His Treasure Seekers

Hmm… it’s looking like I should be calling these “bi-weekly wrap-ups.”  Between a week off, Ian’s birthday and some sickness running through my little ones, it didn’t even occur to me until a couple days ago that I hadn’t written in a while.  And really, there hasn’t been that much to write about.  We started reading Heidi, by Johanna Spyri (using the translation by Helen Dole, which I highly recommend).  This is one of my favorite children’s books, but I’ve held off on it for a year or so, unsure how the boys would respond.  So far they seem to be enjoying it.

For history, we’ve continued reading several chapters in From Sea to Shining Sea for Young Readers, moving into the years when slavery became such a divisive issue.  We’ve talked about the subject before, particularly during our time studying the Underground Railroad, so I didn’t pull in a lot of outside resources.  I did read Who Owns the Sun? by Stacy Chbosky, a Five in a Row book we hadn’t used before.  I’m glad I saved it until the boys were a little older, because it is such a rich text and a beautiful way of helping children process the injustice of slavery.

We’re still tackling biographies regularly, though the boys pretty much went through those on their own over the last couple weeks.  They read about Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton, as well as watching the Torchlighters DVD (both the animated story and the documentary) about William Booth.

      In our IEW lessons in All Things Fun and Fascinating, we moved onto the next unit, on writing from multiple sources.  I continue to be impressed by how much the boys have learned through their IEW class last year and now the lessons at home this year.  It seems like every week they are able to do a little more on their own, and they are starting to really think like writers, which is a huge blessing to this former classroom teacher who always felt at a loss when it came to helping children learn how to write well.

Of course, the boys continued plugging away in all their other subjects, but there wasn’t anything specific to take note of, so I think I’ll leave it here.