we turned to red, symbolizing the water being turned to blood as the first of the plagues:


For his letters activity, I made dots for him to trace for his "F' practice, and he did the last 3 totally on his own!


Emmett couldn't be happier with school.
Hope you all had a great week!
In Christ,
Julie

[LynnH]

Julie- Wow Wyatt's notebooks look great! I can't wait until we are doing CTC next year. Noah will love doing those.

I have started a blog so here is the link to my weekly update page http://graceandfur.blogspot.com/2010/02 ... pdate.html. I hope it is ok that it has the few things like co-op and our olympic study that aren't HOD. The ease of Preparing and the 4 day schedule are what allow us to do those things, so hopefully it is ok they are on there.

[blessedmomof4]

Week 5 of Preparing went well. Tamara really got into making the cartouche, and all the basics are going along smoothly. She has almost mastered her times tables through the 10's with only a few extra minutes of practice daily (short lessons work!). Her favorite thing this week was the science experiment to see how the waxy coating of a cactus helps it save water. We live in the desert at least near it), so this section is of great interest to her

[my3sons]

Lynn and Noah - I love these pictures! You are doing such a great job with Preparing Hearts, Noah! I enjoy seeing the neat pictures your mom shares with us, and I always like hearing about your week. My son liked Raiders from the Sea so much too, he builds with blocks too, and is very much looking forward to the Olympics - so you two sure have a lot in common. You've done a super job this week in school, so now you can relax and catch some of the Olympics this week! Your mom is such an encouragement on our HOD Message Board. We are blessed to have her there, as you are blessed to have her as your mom. Have a good weekend!

In Christ,
Julie

P.S. I tried to post this on your blog, but am not savvy enough to figure it out , so I posted it here.

[my3sons]

blessedmomof4 -
Tamara is already in her second month of PHFHG - doesn't time fly! The second month is always more of a favorite of mine than the first, as all of those "firsts" are now "seconds" and usually that much better. It's nice to skills growing and to settle into routine. Congrats to Tamara on her neat cartouche, mastering her times tables, and conducting her experiment! The desert sounds like a mighty fine place to live to me about now, as we are freezing in the snow in SD. Thanks for sharing your week here with us!

In Christ,
Julie

[brenm37]

We are absolutely loving Raiders From the Sea in my all girl family - in fact, my girls are loving it so much, we are way ahead! They want to read the rest of the series now. We also enjoy the memorizing of the poetry and One Small Square, Coral Reef. We just finished Unit 23 and making a coral polyp was enjoyed by all!
Brenda

[Daisy]

Here's my week in review.

http://daisyhomeschoolblog.blogspot.com ... 21210.html

[annaz]

Here's my week in review.

http://daisyhomeschoolblog.blogspot.com ... 21210.html

Daisy...where did that visual narration chart idea come from? Was that from Bigger?
Also I love that garden idea you had making that root and flower out of veggies. Are these your ideas?
Ann

[my3sons]

Brenda - I'm glad you enjoyed the Raiders of the Sea too! That seems to be a hit with all dc - boys or girls. We have fond memories of making the coral polyp as well. That was one ooey, gooey, yummy polyp to eat! I'm amazed at how well dc can do with memorizing poetry. I wish I had done that when I was young. My middle ds just memorized "Four by the Clock" in Bigger Hearts. He had it memorized almost immediately, while I was still looking at the poem for help. Sounds like an awesome week!

Daisy - Buttercup's drawing of Bucephalus was beautiful! Her CTC notebook pages are turning out so lovely. She has such an attention to detail in each of her projects. You must be very proud of her work! We just finished Archimedes and the Olympics. Weren't the Olympics fun? Everyone got into it here, and it's too lucky that the Olympics are actually this time of year. I wish I could have seen Dragonfly's reenactment and his log house. We are not that far yet in Bigger Hearts this year, but I know when my oldest ds built his log house creations they were quite elaborate. It will be neat to see what my middle ds's building looks like! Totally different, I'm sure, as the Lord has given us 3 very different sons. We just did the first vocabulary word this week in BHFHG, and I'm glad Dragonfly enjoyed drawing his picture for "trenches" .

Thanks for sharing, ladies!
In Christ,
Julie

[Daisy]

Daisy...where did that visual narration chart idea come from? Was that from Bigger?
Also I love that garden idea you had making that root and flower out of veggies. Are these your ideas?
Ann

The garden idea was pre-HOD. LOL. It's from over a year ago.

The visual narration chart is also just the way I think. Both children enjoy doing this and it makes it easier for my son to remember his stories. A sort of scrapbook of learning. I'd say thought that HOD embraces that thought with it's notebooking pages.

[Daisy]

Ha, I should have taken a picture of Ryan's reenactments and tower-building. It was a crazy week. The pictures were taken after the fact this week. I pulled out the work and snapped pix. By that point, the reenactments & towers were long gone. Same with the Olympics! I should have taken pictures.

[annaz]

[quote="Daisy"][quote]
The visual narration chart is also just the way I think. quote]

Oh I hate when women say this. That means I won't do it, because I stink at it. You're very gifted.

Very cool, very cool.