Week 20 in CTG

This week for Bible we studied about King Saul. First, you have the Israelites asking for a King. Samuel balks, and says, "No way!" But God encourages Samuel and tells him who to choose. I guess, somehow, it is always easier to follow a person you can see with your eyes as king, than following a King you can only see with the eyes of your heart. Rabbit did a great job memorizing Psalm 23. She probably had it memorized a couple of weeks ago.

In History, we studied the Greek dark ages and some Greek mythology. Mostly it was just covering the different Gods. Rabbit loved reading The Trojan Horse. In fact, she was so excited about it, she read it to her dad at bed time. I bought the audio book version of The Children's Homer and have been listening to it while we follow along in the book. Those old Greek names can be quite intimidating to pronounce, so it is nice to just follow along in the book. This story has been harder for Rabbit to narrate. She will often summarize, but get confused about who did what. I have been having to help with the narrations a lot more with this story.

We started All About Spelling Level 4. The first step is review. I have a feeling it is going to take us a while to review all the previous phonographs and such.

All our other topics have gone pretty well.

(P.S. - I'm writing this about 3 weeks late, so it's pretty short. But, my previous post on the science for this week is the bigger highlight.)

Science of Week 20 in CTG

After feeling like a failure so much with science, this weeks science went better. Since there were so many experiments in one day, I thought I would do a separate entry.

We did not do the "It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's SUPER Feather" experiment (no feather handy) or the "Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem...Rubbery Bones?" experiment (no bones - we only buy boneless chicken breasts).

The "Up, Up, and Away" experiment was probably the most challenging, but we were finally able to get it to balance. We tried plastic forks, but they were too light compared to the weight of the clay. So, here is what you will need:

Then we followed the instructions in the book. I had to tweak the forks quite a bit, but we did finally get it to balance. Here is one of me holding the cup:

Here it is setting down. You can see the fork on the right is just barely above the counter-top. So, it was close:

The weight of the forks would pull down in the clay and the weight of the clay and forks on the toothpick would make it move in the clay as it balanced on the edge of the glass so, you had to be kind of quick. Several times I had to pull all the stuff out of the clay and reform the ball. Here is a view from the top - you can see how the forks were starting to pull down and stretch the clay; you can also see how close I had to put the ball of clay to the edge of the glass:

The "Glide and Lift" experiment was relatively easy. It helped to get a yard stick to draw a line along the diagonal of the paper to be able to fold it better. Here is our glider:

Here is Rabbit making an attempt to toss it off our balcony:

You can see that with this toss, the glider looped up. It did take some practice to get it going out rather than up. We are fortunate to have an open floor plan so we had a "balcony" to toss the glider off. If you don't have a balcony, standing up on a chair would probably give the same effect.

I tossed the glider a couple of times from the balcony, and one time it landed right on the hook of our coat rack! We probably laughed for 5 minutes over this!

The final experiment was called "Winging It." From the instructions we couldn't tell if we should tape the edges together so they lined up, or if we should tape the shorter side down to the longer side. We tried both, and decided taping the edges together so they lined up was what they wanted, so it looked like this:

The only bad part about this experiment was getting dizzy from all that spinning. Here is our wing in action:

So, 3 fun experiments. It probably took us a good 45 minutes or so to do them, but well worth it for the laughter and fun.

Week 19 in CTG

Not a bad week, overall. More history this week. For Bible we have studied Ruth and Samuel. Those have been neat readings and discussions. Ruth's obedience to and trust of her mother-in-law is inspirational. It was fun to talk about Boaz redeeming Ruth, and compare that to Jesus redeeming us. Then, reading 1 Samuel and how God answered Hannah's prayer for a child, and then she willingly gave him back to the Lord! I have so much respect for that having lost a child of my own and knowing how hard that was.

For History, the main focus has been the Minoans and Myceneans. It has been interesting reading the information about those cultures and trying to figure out who the "sea people" were referenced in Hittite Warrior.

Science. Sigh. I was a bad mom. We didn't do any of it. We read it. We talked about it. We didn't even do the fish model. I told Rabbit that I had to do several dissections in 7th grade biology, and the inside of the animal never looked like the pictures in the book. About the only thing I ever successfully identified in a dissection was the heart. So, I wasn't that motivated.

In Spelling we finished Level 3 of All-About-Spelling today! The last two lessons - contractions and homophones were super easy for Rabbit. The fun part was we just covered contractions last week in English, so it all came together perfectly. Contractions she gets - writing less is very cool to her.

We finished off the "What I see out my window" lesson from Writing Strands this week. Rabbit only wrote about 2 items. Today she said, "But Mom! It's winter. It's boring outside. There are no birds no flowers and the grass is all covered with snow. I don't want to write about it." So, I let it go. She wrote one very good paragraph and one decent one. We'll move on.

In Math we finished Unit 11 in Delta today. Hmmm. At this rate, I don't think we'll finish by the end of our school year. I see math continuing over the summer. She gets how to do averages, her math just doesn't always add up (pun intended!).

Art has been going well. We often modify the lessons a little because of the weather or she's not interested in drawing exactly what the author has suggested. But, even then, sometimes she'll be doing her own free art, and then incorporate those ideas. So, overall, I think it has been good to at least read the book and see what he suggests.

I realized today that we start Week 20 tomorrow. We only have 14 weeks left of school! That just doesn't seem all that long. The CHEC Conference is in June. We'll have to see if we want to start early again this year, or just do school-lite over the summer.

Trusting God for the End Result

You know, this home school journey can be quite stressful. Am I doing enough? Is this the right method to teach this kid? What about this one - the right-brained one - how am I ever going to get through to her? Should I use Math-U-See or Singapore? Do I want textbooks or literature-based? Ahhhhhh!

Then you just start. And you head down the road. And you realized that these traditional flashcards don't work for child number 1, but these cool right-brained ones work terrific. Child number 2 looks at a multiplication table one time and has them memorized. But nothing seems to work with child number 3. So you pray, and ask God for guidance. And you know what is so cool? He answers. Every time. Without fail.

We can't guarantee the end result. Oh, we can do things - lots of good things. We can follow so-and-so's parenting methods. And the such-and-such teaching method. We can be there with our kids through the up's and down's of everyday life, admitting our failures, being an example of how to turn to God and ask for His help. We can get tutors, and right-brained flashcards, and sign up for extra-curricular activities. We put God before them every way we can so they can know Him and what He has done for us.

But in the end, we have to trust God for the results. They're His kids. He has a plan for them. He gave them to us as part of that plan. But, they're His.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;

In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6

Week 18 in CTG

Not a bad week, overall. We ended up starting last Thursday, so our "light and independent Friday" falls on Wednesday. This will be good, as the boys will be taking a P.E. class on Wednesdays, and Rabbit's dance class will be on Wednesdays when it starts. We'll need a lighter school day.

Bible this week covered Gideon and Samson. It is the time of the Judges. I find it interesting that the Israelites had trouble following God unless they had a strong leader. And even then, some of the Judges weren't that great (especially Samson).

Our new Greek root this week was helios. We had fun finding words in the dictionary and guessing what they might mean based on the other Greek roots we already know. Rabbit missed one (logos) on her quiz, though. I haven't started playing the games recommended in the T.M. with Rabbit. I really should, as they look like fun. But, some days Kindergarten is taking 2 hours with the boys!

We are progressing well on spelling. We've almost finished Book 3. Rabbit's spelling is not perfect, but it is improving greatly. I went ahead and ordered Book 4. I think the new format is really helping Rabbit learn her words better.

Rabbit is having trouble mastering her divide by 4 and divide by 6 facts. I keep working with her. We've moved on to calculating averages. She wanted to know why, and it was hard for me to come up with reasons.

Monday and Tuesday, and a little on Thursday, were History days. We learned about the people of Canaan, the Hittites and the Philistines. I personally read a book recommended in the manual called Hittite Warrior. First, it is a very good book, and is a great fictional story set in the time of History we are covering. I've chosen not to read it to Rabbit as a read aloud as she is only 9. The book covers a lot of the sacrificing to the other gods of the time, Molech especially. It was hard enough for me to read it. I'm sure it would have upset Rabbit.

Science... Sigh... Once again, we're about 50/50 on the success rate. For the life of me, I cannot get Match Rockets to work. The foil just burned up. The match might "jump" off its launch pad, but it didn't fly. I did get the see-through-egg experiment to work and didn't even break the egg. I let the egg set in a jar with a lid for about 26 hours. When we scooped out the egg, it's shell was completely gone. I think the picture in the book is a little misleading. It implies that you could see through the egg clearly. That was not the case with our egg. However, we did hold it up to the light and could easily see the yolk that way. We didn't do the two-state rocket experiment, but it is one I plan on hitting sometime - if we could just find a day with time to do it.

Art this week was all about drawing nature. Alas, it was way to cold to go outside (below freezing!) to do any drawing. So, for one thing she drew a silk flower that I had. We'll have to wait for a nature study when it warms up.

In reading we've switched back to an Abeka 4th grade reader. Rabbit still has trouble with names. We've only been reading together for about 15 minutes. She's been reading her Bible for another 15 at bed time, plus books from the library, so I figure she's getting in 30 minutes, at least.

The Spanish lesson this week was about horses, so at least that captured her attention.

The Abeka K program is driving me crazy. Some days it is taking me over 2 hours to do K with both boys. One thing that is hard is some days (days when they read to me), they'll have lots of seatwork - like 5 pages. That is a lot of writing for my two boys. So, I've changed it so they only have to do the tracing parts on the writing pages when there are lots of pages. That's helped them. I'm thinking next year, even if My Father's World First Grade program has handwriting, I'm going to have to get a Handwriting Without Tears workbook for them to increase their skill and endurance on writing. On a good note, they are reading short-vowel words (okay, they often are still sounding them out, but still) and love the fact that they have special little readers to read. They love using the blocks in the Math-U-See Primer book. It is funny how they each do the book differently. Tigger builds each problem, colors the blocks and writes the numbers one at a time. Pooh builds all the problems, then goes through and colors all the 1 blocks and writes their number, then all the 2 blocks and writes their numbers and so on. It still takes them about the same amount of time to finish the page.

Glimpses of Progress

You ever wonder if your kid is going to get any better at something? You work at it and work at it and, sigh, you just think, "Is this ever going to get better?"

Rabbit has a small issue with writing. (Well, maybe it's a medium issue.) It is hard for her. Last year we did a lot of double dictation (she would tell me what to write, I would write it and she would copy it), and we still do it for notebooking assignments this year. For many writing assignments, I usually scale things back, or make things multiple choice, or write half of it for her, or something.

Well, the other day we were doing a science experiment with potatoes. (Yes, the one called "Potato Sponges.") Anyway, she got out a piece of paper and wrote 6 sentences (okay, she forgot to capitalize the first letter, but she remembered to put periods) about things she observed about potatoes while we waited for half of one to boil. This was totally her idea. I didn't even realize she had done it until I read the paper today (she left it on the counter). And, the really neat part was she didn't make that many spelling errors. I mean, she made a few, but not like she used to. It definitely wasn't the funky phonetic spelling that I used to see when she did stuff like this. I'm going to save the paper and put it in her science notebook.

Now, sometimes you feel like if you say something, you'l jynx it. But, I don't know, it's like something happened over Christmas. She's not complaining (too much) about writing. She seems to be trying real hard at all her school work. I don't know. It was just a glimpse that maybe it won't always be hard to get her to write.

Starting Back Up

Yesterday we started back to school. (We were going to start Wednesday, but a series of unfortunate events prevented that.) It's gone pretty well. We're on week 18 of Creation to the Greeks and have done 81 of our 172 days of school.

There have been a couple of really good teachable moments this week. When we do "writing station" time with All-About-Spelling, we do it a little differently than the book suggests. I give Rabbit 3 of the words, she writes them, and then has the option of writing as few sentences as possible to use all 3 words. Well, yesterday, she wrote her sentence but it was a really awkward sentence. The good part was, after she wrote it, she recognized that it was awkward. I told her that was great that she knew it wasn't quite right. So, I wrote it on the white board, and we analyzed it together.

Her original sentence was, "The soapy water spreads bubbles while mom mopped the floor." (The 3 words were soapy, bubbles, and mopped - just FYI.) So first I asked her, "How did the soapy water spread the bubbles?" That made her laugh, but she said, "Well, because mom is mopping." Then we talked about how spreads was present tense and mopped was past tense. So, we re-worked it to something like, "When mom mopped the floor with the soapy water, she spread bubbles all over the floor." It was just a good moment to stop and look at something. I told her I'm always re-writing my e-mails and blog posts.

Another teachable moment was with Lesson 52 in Intermediate Language Lessons. It was a writing opposites lesson. So, I got out the Thesaurus and when she didn't know what a word meant or a good opposite, we used the Thesaurus. We talked about synonyms vs. antonyms and how they are listed. I had written out the list of words so she only had to write the opposites down. I also shortened the 2nd and 3rd questions to writing only 3 other pairs of opposites and one sentence.

Today, we were looking up words for the Greek root helios. It was great to put together other Greek roots we've learned - helioscope and heliometer were in my dictionary, so I had her guess what they might mean (we've covered skopeo and metron in previous lessons), and she came pretty close.

Another great moment today was again in spelling. She has had such a hard time remember to use "le" at the end of words like candle - she usually uses "el." Well, one of the writing station words was "candles" and she got it right! And, in dictation there was a sentence with both "too" and "to" and she got those right. I was so excited. I didn't say anything to her, but then the next sentence she wrote "ot" for "to," again. So, I asked her to go back and carefully read her sentence, and she found it. That is progress for her to find her mistake, even if I had to ask her to go read it.

It was too cold today and yesterday to do the science experiments (when it doesn't go above freezing, I don't like going outside), but it is suppose to warm up tomorrow. I hope we'll at least try the Match Rocket experiment. When I told my husband about it, he thought it sounded cool. I just might be able to get him to join us on that one.

The boys are doing fine. They don't always have good attitudes, especially with "review" time, but they still need the review. The letters "g,", "y,", "b," "d", and "q" still give them problems. But, if I tell them, "That's a b," then they do all right with it. Hopefully Monday won't take quite so long.

It hasn't gone bad for an almost 3 week break in school. It is good to be back in our usual routine, that's for sure.