His Treasure Seekers

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)