School 4 Us

EXP1850 Week 3

2011-08-21T21:00:00.003-06:00

Okay, so this was a crazy week in school. Dance classes started. Rabbit is taking 2 classes, and the boys 1. Rabbit is taking Ballet II and Worship Dance II at Dance Scene Studios. The boys are taking a boys Hip Hop class. It is a Christian dance studio. At least all the classes are in the evening. I think this gives us a little more flexibility in our scheduling. P.E. Class doesn't start until the beginning of September.

History focused on King James and Jamestown, and some of the exploration for the Northwest Passage. There was one activity, making a wigwam, that we saved until our light and independent Friday (which currently falls on Thursday). We're almost done with it - we just need to cut out a hole in the top and on the side. (I'll post a picture or two when we finish.)

In Science right now we're focusing on Mammals. It is fun to learn about the different sizes and shapes and abilities.

We actually managed to at least read the Art lessons this week. We hardly ever have time to focus on that. And we squeezed music in on the way to piano lessons (can you say car-schooling?).

We started the read-aloud this week. Personally I'm enjoying it. I think Rabbit is too, as the story is told more from the point of view of a girl just a little older than she is.

The hardest part is getting the 2nd and 3rd grade supplement into place. I changed the routine, doing Bible, Spelling, English (or Writing), Reading and Math first. That leaves History and Science for after lunch. I think this has been working much better for us.

EXP1850 Week 2

2011-08-13T09:18:00.005-06:00

Whew. We went camping before starting this week on a Thursday. I had nothing prepared like I like to. That made it a little bit hectic.

This week started the memorization of James. Right now we're doing Plan A. That could change as AWANA starts up in September, but right now, we're going for Plan A. It has been challenging, but well worth the effort, so far. I've needed some reminder of those first 4 verses.

I found a History Scribe pack over at CurrClick (for $5) that had lots of topics we'll be covering this year and next (Egypt to the Present). It also included pages on the Indian tribes we'll cover, too. So I bought that to use for some of our History Notebook Pages. Using the "blank" pages from that and good old Photoshop, I made some pages for the kids to fill in for their "summary pages" this week. We did make the Shortbread as described in the T.M. We used fresh-milled whole wheat flour and honey to make it "healthier." My husband said it reminded him of pie crust. He said, "Leave to the Americans to add apples and call it pie." Here's a picture:

In Science, we started looking at the Classification System and Vertebrates. The kids liked the activities. I made a Vertebrates page in Microsoft Word for the kids to show them the fun we can have with our science pages. The boys have been working out of the Complete Book of Animals some, too. We made the model backbone as described in the text.

Math is going fine. Rabbit takes a little bit longer on those Review pages in the Singapore Textbook. It took us 3 days to complete one. We're working on Order of Operations. I let Rabbit use the calculator a little bit, or it would have taken us hours and hours to do those problems. (I only let her use it if a step was NOT a common math fact.) The boys seem to be doing okay with math, though Pooh Bear often needs two or three explanations before it sinks in. He's really having trouble with his math facts, so I get out beans for him to use to do subtraction. Tigger loves Quarter Mile Math, and it really seems to be helping him.

Tigger continues to plow on in Reading and Spelling. He's over halfway through the Abeka 1st grade readers, and he's only got two more steps to finish in All About Spelling Level 1. Pooh Bear continues the slow and steady pace. He can read, but it is a lot more work for him. Spelling goes even slower. But, I've found if I let him do it on a whiteboard, so his letters don't have to be on lines, he does better. Rabbit is reading fine these days. We've been in All About Spelling Level 5 for a while. She is really struggling with some of the concepts at this level.

We've missed quite a few God and the History of Art pages. If I have to let something go, I feel like letting Art go is the easiest thing, because it's not always my interest. But, two of the three kids like drawing. If our days weren't so long, I'd probably do more.

Pooh struggles with Rosetta Stone, but part of that is he doesn't always speak clearly. I've also read that dyslexics have a hard time learning a Foreign Language. Rabbit seems to be mostly liking it - except when she has a hard time pronouncing things. Tigger enjoys it and isn't taking it too seriously. They are all doing Spanish.

I come up with a way to create a flexible schedule. I am using a pocket chart and some wipe-off word strips. Basically it is just to give us the order of the day. If multiple things are listed, the left column is for Rabbit, the middle for Pooh Bear, and the right for Tigger. So, if I'm working with Rabbit on English, the other two have independent stuff to do. Here's what it looks like:

It makes it pretty easy to change the order of the day if I know we have an appointment or something. We turn the cards over as we work through each section. I am thinking about moving Math and Reading before lunch, and History and Science afterwards. I really feel that sometimes the 3 R's get neglected if they're not done right after Bible. But, that is a lot of writing right in a row for the little guys, so I don't know.

Our curriculum break is over!

2011-07-29T21:09:00.002-06:00

What have I learned this week... Well, with Math, it is good to have Tigger and Pooh doing Math Drill and Rosetta Stone while Rabbit does Math with me. That gives them more time on those. They probably only take 15 minutes each when it comes to Math time, so that shortens the time on Rosetta Stone and Math Drill for Rabbit. Still not sure that's the best way to do things. The TM implies that you're doing math with all your kids at the same time, going from one to the other, but with my two dyslexic kids, that doesn't work well. I need to watch them do their math and make sure they write their numbers correctly. Hmmm. Not 100% sure there what I should really do.

Rabbit really enjoyed Dance Camp this week. (I'll have to post some videos later of the dances they learned.) We got to go today and see what they learned. It is funny to watch her facial expressions while she is dancing.

Tigger is really reading well. He enjoys doing the pages from The Complete Book of Animals, and will even fill in some of the blanks himself. I think Pooh likes them too, because they are fact based and not "stories" like is reader is. Pooh is slowly but surely making progress. I can't wait to add spelling back in for him.

I think having a little more laid back week was good before we dive into week 2 and start memorizing the Book of James. Now, to prep for next week.

I also learned I need to buckle down on getting school started and getting it done. One thing that will be different, since Rabbit has decided to take dance classes at Dance Scene Studios this fall, I won't have to have our light days be Wednesday. Her classes are all in the evening hours, so that doesn't interrupt our "school" time. I think that will make the year feel very different than previous years. We'll still have P.E. class for the boys (unless they both decide to do Hip Hop at the dance studio) on Wednesday, but that's not quite as big a deal as having P.E. and dance on the same day.

Working around dance camp, day two

2011-07-26T17:06:00.003-06:00

Okay, so today we got Math and Reading done before taking Rabbit off to dance camp class. Whew.

[Side note: While there, I talked to the owner of Dance Scene Studios to find out how their regular ballet and worship dance classes worked. So, now we have to make a decision. Do we do Celebration Ministry of Arts or Dance Scene Studios? Dance Scene Studios would be a full year, August through May, of traditional ballet with a recital at the end of the year. Then Rabbit could be on the Worship Dance team, and they go and visit hospitals and nursing homes monthly and put on a performance. Celebration Ministry of Arts would be 3 months of Worship Dance and Ballet in the Fall and Spring each. She would have two Worship Dance recitals, but no recital for the Ballet class.]

Then, while Rabbit was at dance camp, the boys did a Science page each from the Complete Book of Animals, notes drill, a math football game, and a little bit of Scrabble (that's spelling, right?) before we had to go pick Rabbit back up. Then, after lunch, we listened the music lesson we missed from last week and did piano lessons. To wrap up, we went to the Smokey Hill Library and picked up their prizes for completing the Arapahoe Library District's summer reading program.

Overall, not a bad 4 hours.

When God has other plans...

2011-07-25T20:54:00.002-06:00

Well, Rabbit had dance camp this morning, and the dog (perhaps we'll call her Piglet - she's about as timid, but can be "brave" as she deems necessary, but she's not pudgy) had a vet appointment for a recurring ear-infection. So, the boys and I only got Math and Reading in before we needed to pick up Rabbit. Then, the teacher said only 2 of the 4 girls who signed up showed up. This evening we got a call and they're offering a 1.5 hour class for the rest of the week, and they'll only charge us half the original cost. I'm good with that, but it means I need to come up with other work for Rabbit for the remainder of the week.

So, she can do Math Drill, Rosetta Stone, Reading, Book Basket, Piano, Math, and maybe some Spelling if I can figure out how to work it all out.

But, whatever my plans were doesn't matter. I'm sure God has a better idea on how this week should go.

EXP1850 Week 1 in Review

2011-07-20T17:32:00.005-06:00

Okay, we've started early. I can tell you what NOT to do. Don't decide to enter bread into the county fair the same day you're starting your school year. Though my bread did well (one 1st place and one 2nd place), it added way too much stress to the day. The day went well, but it was a very long day. I decided to try going in the order things are listed in the TM. I had activities for each of the kids for the times I needed to do one-on-one work (English and Spelling). Still hopping around and helping the kids a lot. Especially the little guys getting started on Rosetta Stone. Plus, the dog had an accident in the house. So, we had a bit of an interruption. It took 5.5 hours to do all our school. But, for the most part the kids enjoyed it.

For day two, we did school in the morning, so I decided to do the core subjects (Bible, History, and Science) first, and then get as much done beyond that as we could. The judging for the bread was at 1:00 and I wanted to take the kids to that (field trip!). We did the boats as described in the TM, and the kids loved that. Here's a picture of each of them behind their boats.

And here they are all floating. Since we have water restrictions here, I didn't put them in the tub, but the did each try to blow their boat across the sink. Rabbit's boat spun in circles. Pooh and Tigger's boats did go across the sink, but they were hard to control. We talked about how the boats could only run on wind power.

And we got Handwriting and English done before running off to the judging.

So, for day three, I decided to do the core first, again, and then Language Arts and Math. That seemed to just work better for us. I think doing all the together stuff first (except Art/Music and the Read Aloud) just makes things go smoother. We can get English and Handwriting done before lunch, and then that leaves Math, Reading, Music/Art, and Piano for after lunch. The day just seems to run smoother for us.

For day four we did core first and then language arts again. That worked much better. I am having trouble getting the 2nd/3rd Grade Supplemental science in from the Complete Book of Animals. Sometimes it actually seems like there is more work for the 2nd/3rd Grade Supplement than there is for the regular part. The boys really enjoy the science, so it's not that much of a big deal to do the World of Animals books.

Day five was lighter, but we tried to catch up on some things we missed earlier in the week. That was good. I still need to figure out work for the kids to do for Reading and Math times, but we're making progress.

Next week Rabbit has dance camp for 3 hours every morning. I'm going to count that as school time (Fine Arts, you know), and then do Math, Spelling and piano for an hour with her after lunch. For the boys we're going to work on Reading, Math, Science (pages that we didn't do last week), Rosetta Stone, Math Drill, Spelling, Piano, Handwriting, AWANA verses, etc. I should have a good 4 hours worth of stuff for them to do, too. This should give me a week to come up with better ways to run our regular curriculum days.

The other thing we are thinking about is dance. Celebration Ministry Arts is a great program. Rabbit loves it and the dancing is wonderful. But, it is pretty expensive. There is a new dance studio that has opened up near-by. It is less expensive and closer. But, I need to see what days Ballet classes will be to see if it will work for us or not.

Winnie the Pooh Movie

2011-07-17T20:00:00.003-06:00

We took the kids to see the new Winnie the Pooh movie this afternoon. I give it 2 thumbs up. Pooh values his friends over his tummy. Tigger feels bad for Eeyore being left out, and in his Tigger-y way, tries to include him. Piglet has to be brave when he doesn't want to be. Owl and Rabbit are their usual selves, but there are even lessons to be learned from them. You'll laugh-out-loud at all the antics.

And the reason we went to the movie: we start school up tomorrow. Maybe I'll remember to post about our first day of school.

Starting Early This Year (Explorers to 1850)

2011-07-13T21:10:00.005-06:00

I'm really thinking about starting our school week next Monday! That way, I would do a full week with all 3 kids and see how it goes. Then the next week, Rabbit has Ballet camp in the mornings. So that week I would probably do the 3 R's with the boys while she's at camp (maybe throw in Rosetta Stone, Spelling and anything else that doesn't matter on the grid), then do another hour of school with her in the afternoon and get one more hour for our 4 hours. That would give a week to think about and tweak things. Then start back up on a full Explorers to 1850.

I think I really want to see how things go before we add in Dance and P.E. class in the school year. It will help me feel more confident. They both start in September, so that would give me a full month to see ow it goes.

I'm pretty well ready to start. I've copied James from Bible Gateway (an 1984 NIV version) to a Word document, increased the font for the boys, and then put it in those folders that have the 3 prongs. So we'll use that for our James study. I've got notebooks ready. I've got all my data entered in HST+, I think.

Really, the only things left are copying from George Washington's World and taking last year's work to FedEx Office and having it spiral bound for keepsakes.

Year 2010-2011 Finshed

2011-07-09T13:14:00.003-06:00

Well, we finished a while ago, actually. I've not been very good about keeping up my blog this year. Too much going on. Let's see if I can give a good summary. (Perhaps later this summer I can go through and find some fun pictures to post.)

The boys finished MFW 1st grade. They are reading pretty well. Tigger has really taken off. He loves Calvin and Hobbes right now. Pooh is a little slower. We've found a couple of good motivators for him: a Lego comic story book (I found it at Sam's Club) and fortune cookies. He's actually starting to read signs on the road, too. We're still working through the Abeka 1st grader readers, and will continue to do so this summer and into next year. I basically just have them read 10 minutes a day to me. Tigger gets through 10-12 pages each time, but Pooh only gets through about 6 (he just reads a bit slower). So, Tigger is now a book-and-a-half ahead of Pooh.

We enjoyed doing the MFW 1st grade science. We just moved it all to our "light" day. The only thing I wish I had done for the science was go to Home Depot or Lowes and get some clear, flexible tubing to do some of the water experiments - there were several that needed it and we never did them. The boys also joined in on Exploring Creation through Astronomy that big sister was doing in RTR. We even made notebook pages. I did duty as scribe for them, but they drew and colored pictures.

The boys weren't always big on drawing pictures in their Bible notebooks. We always did double dictation for those, too, so as not to reinforce bad spelling. They really liked their Bible readers. One thing I started doing was going through the story before they read it and picking out any words they might have trouble with. I would write them on the whiteboard and we would work on sounding them out before reading them in the Bible reader.

At the end of the year, we already had our 172 days in but I still had 2 weeks of curriculum left in RTR. So, we condensed the History and Science portions and fit them into one week. So we dropped all other subjects and just finished those off. I don't think I required any notebook pages for History, but I think we did a couple of science things. The "Is Pluto a Planet" debate was hard for Rabbit. She really tried, but after she tried to convince herself that it is still a planet she was more convinced it wasn't!

NASA has lots of pages on the planets that went perfectly with studying Astronomy. And their Sun page is awesome! I still go and look at that about once a week. The spacecraft MESSENGER got to Mercury either just before or just after we studied Mercury, so that was a great coincidence (or Providence, as the case probably is). It seems like there were some interesting events on Saturn, too, when we studied Saturn. So, I highly recommend keeping up with NASA's site.

A couple of weeks later Rabbit finished Singapore 4B! Hooray, she is caught up and on track to finish 5A/5B by the end of next year. Perfect! We didn't quite finish Writing Strands 4. We only have to do half of 5 next year, so I think we'll just continue where we left off in 4. She did finish her Latin Roots and English for the year. She's about halfway through Level 5 of All About Spelling. There were lots of weeks where we only got in 3 days of spelling.

In the second half of the year we added Piano lessons. That added quite a bit of work to my day, as I need to at least sit with the boys as they do their lessons. I usually only need to sit with Rabbit once, but the boys need a lot more assistance. I really like our piano teacher. She really tries to tailor the lessons to their interests. For example, Pooh is pretty good at memorizing the lessons, so she has him memorize them and then has him add rhythm to it. For Tigger, he is really into contemporary Christian music, so she has him work a little in the book, but also lets him pick a song to work on chords. And Rabbit is just flying through the music books.

The year went amazingly well doing the two programs. I'm pleased with how it turned out. I need to be more disciplined on somethings (like staying off the computer (meaning the Internet) until we're done with our day), but I think we did well. We've had to work on attitudes some days.

We just recently added a dog to the family, so we'll see how that affects our school days next year.

Up to Week 23 in MFW 1st

2011-03-16T15:10:00.007-06:00

Well, we're in the middle of Week 23 in MFW 1st (that's day 110). Tigger is doing really well with his reading and math. The math part surprised me, but he really seems to get the concepts. Pooh is a bit weaker in the reading (but does fine with the math, although he does it slowly). I have added All About Spelling for both of them, and it seems to be helping Pooh some, and he likes it, so I'm going to stick with it. But, if his dyslexia turns out to be more severe, I might have to turn to Barton's Reading.

What the boys enjoy most is science. They've been doing Astronomy in RTR with Rabbit. I've been using Jeannie Fulbright's free Astronomy notebook for the boys. They love drawing the pictures, and then they tell me a little narration and I write it on the pages for them.

We've been doing all the experiments we can from the 1st grade program too. Today's subject was "Making Water Work." The demonstration (or experiment) was to build a water wheel. One of the items called for was a styrofoam egg carton (or two). Well, we don't have any. I was trying to think of what to use, and then I remembered the left-over plastic Easter eggs from last year. So, we took the "larger" half of those eggs, and used a hot glue gun and glued them on like this:

Then I glued the other side on (again, with a hot glue gun). We didn't have any spools, but we do have lots of K'nex, so we used a K'nex rod and two wheels from that in place of the spool and pencil like this:

We taped the wheels to craft sticks rather than the rulers, and then rested the craft sticks on rulers so, it looked like this:

Then we tried it to see if it would really work, and it did! (Make sure you do this near a sink, as water does splash off the wheel.)

So, anyway, definitely try to be creative with building the models and doing the science experiments, even if your days end up long.

Up to Week 23 in RTR

2011-03-16T14:33:00.006-06:00

Sigh. Five weeks since my last update. Let's see if I can get caught up.

In RTR, Rabbit and I have been cruising along just fine. We got up to about 1400 or so in Europe, and the curriculum backtracks a bit to cover the same time period in China, Japan and Australia (I think we hit Russia next week). It has been interesting to note how a feudal system developed in both China and Japan, without having any contact with the West.

One of our fun projects was to build the model of a medieval castle (it comes with the curriculum). It's a lot of work, and I did most of it, but once I got into a rhythm, it wasn't bad. I bought a 1/4 inch thick poster board and we built it on that. We tried some different craft glues and Elmer's. Different glues worked better in different situations. Rabbit did a presentation at our homeschool group on castles after we made it (she cut out and glued on all the figures):

In science we finished up the Human Body and began Astronomy 2 weeks ago. The last unit in the Human Body was the reproductive system. Don't miss The Wonderful Way Babies are Made. I didn't read it to my 6 year olds, but it was perfect for Rabbit. Now that we've switched to Astronomy, we had another great "line-up." We're studying Mercury this week, and Mercury is visible in the sky just after sunset, along with Jupiter. We hope to get out tonight to be able to see it. (This website has details.) I've been trying to do all the experiments and projects. It's tough, because our days go longer, but the kids really enjoy them. Here is our model of the solar system:

We used a bead for Mars because it was so small. We should have used a bead for Mercury too. But it looks great and the kids really got a feel for how things compared in size.

We finished up memorizing 1 Corinthians 13 and are now on to Philippians 2. These are great verses for a family to "rememberize" to remind us how to love and how to treat each other. In Luke we're up to Passion Week, which I think is perfect as we approach Easter.

We haven't been doing as many of the Art lessons from God and the History of Art these days, but we are reading the History. And, if there is a lesson that she finds interesting, we do that. We have been listening to the music and really enjoying Mozart. We recognize lots of the movements.

We are now in Singapore 4B in math. I really like the way they've been teaching fraction to decimal (and back) conversions, and wish I would have learned it that way when I was in school. I will say that the reviews, in both the workbook and textbook seem WAY longer than in 4A.

English and Writing Strands continue to step up, but Rabbit is usually up to the challenge. Our latest Writing Strands assignment was to write a description of our home. I don't think we did as great a job as he implied we should do in the lesson. But, we have a rather large house, and it would have taken us many more days to complete the lesson. I told Rabbit I'd like for us to try again with it this summer, now that we have more of a feel for the lesson.

We're still in Level 5 in All About Spelling. I'm not sure if she is going to finish it this year. More of the tricky words ("If the sound is /long-e/ then it's i before e except after c") are in this level, and they are giving her trouble. She is recognizing more and more when she misspells, but still can't always figure out the correct spelling.

School has been going pretty well. We added in piano last week, so that is also adding to our days. Rabbit has taken right to it, and practiced every day.

RTR Week 17 - Lefse

2011-02-12T19:12:00.004-07:00

Well, we tried making "Lefse" today, since we were studying the Vikings. We followed the recipe in the TM, except we only had 6 potatoes to use. This still made 10 "Lefse." I'm not sure I made them thick enough, but if I made them any thinner, they would stick to the counter, even after flouring the counter and my rolling pin.

We topped ours with cinnamon, sugar, and honey. Warning: they are VERY filling. These would be better for breakfast or lunch, not for desert!

School has been going well. Rabbit doesn't like the stuff about wars, so she had a really hard time with drawing the Bayeux Tapestry this week. (Follow that link, and you can see the whole tapestry with a description. Someone posted it on the MFW boards.)

Rabbit is about to finish Singapore 4A. These Review pages are taking a long time. We spent an hour on the first review, and still didn't finish.

Tigger and Pooh are progressing through 1st. I was really proud of Pooh this last week. He had dictated me a summary, I wrote it and he said, "I can copy it by myself, Mom." So I let him, and he did a pretty good job! He did misspell 3 words even though he was copying. But, he remember to put a space between each word and worked very hard at writing neatly for him. And, when we went to the grocery store he actually read "Jet-Puffed" off the marshmallow bag by himself.

Tigger plows along. We got fortune cookies from the grocery store, and he even tries to read his fortune to himself.

They LOVE exploration day and insist I start with the science reading and do the experiments. We're on the water book, and those are fun experiments. If you can, make sure you go to the hardware store and get some clear, flexible rubber tubing for some of the water experiments. We haven't been able to do a couple of experiments because we haven't any.

Back to School

2011-01-07T14:52:00.004-07:00

Well, it has obviously been too long since I updated my blog. We started week 15 today (so I'm going to skip filling in the weeks we've done since my last posting).

I think it was fortuitous (or perhaps Providence) that there was a recent discussion on the MFW message boards about Story of the World and how it introduced Islam. Thanks to that discussion, I was able to preface that reading with, "Now, this is what Muslims believe happened, and what they pass down to their children." The kids totally got it and compared some of what we believe as Christians as compared to the little bit discussed in the passage we read today. The Muslim Fact Cards were also helpful. Be sure to read the verses that compare Muslim beliefs to Christianity.

The rest of the day went quite well. Since we had done the lung experiment last year, we didn't repeat it today. But, I did read through the description again. Everything else went smoothly, even math (fractions!). Again, Providence played out in English. A few weeks ago in Writing Strands we had worked on point of view - telling a story from 1st person and then retelling the story in 3rd person. Today's English assignment from Intermediate Language Lessons was similar - write a story in 3rd person, and then rewrite it in "autobiographical" form, meaning 1st person. Since we had done the Writing Strands lesson before, it was pretty straight forward. We outlined what we were suppose to talk about, and did most of the assignment orally. Rabbit even asked if, "Later, can I rewrite the story differently."

The boys surprised me in that they didn't forget much over our long (for us) Christmas break. I didn't do MFW 1st today, but instead did All About Spelling, had them read to me, and had them do worksheets with math fact problems. Tigger even did a couple of math pages from a Lightning McQueen math workbook I picked up sometime in the past. I told the boys if they could read the last story in the second 1st grade reader from Abeka, we could go onto the third book. They both did well, so I'm going to go on to the third book in the series. They sat in on the Bible, History and Science of RTR, so I figured that it was good.

I love it when we have a good day of school, and God's hand showed up in the details with the discussion on the MFW message board and the fact that we had already done a similar lesson in Writing Strands before coming to it in English.

Winter 2010 Worship Dance Recital

2011-01-01T13:35:00.003-07:00

Rabbit's Winter 2010 Worship Dance Performance: An Audience of One

MFW 1st Grade - Up to day 50

2010-10-24T10:06:00.004-06:00

We've been cruising along with MFW 1st Grade. I think Pooh may be dyslexic (just like big sister Rabbit). He loves science. He loves being read to. He loves looking at the Come Look with Me books. He mostly enjoys doing math (but not always). But when it comes to reading, well lets just say it is very hard for him.

We've basically continued on as scheduled in the TM. Having the days in between learning new sounds where we read the Bible reader has been good. I use those extra days to review and reinforce sounds and play games.

Tigger just plows on in the reading. He doesn't get upset if he misses a word or anything. Sometimes he shows signs of dyslexia, but not like Pooh. It's also great to see him trying to write. It is very phonetic, often using the wrong spelling for the sound of /er/ (mostly ir), but he keeps begging me to teach him how to spell. So, I may be getting out All-About-Spelling level 1 before I intended to.

For Math the last month or so we've been working on adding to 18 using only single digit numbers. I vary which manipulatives we use to do this project. As we got to above 10, though, we've pretty much stuck to the Math-U-See blocks. I just felt it was easier for them to see how it worked.

The boys join in with RTR Bible, History, and Science. They love the science.

The hardest thing for me has been to get the library books for the science. I always forget to look ahead and get them reserved from the library. That is something I really need to work on.

I set up their timeline boards. What I did, since we already have a timeline up on the wall for Rabbit for CTG and RTR, I got those 3-fold science project boards to use. I drew 6 lines across (spaced approximately 6 inches apart). Then I put each beginning marker on a new line. Here's a picture to show you.

RTR Weeks 6 - 9

2010-10-24T09:36:00.006-06:00

Man, have I been bad about keeping this up. We've been pretty busy. There was some sickness, so for two weeks, I was a helper at Awana while my husband recovered, so I didn't get a chance to keep this updated.

My last post was about our Roman Arch - which was done in week 6. You can see the picture from that post. I would encourage anyone to not give up on that project. We didn't sand the pudding boxes or anything. We built it several different times (like for Dad, when he got home), and it worked every time.

Another great thing you do in week 6 is study the Old Testament Prophesies of Jesus, and how he fullfilled them. I think that was a great thing to study.

Rabbit was excited in Week 7 that we're beginning to focus more on Jesus. She really doesn't like August Caesar's World all that much (to many false gods, murders and too much intrigue). This week we worked on the ear in science. The art lessons were good - drawing cubes books - getting your depth right. Rabbit thoroughly enjoys The Bronze Bow, but the boys aren't so keen on it. I'm sure they'll enjoy it when they're older, though.

We're breezing through Jesus's life pretty quickly through weeks 8 and 9. That's to keep up with our history studies. We covered the skin and the eye in science. We reading about the political changes and such going on in the Roman empire. We finished The Bronze Bow - loved the ending. The idea that you can't repay love with vengance is such a good theme in the book. It even got me to thinking about things.

Rabbit finished up her Singapore 3B book sometime during this stretch and we've begun Singapore 4A. It is a review of place value and rounding right now. She tells me it doesn't always make sense to her, but I don't know how else to explain some of those things.

Spelling has been Rabbit's hardest subject. We've really slowed down now at Level 5. Here's an example of her spelling thinking. The word is "actress." I very carefully pronounced "/ac/-/tress/." She spells it "acteress." And when it happens is when she is sounding out letter by letter, she say, "/a/, /c/, /t/, /er/, /e/, /s/, /s/." I posted on the Chatter Bee board for some help and got some ideas. One idea was to have her count syllables before she writes it to give her an idea of how many vowels or vowel teams there should be in the word. I want to try to get her to more spelling syllable by syllable than sound by sound. Sigh.

Our days run pretty long most days. That can be discouraging. But, we keep making progress.

Here's a beautiful creation she made just this last week with the Pattern Blocks. The kids just love playing free-style with them.

From School 4 Us

Our Roman Arch Worked!

2010-09-24T14:34:00.005-06:00

Okay, this is from week 6 in RTR. I was skeptical, but... Whoo-hooo! Now, I didn't have cereal boxes, so we used those corrugated cardboard bricks for our "base." And, by the time we were finished, the bricks were only 5 3/4 inches apart, rather than 6 1/2, but it is staying all by itself!

I have more to post about our last couple of weeks, but I was just too excited about this!

RTR Week 3

2010-09-08T15:58:00.004-06:00

The first day had a little bit of stuff from How the Bible Came to Us, so we did that the evening before, but the rest of it has been basically memorizing the books of the New Testament and just looking up a few verses from those books, so we've been doing those in the morning. It's great getting a brief summary of each book and who (possibly) wrote it.

We're continuing in August Caesar's World for history, along with tidbits from The Roman Empire. I've had to reword a few things from the former to soften them for Rabbit. Yesterday we did the mosaic project. We used construction paper and foam squares (I had some from many moons ago), and it ended up looking like this:

Cutting up construction paper into little squares just didn't appeal to me, so I felt like this was a good substitute. I need to print out the picture for Rabbit to add to her history notebook.

We've continued learning more about the Brain this week. It is so neat how God designed our bodies.

For our Latin Roots test, I made up addition and subtraction problems in Latin and had her write her answers in Latin. I figured that was better than a matching test. We're still on numbers at this point.

Over all, a pretty good week, except Rabbit hates Math again. But, I think we're just going to keep at it.

MFW 1st - up to about day 20

2010-09-08T15:43:00.002-06:00

Okay, so my boys are always surprising me.

We're finally up to learning long vowel sounds - long a (spelled a-consonant-e) and long e (spelled e-consonant-e and ee). When we did long a, Tigger did great. Pooh did okay, but he caught on. I played reading games that afternoon with both of them, and then that evening I worked with Pooh one-on-one. Then the next day we did long e. Pooh really struggled with it. He was on the verge of tears a couple of times. Tigger did fine. Then, that afternoon we played a couple of reading games. Pooh really worked hard to read the words correctly. It might take him several seconds to think about it, but he read most of them correctly. Tigger, on the other hand, kept missing them. I was a bit suspicious, though, that he was missing them so I would play a reading game with him one-on-one.

So, needing "Exploration Day" to land on Wednesday, we took a few days off following the MFW 1st grade manual and just spent time each day reading books, playing reading games, doing fun little math things, etc. Yesterday, we were playing reading games and Tigger kept missing words I knew he read the day before. Then he finally said, "You're going to have to play games with me tonight, because I keep missing words." A-ha! I knew it!

Today we picked it back up (as it was finally Wednesday), and did our Exploration Day. We started with verses, and then looking at a picture in the red Come Look with Me book, reviewed our science book, read some of our library books, played with Pattern Blocks, and played a reading game. For the reading game, I had the boys spread the cards around the room and then I would call out a word for them to find. Pooh did better than Tigger at this, which really surprised me. They LOVED this game. In fact, it was really hard to calm them down to get them ready for P.E. class.

We'll be ready to start back at day 21 tomorrow.

RTR Week 2

2010-09-08T15:35:00.003-06:00

Whew, I need to get caught up.

We've been doing most of the Bible the night before so Dad can join in. It's been interesting learning how books got started, and even writing. You do have to wonder how much if it is "right," though. I mean, no one we know personally was there.

This week we started August Caesar's World. Not sure what to make of the book. I enjoy it, and the writing is good. Rabbit is having a hard time with it because of all the mentioning of other "gods." I'm really having to filter for her. One day we had the opportunity to play "Odd or Even" and even the boys enjoyed that.

In science we've been learning about nerves and how the brain works. There have been some good experiments or demonstrations to try to show how it works. It's pretty cool.

The drawing lessons in God and the History of Art have been good - we've been learning about perspective. I think this will help Rabbit's drawing.

So far, in English from the Roots Up we're just covering numbers in Latin. It's pretty easy, because it lines up with Spanish pretty well, and we've been studying Spanish since 1st grade.

Otherwise, not a bad week. I'm learning bunches.

RTR Day 5, MFW 1st, Day 14

2010-08-25T15:46:00.003-06:00

Let's just say "light and independent" Friday for Rabbit was a big help in the grand scheme of things.

We still didn't get started until 9:00 today. Sigh. Can my children eat breakfast any slo-w-e--r? (If I could stretch out that word and then make it bend down like a drooping flower, I would!)

We started with the boys new verse (since this would be a "Monday" in MFW 1st). They said it a couple of times and we discussed it as directed in the T.M. Then we read another Miller's story. I'm always surprised how much they like these. Today's chapter was called, "Play the Man" and was about common courtesies men can show women - like opening doors and where to stand on the sidewalk and such. (As you'll see, this will come into play later in the day.)

I gave Rabbit her seatwork - it was simply a test for her Latin roots and a math review page. I used EasyTestMaker to make Rabbit's test. I had her define each root, and then I also had her use two derivative words correctly in a sentence. It was all "short answer" style, as there are only two roots at this point. When we get more, I'll change it over to multiple choice. She didn't miss any, and only missed one math problem. Way to go Rabbit! I told her she could practice sewing or work on her latch hook when she was done.

The boys did okay with reading today. Tigger had one word he stumbled over. Pooh, on the other hand, had more trouble. He's also a little too hard on himself about this. He has no problem marking the vowel and saying the vowel sound. It's the saying the rest of the sounds in the correct order that seems to get him. He'll do fine for a few words and then get all flustered. Then he'll do fine again and get flustered. But, he did fine with the cutting out the sentences and gluing them under the correct picture. I never know what to think about this kind of problem.

Next we took a snack break, and then did Math. I've stopped having them bring me the number of the day items. It just takes too much time for them to hunt them down. One thing I have been doing differently is not only drawing a line the number-of-the-day inches long, but also drawing it in centimeters. One thing I've struggled with is how large something is. I think drawing the lines in centimeters allows them to compare inches to centimeters. Plus, you can go up to 30 centimeters instead of just 12 inches. The next two weeks in Math is suppose to cover counting. That's fine, but they're pretty good at it. I forgot to reserve books from the library on it, though. But, we did do the first page in the workbook - it was easy and quick. Oh, I had Rabbit play some math games with one boy while I was working with the other. It was kind of good, except they got a little noisy and silly sometimes.

We read the Science pages next. They were pretty excited with the idea of watering some beans and watching them grow, so we'll probably do that. I do have a few books reserved for that topic at least.

The last thing we did before lunch was go on a Nature Walk. We did our usual path. We saw a very large grasshopper sitting on a weed, lots of bees, and other signs of summer. We could see just a very few yellow leaves on a few trees, telling us that fall is just around the corner. We talked about the different things we saw. Now the funny part was Rabbit kept insisting that the boys walk on the outside when we walked along the sidewalk so they could "Play the Men" as talked about in the story this morning. Yet, when they did, this made me nervous because of the occasional car going by and them being smaller than we are.

After lunch, we finished up the boys by listening to our Spanish program. It was basically learning common phrases (hello, good day, etc.).

Then I worked with Toni. We went over her math and had her fix her one mistake. She surprised me by wanting to do Writing Strands first. She made up a story about a hamster's first day in a new home (she wants us to get one for her to have as a pet). I captured her main points for her and then helped her come up with her long sentence. It always works best if we use her ideas. Not sure if I should make her come up with a real thing to tell about (which is kind of what seems to be suggested in the book), or just go with what we have done.

We've been reading from the Abeka 5th grade level "novel" Message of the Mountain - just a chapter a day, which doesn't take that long, but I know she is also reading from her Bible every day and other books she gets from the library (or her Nature Friend magazine - which came in the mail today).

The last thing on Rabbit's list for the day was the dreaded Spelling. Poor kid. She finally spelled all the words we were reviewing right (the green cards), but is really struggling with the two-letter sounds (ai, oa, ph, etc.) when we do the phonics and sound review time (the yellow and red cards). I'm not wanting to continue on with the rest of Step 1 until I feel she has at least got them each right once. She got frustrated with it today.

RTR Day 4, MFW 1st Day 13

2010-08-24T21:52:00.010-06:00

Our day started off with Rabbit having a bloody nose. It took me an hour to get it to stop. So, we didn't start our school time until 9:10. That was a bit of a set back. Then, because we had a Keepers of the Faith meeting the night before, we didn't do today's Bible last night. So, we had to start with that. It was good, though, to read about the lives of many of the New Testament authors.

Then we did History. We read about the Conquest of Greece and the Fall of the Roman Republic. We also started Augustus Caesar's World. That should be an interesting book. I'm going to have to be careful, though, with Rabbit and the mention of other gods. She tends to take that to heart too much.

Next up was Science. We read the lesson, and then did the demonstration on how and why things can get through a cell membrane. I almost didn't do it, but it really made the concepts sink in for Rabbit.

I got Rabbit going on her seatwork, and did the boys reading time. This was the first day of reading words. Both of them did great. They each had one word they tripped over, but overall they did fine with it. Even reading the little sentences and cutting them out and pasting them under the correct picture went well. And, they were really excited to be able to use their special red pencils. The amazing thing was, each of them finished in less than 20 minutes!

By the time we finished with Reading time, it was 11:00. I finally remember that I wanted to do a fun sorting activity with the kids. On Monday I had bought their favorite candies. Today it was time to sort them. So, I printed out a blank chart for each of them. Then I gave each of them about 1/4 cup of their candy. Pooh said, "Mom, I think the only way to sort these is by color." So, that's what they did. Then I showed them how to fill in their chart. We used a crayon the color of each candy, and marked the graph with that. They loved this activity, especially since they got to eat the candies afterward. Even Rabbit did this.

After that, Rabbit went back to seatwork, and it was time for the Daily Math Activities. That was more of a challenge, because today's number of the day was 10 and we needed to glue the beans onto the craft stick. I said, "You know, there is a rule that we can't have more than 9 things in a cup. But, if we glue the 10 beans onto the stick, the stick will be one thing and then that can move into the tens cup." They really liked that little story. I didn't really want to wait forever for white glue to dry, so I got out my hot glue gun (my favorite crafting tool), and we used that to glue the beans to the stick.

It was 12:30 before we took our lunch break, and didn't get going again until 2:00. First we worked on the boys scrolls. Each day they've practiced writing their letters on a sheet. Today we glued them together side-by-side and then used masking tape to tape them to the wooden dowels. Here is Pooh with his scroll:

He thought it was cool that he was about as tall as his scroll. Here is Tigger with his:

One thing I did was to take a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper and cut it in half, and then add it to the left of the sheet that has Aa-Ff on it. That way there would be more room to see the letters and they wouldn't get covered up by the dowel. here is the final product:

So, the boys were done, and it was time to finish up with Rabbit. We did Math, Reading, Spelling, English, and Writing Strands to finish up her day. Then it was time to make the Wax Writing Tablets. For Rabbits, I followed the instructions in the book. Except, I used my hot glue gun and I think you need to put the little 1/2 inch side walls on the TOP of the edge of the bottom 5x7 piece, not the side like I did hers:

Then, of course, the boys each wanted one. I decided to do theirs a little smaller - about 4x6. For theirs, I made sure the side pieces sat on top of the base piece. I think theirs worked better. Here's Pooh's tablet:

And finally, Tiggers:

They loved these and played with them all evening. Rabbit practiced her Roman numerals. Pooh practiced writing addition problems. And Tigger drew pictures. So, in spite of it being 4:30 before we finally finished for the day, I'm glad we did this activity.

MFW 1st - Day 11

2010-08-23T21:49:00.001-06:00

Oohhh. Our last day of reviewing letter sounds. This was a really good review for Pooh. Tigger, too. They did well with it.

For Math, today, I had them play with the old Shape Sorter toy, and we did one workbook page together.

They've been sitting in on our Rome to the Reformation Bible, History and Science times, and I try to remember to add in a little Spanish.

RTR Week 1, Day 3

2010-08-23T21:36:00.001-06:00

We did the Bible the night before. It was about the writers of the Old Testament and the variety of writers, and yet we can still trust the Scripturess.

In History we read about The Punic Wars. Imagine taking elephants across the Alps!

In Science we learned more about cells and made a Jello model:

My only recommendation would be to not fill the bag ALL the way up to the top. It makes it easier to squeeze it and play with it later.

Not to bad of a day. I moved Writing Strands to Thursdays and Fridays to make it easier on us. So far, not to bad. I did have to tell Rabbit that Keepers was optional if she didn't get her work done quickly.

RTR Day 2, MFW 1st Day 10

2010-08-22T17:56:00.002-06:00

Okay, getting started earlier has got to be a priority. My husband let Rabbit sleep in because she had been sick, but we didn't get started until 9:00. Still, we didn't do too bad in getting everything done.

Again, we started with the 1st grade Bible lesson, which was just going over the verse, and then we added a Miller's story. I'm thinking about moving this to breakfast, but Rabbit has to be there for that to work.

Next, we read the History lesson. It was about how Rome became a Republic. That was interesting and didn't take too long. After that, we did the Science lesson, which was just reading about cells. The boys loved looking at the book because it had great pictures of different kinds of cells you can find in the human body.

Rabbit had some seatwork: sentences for her vocabulary word, handwriting, math drill, math (it was a "review" page), and a map. It was Exploration Day for 1st grade, so we read a couple of books for science, did some pattern block pages, did a page in the red Come Look with Me book, did a Spanish lesson, and of course, I read to them at bedtime.

Rabbit and I managed to get in an English lesson, and then I helped her with her math page before lunch.

After lunch we did Spelling and put up our timeline piece. We also went over her work and corrected any mistakes.

Overall, not too bad of a day.

I've printed out assignment sheets from Homeschool Tracker Plus for this next week, and marked the things she can do on her own. I put any papers she needs (map outlines, handwriting sheets, etc.) in manila folders for each day of the week, so she'll know where to find them and where to put them when she's done. I'm hoping this will give her a little more ownership of her work and help her get it done.

RTR Day 1, MFW 1st Day 9

2010-08-19T20:44:00.004-06:00

Our first day where we actually combined both curricula. Whew!

Rabbit said she was feeling up to school this morning, so I decided to go ahead and start. Of course, since Rabbit was back, the boys wanted a story from Prudence and the Millers, so we did that, and then went over the boys' verse from Proverbs. I emphasized that working hard was a wise choice.

After that, we did the Rome to the Reformation (RTR) history portion for the day. It was the discussion of the legend of the founding of Rome. It was interesting that each book we read had a slightly different version of the story. One just said there were twin infant boys who were left in the woods and a wolf raised them until a shepherd rescued them. Another said the twin boys were the sons of the god Mars. And the other said that an evil uncle threw them in the river, and a wolf rescued them. One of the sources didn't even mention how they fought and how Romulus killed Remus, but the other two did. But even between the remaining sources, only one of them mentioned they were fighting over what to name Rome.

Rabbit had to do a notebook page on the "Founding of Rome" so I put the picture of the statue of the boys nursing from the wolf in a document and put some lines underneath for her to write on. I got the picture from the internet links recommended in the Usborne book. Her summary was funny. It said, "The Romans think that this happened..." and she kept emphasizing the think part, because she was trying to point out that it was just a legend.

While Rabbit was off doing her notebook pages, I worked with the boys. It went pretty smoothly with each of them. Pooh is working so hard on his blending. He's really starting to get it, but every now and then it's like his brain says, "I'm going to say this backwards." I showed him that we are almost done with reviewing the letters and were going to start reading words soon. I printed out a dot-to-dot and a maze from abcteach.com for the boys to do during reading time. During math, I gave the one I wasn't working with some muffin tins and the Lauri Fit-a-Shape toy and told him to sort them in as many different ways as possible. The Daily Math Activities have started going a little smoother, so that's been good. I had one more math literature book called A Collection for Kate that I read to the boys after that.

After lunch Rabbit and I went back to work. She worked on her Latin root "unus." I am doing the same thing as last year. I'm writing the definition and words on the back of the 4x6 cards, and then using a sheet I made in Word she writes the definition, draws a picture, and writes at least one other derived word and it's definition. Tomorrow she'll use something I bought from currclick.com to write her sentences on.

Next we did the Roman Numerals for math. I still have my Math-U-See Delta stuff from last year, so we watched the DVD and did one of the workbook pages on Roman Numerals. I'm not sure that she really got it yet, so I'm going to make a small sheet that tells the values of the symbols and the 3 rules for using the symbols and put that up in the school room for her to refer to. Then, once a week for the next few weeks, have her do a page from the old Delta workbook. I just want to make sure she gets how they work, and I'm not sure if we'll cover them again in math.

When we were done with that, I remembered that the boys had a Drawing with Children lesson (which Rabbit joins in on). Tigger was kind of frustrated with just scribbling and experimenting with the markers. He wanted to draw something, so I said he could. Pooh thought learning the different elements of shape was cool, and he enjoyed trying to find them around the room.

This evening we did tomorrow's Bible lesson. My husband has offered to help by doing the Bible from RTR the evening before. However, tonight he was doing the dishes since he got home late, so I read the lesson during snack time so he was able to hear what we were studying. The boys joined in asking questions and making comments about what we learned. I'm sure they'll want to do the project tomorrow.

One other thing we didn't get to in 1st grade was Spanish. I'm not sure how I'm going to work that in yet. We'll have to see how long things take tomorrow with adding science in, too.

Best laid plans...

2010-08-18T14:42:00.003-06:00

Ahhh, well. Kiddos are all sick. Tigger and Rabbit the worst. Pooh's about a day behind on the sickness. When they feel better, we'll try starting up again. Does give me more time to get organized, except today I'm the one starting to feel sick... Sore throat, mostly. A little sneezy. Hot tea and Cold EeZe are my comforts today.

First day for Rabbit

2010-08-16T15:43:00.003-06:00

I'm trying to ease into school for Rabbit, so we didn't really do any "RTR" today. We had a bit of a crazy morning. Tigger didn't sleep well, and then his throat was still sore and still sniffing, so I knew the boys weren't going to do school today. Then, Tigger accidentally dropped his cereal bowl and it broke all over the tile floor. So, there was 20 minutes sweeping and vacuuming added to the morning. The boys watched PBS this morning while Rabbit and I started.

Rabbit and I went over the boys verse for the week. I thought it was a good verse and she will probably join in the boy's Bible time.

Then we did her math. It was really the second half of a lesson she started before she went to visit the grandparents. I basically had to remind her how to do all the problems. Once we got going, she finally started to click again.

After that we had a short snack, and then I helped her write a letter to her pen pal. She had received a letter while she was gone. That took Rabbit quite a while. She dictated to me, I wrote on the white board, and then she copied it.

By the time she was finished, it was time for me to make lunch. So, I did that. After lunch I had her spend some time on the iTouch doing math division drills. Then we listened to the Spanish lessons from The Easy Spanish that we never finished last year. I thought it would be good to at least finish those off. Finally, we started Book 5, Step 1 in All-About-Spelling. The first lesson is a lot of review, so I set the timer for 5 minutes for each section. We did 5 minutes of the yellow cards, then 5 minutes of the red cards, then 5 minutes of the blue cards, and finally 5 minutes of green cards. I figure we'll just do that every day until we've finished most of the review. The yellow cards are the hardest for her. The blue cards she did great - only missing 4 in the review.

One new thing I'm going to do this year is print out a list of assignments from Homeschool Tracker Plus for her. I've entered almost all the things from the RTR T.M. So, I'll print it out and highlight the ones she can do by herself while I work with the boys. This way she can see what is expected overall for each day, and by herself each day. I'm hoping it will start giving her some responsibility and independence.

MFW 1st - Days 6 - 8

2010-08-16T15:33:00.005-06:00

Let's get caught up on how first is going.

Day 6 had us making "Jewish Calendars." I went ahead and cut out the calendar and glued the arrows together the night before. Then, I let the boys color them and glue them on their background. (I highly recommend the tiny brads you can get for scrapbooking - much smaller, so your holes can be smaller.) Here's ours:

I read a book about patterns for math time. They liked that. Of course Pooh started recognizing a lot of those patterns when we were out and about after reading the book.

Day 7 finishes out week 2. We just did the things recommended in the teacher's manual, and I had the boys do one sheet out of the Complete Book of Math on patterns. Tigger followed the directions and glued the patterns on the page. Pooh decided he would cut out the shapes, but not glue them, so he could play with the page again.

Day 8 started with Proverbs 10:5. We followed the T.M. again for the Bible lesson. This is a good verse for Pooh to learn, and we will have ample opportunities to discuss this one. We also read The Ant and the Grasshopper after reading this verse, to discuss the consequences of "not gathering our crops in summer."

Poor Tigger either has a mild cold or allergies - sniffy nose and sore throat, so we didn't do 1st grade today, unless you count watching PBS.

MFW 1st - Day 5

2010-08-09T17:33:00.008-06:00

Our first Exploration Day! What fun we had.

We started with reviewing the science book pages from a couple of days ago. Then I had the boys search the book basket for books about moles and ants and other animals we might find close to the ground. We read one book about moles, one about ants and one about snails.

Then I said, "It's time to do our experiments." Pooh said, "Really?! We get to do experiments?!" (Can you tell that's his favorite part of school?) The first was to see if we could attract some ants to a piece of bread soaked in honey. It had rained last night, so there weren't many ants out at first. We found some place with signs of ant holes and left a piece of bread (about the size of a nickel or quarter). Later in the day, we found ants on the bread and could see many ants carrying away tiny pieces of bread in their mouths.

The next experiment was to make a worm habitat. First, we made are jar with the layers, and then went on a worm hunt. Well, that was a failure. We tried digging in 3 different places, no worms. But, in the process found a young grasshopper or cricket, so that was cool. I was hoping with the rain the worms could be found, but no such luck.

We came back in, and I had the boys do some pattern block pages. Pooh loved these. They were harder for Tigger, so I helped him out, but he was starting to get the hang of it pretty quickly. These are Pooh's first couple of attempts:

And here are Tigger's:

We looked at the first painting in the blue Come Look With Me book. That was a really interesting discussion. When I asked Tigger where he would want to be if he could be in the picture, he pointed at one of the houses. He said it would be warm in the house (the picture was a winter scene). Pooh said he would be one of the ice skaters.

Then I was hit with the inspiration to go over to Cherry Creek Reservoir for a nature walk. Turns out that a tree on the swim beach was struck with lightning in last night's storms, so that was cool to see the bark and part of the tree stripped off. It looked like the bark just exploded all over the place. And we saw real ant hills along the beach, too. We didn't stay long, but the boys had a good time running around and looking at stuff.

The boys really wanted worms for the worm habitat, so we went to Walmart and bought a tub of night crawlers from the sporting goods department. Pooh kept asking if they were "slimy" on the way home. When we got home we added about 4 worms to our jar and then ripped some leaves into tiny piece to top it off. Tigger didn't mind touching the worms, but Pooh refused to help with that part. (I didn't mind either.) Almost as soon as we added the worms, they started digging into the soil we put in the jar. I had some black cloth from some sewing experiment in the past, so I cut that up to put over the top and secured it with a rubber band. I suspect we'll be checking the condition of the worms daily. Here's a couple of views of our worms:

We're still working on A Bear Named Paddington at bedtime, and the boys are enjoying it.

MFW 1st - Day 4

2010-08-05T16:16:00.008-06:00

Well, skipping the bike ride lets us get started by 9:00a.m. I'd still like it to be earlier than that, but we'll take it.

We did read a Prudence and the Millers story and then went over their Bible verse. That didn't take too long.

Started with Tigger in Reading. Pooh worked on some mazes (okay, he finished those really quickly and decided to sharpen all the pencils in his new pencil box). It took us exactly 20 minutes, and that included doing the scroll page, but not coloring the pictures on the scroll page. So, I had Tigger finish coloring the scroll page and do mazes. It took Pooh 20 minutes to do just the Reading portion, without doing the scroll page. While I was making their morning snack, Pooh worked on his scroll page. It didn't take him that long, though.

After snack, we did Math. What I did to streamlline this was make pages for their Math notebook (a 1-inch 3 ring binder) that has everything I want to cover. So, the first page is just a list of the months of the year and the days of the week. We go through the lists, and ask the before and after questions. Then, the next page is a calendar of the month page. So, we count up to the day, cross out the day, read the date, and the day before and after. The page after that has their name, address, phone number and birthday. So, we just work top to bottom through those things. The next page is a weather dial I made in Photoshop Elements - it has arrows on a brad just like the big one on the wall that they can turn to match the day's weather. The page after that is the weather chart to mark off what the weather. The next page is the 100 Chart, and that's my cue to do the Daily Math Activities. So, we work through those, filling in the 100 Chart when we come to it. After the 100 Chart are the "Number of the Day" pages for them to fill in. So, basically, we can just sit at the little table and do the whole routine together. This takes us about 10-15 minutes right now, depending on which kid. I expect it to speed up a little bit once they can say things themselves instead of repeating after me. Then the next 5 or 10 minutes we spent doing our pattern activity. Today I would write a pattern of numbers on the paper, and then they would continue it. Then they wrote a pattern, and I would continue it. We did that a few times, and then time was up.

We had a little scroll activity today - to make scrolls that fit into our clay jars (or in our case, pots) that we made the other day. I had packing paper from a package that arrived recently that was all scrunched up, so I used some strips from that, cut the ends off of toothpicks and glued them to the ends.

Once they dried, the kids rolled them up like scrolls and put them in their pots.

You know, I had a bunch of Model Magic - that would have been easier to get more of a jar shape with than the homemade clay. Oh well. The kids had fun with it.

Next we did Spanish. We only went for about 10 minutes. The lesson was going to be longer, but I stopped it short as it was time to make lunch.

After lunch we did the first art lesson. The kids actually did pretty well with it. Pooh's left hand isn't very stable, but he was pretty much able to do most of the pictures. Even Rabbit joined us for the art lesson, and she was excited to do it.

MFW 1st - Day 3

2010-08-04T21:16:00.003-06:00

Well, I've got the routine down, it's still taking us quite a while...

We didn't get started until 10:00a.m. again due to the bike ride. Pooh suggested we do that in the afternoon. I just don't like to because of the heat. And, we've had a monsoonal air mass over the state, so that often means afternoon rain showers. We did a story from Prudence and the Millers and then the Bible time. That was fun, discussing what "the fear of the Lord" means and what "wisdom" means. Since I had them there, we did Science next. They listened, and talked about seeing slugs and ants in the yard. But, when we got to narration, they basically forgot everything. Sigh. They'll get it. I have had them narrate before, but it's been the Miller stories, not science facts.

Today, Pooh went first for reading. When we got to the phonics blending part, he got really distracted by the cut corner - you know, where you cut out the vowels for the blending. He kept staring at the corner looking at how the first page only had one square cut out, the second two squares, and the third three squares. He wouldn't stop looking at it for some reason. So, I got out the Lauri lowercase letters and we used those instead, and he did pretty well with it. I think I'm going to have to go cut all those corners the same so he'll stop looking at them and analyzing them! Then Tigger did his reading time (I had pre-writing papers for them to do from Donna Young's site while I was working individually with them). He wanted to move the vowels around himself for the blending practice. I let him do it a little, but then I did it some, too.

After lunch we did Math. Tigger went first for math, and he did okay with it. I got out the Math-U-See blocks for solving the "what number plus one equals three" equation because it's easier to see the answer with those. This week we are covering patterns, so I got out the Lauri Fit-a-Shape toy and we used those. We did things like: big circle, medium circle, small circle, repeat. I would start a pattern, then Tigger would repeat it; then Tigger would do a pattern and I would repeat it. We only did that a few times, but since we did patterns last year and the year before with the Lauri toys, they're pretty familiar with it. Then it was Pooh's turn for math. He went through it fine, and didn't need the Math-U-See blocks. He loved making the patterns. After we did a few shape patterns, I still used the Fit-a-Shape toys, but we based the pattern on color instead of shape. That was a little trickier, but he got it.

I read two books to them for read aloud time: Goggles and A Letter to Amy, both by Ezra Keats. They liked those. (Then tonight, I read the first chapter of A Bear Named Paddington to them.) I think I'm going to save the read aloud time for bedtime story, because it just seems to add too much to the middle of our day. Again, I barely remembered the next scroll page to start. But, they worked and finished those rather reasonably. I need to work on remembering to do those. I decided to skip Spanish today, but plan on doing it tomorrow.

I've done some streamlining this evening for doing school tomorrow. If it helps, I tell you about it tomorrow. I also really want to try to remember to use a timer for each session tomorrow. Looking ahead, Bible is only working on memorizing the first half of the verse, so that ought not to take more than 5 minutes. Reading time (which includes handwriting) will probably be 15 to 20 minutes each. Math (the subject I've tried to streamline) will probably be 15 to 20 minutes each. I need to have them do their scroll pages - which takes them about 10 to 15 minutes, when you count the coloring and everything. Then we have a (hopefully) short activity, art lesson, and Spanish. Not sure how long the art lesson will take. Spanish is usually about 10 minutes. And I still need to figure out what to occupy them with when I work with them individually.

MFW 1st - Day 2

2010-08-03T14:34:00.004-06:00

Well, since we had plans this afternoon and needed to be done early, we skipped our morning bike ride and got started by 9:00am.

We still began with Prudence and the Millers. The story was kind of sad, so that put a sadness over the kids. Then we talked about Proverbs and the purpose of it - Proverbs 1:2-4. Those were some big words for the boys. They really didn't get the idea very well, so I guided them through it. We looked up several of the words in that passage in the dictionary and I tried to explain to them that God wants us to learn these Proverbs so we can live the right way.

For reading, I started with Tigger again. He did the lesson quite easily, but he writes slower than Pooh, because he's trying to write so neatly. He did the blending exercise just fine and finally said, "Mom, can we just be done now." I had a dry-erase book that had mazes in it that Pooh did while I was working with Tigger, which Pooh really loved. Then we switched. I reviewed /a/, /b/, and /c/ from yesterday with Pooh before starting with /d/, /e/, and /f/. Everything went well. Pooh writes faster (not necessarily neater, just faster), so that part of the lesson didn't take as long as it did with Tigger. When we got to the blending, he mixed up /b/ and /d/ a few times, but then he started trying really hard not to mix them up. We practiced the blends a lot and he really tried hard for the lesson.

By the time we finished all that, it was about 10:15 and well past time for a snack. So, we stopped for about 15 minutes while they ate their snack. I got Rabbit going on her computer drills, and then I did math with the boys. Pooh decided to go first for Math, so Tigger played with the Pattern Blocks. I think it's a good thing to do it separately until I'm sure they understand the Calendar and number of the day stuff really well. When I asked Pooh what month was after December, he said, "Nothing." So, I had to explain how that worked. After Tigger finished Math, I had him finish the first scroll page. That went much better having him do it separately from Pooh. When he finished writing his letters, I sent him to his desk to color the pictures and had Pooh finish writing his letters and then color the pictures.

While they were coloring the pictures on their scroll papers, I made the clay from the recipe in the T.M. I doubled it, figuring Rabbit would want to do a jar, too. I added food coloring to the water, following the recipe on the box to make it brown, and then added a few more drops of red to try to get it to be more of a terracotta color. Here are our jars drying on wax paper:

They look more like pots than jars, and they're more pink than terracotta, but the kids loved doing this activity - even Rabbit. I even have some left over.

After lunch, I went over the idea of art class and needing quiet so we can focus and learn how to draw. Then I read Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. That was very much enjoyed. Finally, we did the next Spanish lesson.

So, I figure this all took 3.5 hours again today - but remember, I'm teaching 2 separately for Reading and Math. That's not going to work very well when we start Rome to the Reformation with Rabbit. For sure I'm going to have to drop Prudence and the Millers, even though it doesn't take that long. Spanish may have to be combined with Rabbit's Spanish, somehow. Mostly at this point I just want exposure to the language, so it may not be a big deal, anyway. When we have read alouds in Rome to the Reformation, the boys will listen in on those, and that will count towards reading aloud.

Go!

2010-08-02T16:39:00.004-06:00

We did it! We completed our first day of first grade. Whew!

We didn't really get started until 10:00 this morning. The kids got up at 7:30, and then breakfast, brushing teeth, morning chore, bike ride and snack took until 10. I'm probably going to have to figure out a way to speed that up. I hate to drop the bike ride, because the exercise is good for the kids. Getting the kids up earlier isn't an option because they often need a little supervision while getting dressed, and I'm usually not ready until 7:30 myself. But, we'll figure that out eventually.

Now, over the summer we've been reading some of the "Millers" books. Right now we're on Prudence and the Millers. The kids are loving these, and always asking for more. So, we started our school time with reading the next chapter out of that. Then we started the Bible time from My Father's World 1st Grade. Today was a discussion on the importance of the Bible, and how in the olden days they wrote on scrolls. My husband had got dowels this weekend and cut and sanded them down. I took a long sheet of paper (made by cutting packing paper in half) and made a sample for them to see what one would look like. We had a fun little discussion about that.

Next was reading time. I worked with Tigger first, while Pooh did some dot-to-dot pages and colored them. Everything went fine with Tigger, and the blend practice was a good review. I decided to save the Student Page for later since he just did so much writing. Pooh and Tigger switched (and Tigger was very excited to use his new markers and crayons on the dot-to-dot pages). Pooh did fine with everything up to the blending. But, we just kept going at it until it became easier for him. He kept saying /d/ for the "b", even though we didn't do "d" today.

After that, I decided to do Calendar time and the Weather Chart all together. I had found an old job chart from the Dollar Store that I never used, turned it sideways and now I have a chart to go with our weather dial. We reviewed the months of the year and days of the week. Then, one at a time I asked for a month before and a month after, chosing a different month for each one. Did the same for the days of the week. Then we went over how to read a calendar, and what the day before and after today is. Finally we practiced saying our phone number and address, and it was 11:30 - time for me to go make lunch and the kids to go out into the backyard to play.

Thinking about how doing Calendar time and the Weather Chart together went, I decided to do the rest of the Daily Math Activities separately. This was good, because it took a while for Tigger to understand filling in the number of the day page. We never covered subtraction in K (never got to that lesson in the Math-U-See Primer book), so I had to cover that. And, he had trouble with the "what number plus 1 equals 1" equation. But, I kept showing him with beans until he finally got it. While Tigger and I had been doing this, Pooh was playing with the Pattern Blocks. So, then we switched. Pooh breezed through the rest of the Daily Math Activities, but I can see he's going to have trouble with the Calendar stuff. So, I think I'm going to have to keep working with them separately on this until I'm sure they both have it without relying on the other one. After I finished the math activities with Pooh, I got the Student Workbook out and worked on the blending again. He still had trouble with saying "ab" as /ad/, but as we persisted he got better at saying the right one.

Next I read Little Toot to them for the read aloud time. They enjoyed the book, and it was a good story about changing your character, working hard and not giving up.

Then I remembered I was going to do Spanish with them, so we listened to the first lesson together. I'm going to have to move our boom box out of the kitchen and into the living room so we can sit on the couch together and have them look over my shoulder at the book.

Finally, we did the first half of the scroll page - I had forgotten about it until this point. This is when the protests started. Pooh fussed because he was having trouble doing it super neat. Tigger complained because there was "one more thing to do." I did manage to keep my cool and walk them through it. We did it together, but I'm thinking that's not a good idea. They keep looking at each other's papers and comparing.

Overall, not a bad day. It took longer than I had hoped (we didn't finish until about 2:30). But, I had worked Rabbit in there too, getting her going on her Math and writing a letter to her pen pal and getting her going on her computer time. I've got 2 weeks to sort it out before we throw Rome to the Reformation into the mix.

Get set...

2010-07-31T14:45:00.006-06:00

Okay, since last time, I've been doing some more work. The Dollar Store had those tri-fold project boards, so I bought 2 for the boys to put their timelines on, and then 3 more for our annual geography fair. A dollar each is cheap for those. I went to a local teacher supply store and found one of those weather dials so we can track the weather each day and 2 math game books that were half price. I used Excel to make a weather chart that the boys can fill in each day, with the columns matching the dial. I already had charts up for Days of the Week and Months of the year from last year. I also have a wipe-off calendar that I bought last year for K. So, we have this closet door in our entry way and the wall next to it that now have all our 1st grade stuff. The blank white page at the top is for me to write the number of the day on. The three white papers in the middle have the boys names and our phone number.

Today I cleaned the house, printed out a paper calendar for each (from Donna Young), and printed out a few mazes and dot-to-dot things.

The toughest thing that I've noticed this summer is that Pooh is not at the same place in his reading as Tigger. After posting on the MFW message board and talking to some MFW employees, I'm going to teach them reading and math separately. I'm okay with that, except what do I have the other one do while I'm working with the other one?! Some ideas I've come up with (and I'd gladly take more):

starfall.com (anyone know of an equivalent math site?)
mazes
dot-to-dot puzzles
the MFW Lauri Pre-K toys
math games
looking at picture books
working on their AWANA books
have Rabbit read them

The other thing I'm not sure about is the MFW 1st grade manual doesn't really talk about how much time to spend on each subject, or how long each subject should generally take. I've got to remember to set a timer for 15 minutes so I don't wear them out. I may have Rabbit time us on how long each subject is taking.

We will start MFW 1st grade on Monday. Rabbit will only do math, math drill, typing and spelling this next week. Then, the next week she is going to spend a week with the grandparents. So, she'll be back August 16th, and hopefully by then I'll have figured out a real schedule for teaching everyone. I need her light days to fall on Wednesday too, so she might not start full school until Wednesday of that week.

One subject I want to add for the boys is Spanish. I haven't decided if I should do them separately with my old copy of Power Glide that I have, or just have them listen in on Rabbit's The Easy Spanish! I really think Power Glide is geared toward the younger set. And having Rabbit join in on Power Glide, well, I don't think that's a good idea, either. Like I said, I'll just have to see how these first 2 weeks go.

On your mark...

2010-07-21T13:25:00.005-06:00

I've been spending much of the last weeks getting ready. I have got my Rome to the Reformation (RTR) and 1st grade plans into Homeschool Tracker Plus. It was a lot of work, but worth it to be able to add math drill and AWANA verses to RTR and Spanish and AWANA verses to 1st grade. Also, with the first grade manual, it didn't remind you do do Art Appreciation or Music, so I was able to schedule those every week, and pick what pages to do and all that.

The prep work for 1st grade is quite a bit. I'm using my boys MegaBlocks for the colored blocks to use for exploring math facts. I made one egg-tray holder as described in the manual, and I'm waiting for another dozen eggs to be used up to make another. I'm using some pretty polished stones for "buttons" (I got them from Michael's for some project when we did ECC). I cut out the circles and glued them together and found some spare cloth to cut up for that.

My latest creation is a cup set for the daily counting and money activities. Knowing that each boy would want their own set, I needed to come up with a way to keep them together and keep the right set belonging to each boy. First I cut off the end flaps on a narrow box. Then I used a hot glue gun to glue 3 plastic cups onto the cardboard. I used a personal labeler to put a label in front of each cup. The cup on the left is for the money, and the middle cup is for tens sticks, and the right cup is for ones. Here's a picture of one:

Right now, with nothing in them, I can stack both up (though I doubt I'll be able to stack them once we start making tens sticks):

Another thing I've done is I made a script for doing Calendar Time. There is a short paragraph in the teacher's manual about what to do, but if I don't have it in front of me, I'm likely to forget. So, I typed up Calendar Activities:

Review the months of the year. Ask what month comes before [some month] and after [some month].
Review the days of the week. Ask what day comes before [some day] and after [some day].
Look at the calendar, and mark off the day. Teach how to read and write the date.
Ask, "What is tomorrow's date?" and "What was yesterday's date?"
Review address and phone number.
Review their birthday date.

Then I took the "Number of the Day and 100 Chart" page that came in the student materials and printed it up on the back side of that and laminated it. Now I have everything on one sheet that should last the whole year.

I've colored their timeline pieces and laminated those. I'm thinking of getting 2 of the tri-fold science boards for them to put their timeline pieces on. I also colored the reading chart (the little pictures) and laminated those.

I took the number of the day pages, and copied it onto the back of itself (easy when you have 2 copies), and then made 50 copies (25 for each boy, 4 number of the day's per page). I've hole punched those and filled in the numbers already and put them in a notebook. I think having them in one place will make it easier to do.

Now, doing all this has made the boys want to "start the new school" everyday. Which, I'm glad. I've already let them play with the Pattern Blocks. They know some of the fun Rabbit has with school, so they're really looking forward to it. Right now, however, we're just continuing through Abeka's 1st grade reading program (we're at about day 23), since I haven't been able to sell it yet. And we're also continuing through the Math-U-See Primer.

I found a 1st grade supply list over at the MFW message boards. However, it doesn't have the craft sticks (that you need for the number of the day activities), beans or cups listed. The only thing I haven't found yet is 3/4" dowels for the scroll project. I think I'll have to hit Lowe's or Home Depot for those.

For RTR, I let Rabbit color the timeline pieces, and I've laminated them. I've pre-read most of the lessons for the first two weeks. We still have our timeline up from last year, so we'll just keep adding to that. I've printed all the Latin roots onto the front of the 4x6 cards, and made a page for her to write the definition on, draw a picture and write extra words. I'm using the Latin and Greek Roots notebook pages thing I bought online from currclick (I think, or The Old Schoolhouse) for the pages to use to write sentences. She likes "fancy" things to do. I've also typed up all the verses into Photoshop Elements to hang on the wall. I still have a few copies from Augustus Ceasar's World to make.

One thing I'm still trying to decide is whether to copy the images from The Body Book onto cardstock or not. I've already copied some of the pages onto regular paper, but I'm thinking it will be sturdier to do it on cardstock. I don't know if the boys are going to want to join in on that activity or not. I really don't want to have to cut out all those body parts. Plus, I'll probably have to go buy another pack of cardstock if I use it.

I'm planning on starting the first week of August. So, I've got plenty of time to finish up and get everything together. The hard part is figuring out what day to start so our light days land on Wednesday for when P.E. class and dance classes start. We've got a camping weekend coming up and Labor Day, that will mess with my schedule.

I'm looking forward to a new school year.

Standardized Testing

2010-07-15T12:24:00.003-06:00

Well, we spent the last 3 days doing IBTS testing with Rabbit. Not required to do it this year, but I wanted to see how she would do with it versus doing the CAT the year before. It pretty much wiped her out. I'm debating on whether or not to do the IBTS again, or stick with the CAT. The IBTS took quite a bit of time as compared to the CAT. I know where my kids are with regards to their skills - do I really need that detailed a test? I was thinking, actually, maybe just doing the IBTS in 7th, and then maybe again in 11th as it gives the more detailed pictures. Then just use the CAT for other years.

I will say I will never do the tests in the middle of summer after a 2.5 week break from school. I had been having Rabbit doing math fact drills on Quarter Mile Math until we started all our vacations. We finally wrapped all that up, and did her testing. I think that break may have hampered her a little. Consistent learning of those math facts will pay off in the long run. (We also hadn't done any math or me reading aloud to the kids.)

Oh well. We'll see what her scores are when they come in.

The Summer Time Craziness

2010-06-07T15:18:00.002-06:00

When to get it all done...

We've been doing "school lite" in the morning. First, we read from the Bible or some other spiritual stories for the day. Then Rabbit goes off to do typing drill and Quarter Mile Math drill. The Quarter Mile Math drill is starting to pay off. Oh sure, she's been doing it a long time. But, she can now remember her nemesis 3 x 6 = 18. Her math facts are coming a lot faster. She also found a "letter practice" option somewhere in Quarter Mile Math, and has been alternating between that and Dance Mat Typing for her typing practice.

So, while Rabbit is off on the computer, I'm working with the boys. We're finishing up Math-U-See's Primer. This week we've started learning about telling time. The boys are very excited about that, as we do have a couple of analog clocks in the house. And then were going through Abeka's 1st grade reading schedule. So far, it is just review, so they're kind of bored with it. But Pooh definitely needs it. I'd say after about 10 minutes or so of reading, his brain kind of just shuts down. He can hardly remember how to put the sounds together. Tigger is doing good with it, though.

I hope to add in Handwriting Without Tears workbooks for the boys soon (they shipped last Thursday or Friday). Pooh is definitely left-handed, so I'm hoping that will help him improve his fine motor control.

Then I have Rabbit do math with me. She is doing well with Singapore now. She gets the ideas, and sometimes can even do a problem or two in her head. I do see her starting to think more about how to do a problem, and look at the whole problem more. We're enjoying 3B because it is more practical - weights and measures, time, and such. After that, we finish off with spelling and reading. Poor Rabbit... I've been going through our "mastered" words again for the summer, just to make sure they're really mastered and "cleaned" got her again. But, she did finally spell "direction" right after about 7 days of trying. We're pronouncing it "digh-rec-tion" for spelling instead of "der-ec-tion" and that seems to be helping her. Otherwise, she was missing that first "i" in the word.

I really need to get the kids doing some chores everyday. Just not sure how to work it in to the overall scheme of the day. I also want them to be able to play outside when it is cooler. I'll get it worked out soon. Probably just in time to start school in the fall. Ha!

Weeks 33 - 34 in CTG

2010-06-03T16:37:00.002-06:00

Well, we finished up a couple of weeks ago, so I suppose I should update.

For Bible History, we went through Nehemiah. It was interesting to see his faith, and fun to tie some of it into Babylonian history. Rabbit did awesome memorizing the Isaiah 40 passage. I am so proud of her.

These two weeks focused mainly on Greece. We learned about drama and the Olympics. It was also interesting to find out about the start of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. We finished up learning about Alexander the Great. It was too bad he died so young. But, I also felt like it was God's timing again.

In Science, we finished up Archimedes and the Door of Science. Rabbit got the concepts pretty well. I love the idea of just analyzing things and studying the universe and asking questions. It was neat to see how science got started.

There were two things recommended in the manual we didn't do. The first was to hold a mini-Olympics. I didn't tell the kids to do it, but I think Rabbit was reading about it in one of the book basket books, and after lunch one day I could hear them out in the yard having contests that were like Olympics. We didn't do the end of year Greek feast, but that was fine.

Rabbit did okay with the Vocabulary words. She missed 2 on her "final" test for vocabulary.

We didn't do all of the God and the History of Art the last two weeks. The Old Schoolhouse was having a sale, and I bought the Draw and Write Through History books and Rabbit did a couple of drawings from there, instead.

We enjoyed reading Aesop for Children. Some of the tales we've heard, but many were new. It was fun to discuss the truth of some of them, and amazing how many applied to current life.

Overall, Creation to the Greeks was a great year. Nothing took overly long (except maybe some of the art work and acting out the 10 Plagues). It is a different flavor than Exploring Countries and Cultures. Some weeks there wasn't much for the book basket. But toward the end there were some great books. The boys joined in for some of the Science. Science was, well, hit or miss. Sometimes the experiments wouldn't work, even after posting over on the message board. Sometimes we didn't do them. We don't have any South-facing windows, and window ledges or place to put things in front of a window are few and far between, so things requiring growing plants during the window months weren't done. But, I think it was good.

Rabbit's Worship Dance Recital

2010-05-12T21:20:00.004-06:00

Okay, so Rabbit had her Worship Dance recital Monday night. Her class was the last to dance before the big "recessional." I missed the very beginning of the dance (hit the wrong button), but the rest of this should be lots of fun and put a smile on your face.

Weeks 30 - 32 in CTG

2010-05-09T20:46:00.005-06:00

Okay, I'm behind... let's see if I can get us caught up.

History has been interesting. Bible history has covered from the fall of Judah, through Daniel, and the Esther. The stories of faith in Daniel are inspiring. And Esther's obedience to her cousin and her strength are encouraging. Other History has covered Athens and Sparta, and the cycle of Babylon being defeated yet again.

We've been enjoying Aesop's Fables. It is especially fun when they apply to some situation we are reading about in Bible or History, or some real life situation we are facing or have currently faced.

In science we started Archimedes and the Door of Science. We haven't been doing any of the experiments in the book (and some of them were done in Genesis for Kids), but Rabbit is picking up on the ideas and concepts pretty well. Chapters 4 and 5 we spread over two days, since they seemed rather long.

We finished off Writing Strands Level 3. For now, I'm just having Rabbit write letters. She just had her 10th birthday, so she'll be writing thank you notes. I think that is just as important as other forms of writing.

In Art, we've read the lessons, but not done many of them. Right now we've been pretty busy on the days they have fallen on, and we just didn't have the time to commit to them. The Old Schoolhouse was (or is) having a sale, so I bought the Draw and Write Through History series. I would highly recommend these as a way to help children have nice notebooking pages.

We finished up Singapore 3A last week and have started on 3B (which we'll continue through the summer). I'm pleased with how she is doing. She doesn't always do the math the way the book presents (she'd rather write the problems down and do the carrying or borrowing that way), but she is beginning to understand word problems better.

We also finished book 4 in All About Spelling. So, for the rest of the school year and the summer, we're basically just going to review the cards. I really want to get the phonographs, sounds and rules into her mind. She does really well with the rule cards, but not the sound cards.

Rabbit's birthday was last week - she turned 10! She and 4 friends went horseback riding for her birthday party. It was fun, though we probably wouldn't use this particular place again. I rode with the girls.

For the boys, I still have about 11 days worth of curriculum to work through. They're doing well. They really like learning new "special sounds," but we've learned all that's scheduled for the year. I'm trying to think about what to do with them for the summer. I think Pooh definitely needs handwriting work, Tigger too. And I'll do math with them. I'm just not sure what to do for reading. Finding "easy readers" at the library has been difficult.

Well, that's it. We have 5 more days of "official" school, and 9 days of curriculum. After we finish our "official" school, we'll do one week of just Bible, History, Vocabulary, Science, Art, Music and Spanish (taking a break from Math, Spelling, English, Writing and Reading). Then Rabbit will have Math, Spelling and Reading every day.

Week 29 in CTG

2010-04-18T20:50:00.004-06:00

I feel like we've been at cruising altitude for a long time. Seems like we've figured out how to do things.

In Bible this week we studied from Sennacherib & Hezekiah to Jeremiah's time. This ties into what is going on in History during this time. Assyria declines (they got too big for their britches), and Babylon becomes the dominant power of the time. We see God's graciousness to Judah, as they survive as a nation longer than Israel does, due to good kings enforcing God's commandments.

We finished up Genesis for Kids this week. We didn't do any of the experiments. But, it was a good ending, and neat to be reminded how God created us and this earth.

On Monday we went ahead and finished The Children's Homer. The story got too exciting and we wanted to find out what happened next. We stopped after each chapter and summarized and read the questions/suggestions in the teacher's manual, but it was fun to finish it ahead of time.

Rabbit decided to do her own story this time for Writing Strands. The text implied to write a story to go along with the author's ideas. Rabbit was not into it and wanted to come up with her own outline. So I agreed. She likes it better when it is her idea, I think, so we get less fighting over it. She has diligently worked on her story.

We should be able to drag out the last few steps in All About Spelling book 4 to finish out our year. Will probably order book 5 and continue through the summer.

We are also about to finish Singapore 3A. Only 6 more lessons to go. We'll be doing 3B through the summer. I'm trying to decide if I should double up on "easy" lessons so we can get through it a little faster. Hopefully we'll get through 4A and 4B next year.

Every thing else seems to be fine. I see a little attitude cropping up every now and then from Rabbit, but if I don't overreact we can usually get through it.

Reward for Your Work

2010-04-17T21:13:00.005-06:00

But you, be strong and do not lose courage, for there is a reward for your work. - 2 Chronicles 15:7

This morning I filled up the last page in my journal, so I was flipping through it before going to file it away and found a few 3x5 cards on which I had written verses. I love reading the Old Testament and finding great promises like this.

The above is from when Asa was king over Judah. Asa had removed the foreign alters and high places, tore down the sacred pillars, and all kinds of detestable things. Azariah the prophet came to Asa and was encouraging him. Asa hadn't removed all the abominable idols yet, but after hearing these words, he was encouraged and finished the job.

This is a great promise for us home school moms. It is so easy to lose courage. Our kids have bad attitudes. We don't feel motivated. The house isn't cleaned. The kids won't listen to us. We have so many activities. It goes on and on. And it is easy to just give up and think home schooling isn't God's plan for our family. It is hard work. Then I see this verse and think, "I may not see the fruit now, the days may drag on and on, but there is a reward for this work."

Now, the problem is I too often try to do my work in my own strength. That never works long term. Then I have to remember Philippians 4:13,

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

This constant turning to God and looking to Him for our victories is what carries us through the long haul.

Later on in 2 Chronicles, King Jehoshaphat is having trouble. The Moabites and Ammonites are about to make war on Judah. He is at a loss, and says,

...nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on Thee. - 2 Chronicles 20:12b

We have to keep our eyes on Him. He will show us. We just have to keep ourselves open to Him. It's so easy to tell Him what we want and how we want it given to us. But, maybe He has a slightly different idea of how things should go.

Sure enough, a couple of verses later, God answers and says,

Do not fear or be dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God's. (2 Chronicles 20:15b)

So often we think the battle is ours. It is my fight. But, when we make it our battle, then we lose the unlimited power and resources that God has for us if we just ask Him.

...put your trust in the Lord your God, and you will be established. - 2 Chronicles 20:20b

That promise wasn't just for Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah. That promise is also for us this day. We need to trust that He will give us the answers to our problems and our battles.

When we think of our daily struggles with home schooling, we would do well to remember this is only temporary. This isn't our final home. We are really citizens of heaven.

For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. - 2 Corinthians 4:17-18

God's plan is to shape us more into being like Him (see Romans 8:29). How often is parenting and home schooling more about shaping our character than our kid's? Sometimes we think the problems we're having with our kids is about our kids. And sometimes they need to change, probably most of the time. But, I bet almost all the time God is working on some character issue in us and we're the ones that need to change.

Remember, be strong and don't lose courage, there is a reward for your work. Turn your eyes to God for your help. He will fight your battles. This is only temporary.

Abeka Kindergarten Progress

2010-04-11T17:52:00.004-06:00

Tigger and Pooh are doing pretty well. I really like that Abeka as consonant blend practice. And you do it a lot. But, now that we're hitting a few vowel teams, they're struggling a little. The vowel teams covered so far: /ay/, /ar/, /or/, and /ou/. They've got /ay/ down pretty well. But the last three are new. So, tomorrow, we're going to play a little phonics bingo.

I made blank Bingo cards in Photoshop Elements. Then I printed them on card stock and laminated them. Now, I can write different consonant blends and vowel teams in the blanks, and play bingo with the boys. I made little tiles earlier this year for the different consonant blends that Abeka teaches, and I grabbed the vowel teams from our All-About-Spelling board, and put those in a cup. I'll have to see if that helps the boys any.

The nice thing about the blank bingo cards is I can use them again. Just wipe off the dry erase marker and put different things (maybe math drill answers or something) on the blanks. Just use low-odor dry erase markers.

Week 28 in CTG

2010-04-11T17:43:00.005-06:00

Okay, this will get us caught up...

This week we read Jonah and a little of Isaiah to tie in with our 2 Kings readings. In History, we read about the Assyrians. It's funny, because many of the history readings say "Advanced" but Rabbit enjoys them, so we read them anyway. It is fascinating to learn about these things. There were several notebook pages this week to work on, so that was good.

We didn't do any of the science. We read the book, discussed them. But, I'm just not letting my child stay up all night. She feels the effects of lack of sleep, so she gets it. In fact, since reading that page, she's been trying to get to bed earlier.

It's been fun continuing on in The Children's Homer. It's been tempting to just go ahead and finish it, but each day we've had other things that have needed to get done, so we haven't.

I don't know if this is a bad idea or not... But, since we've been doing mostly review in Singapore (times and divide by 6, 7, 8 and 9 - all things we covered in Math-U-See Delta) I've only had Rabbit do the Review pages in the Textbook (unless it is just a totally new concept). She gets a lot of practice with the single digit into multiple digit number division. We're getting toward the end of 3A, and I suspect we'll do 3B over the summer.

The rest of it has been going fine. In writing, we're working on writing a story. She didn't want to do the idea in the book, so she made up her own list and is writing her own story. We went a couple of rounds of discussion about the story, but she got frustrated with me, so I told her she could write whatever she wanted. I'm sure it will be fine, but she gets so complicated in her stories. She wants to add so much detail rather than just scratch the surface.

Week 27 in CTG

2010-04-11T17:29:00.005-06:00

Sorry, I'm a bit behind... We'll get all caught up real quick here...

This week covers Elisha for Bible. Bible is also essentially History for this week. I already wrote my entry about Elisha's servant seeing the town surrounded by the Syrians and how Elisha prayed for God to show his servant the heavenly host surrounding the Syrians. I love how that all tied together with what I was reading in my quiet time.

We stared memorizing a passage from Isaiah 40 this week. I love this passage. I love the assumption in this passage - it assumes a Creator. And it talks about His sovereignty.

We didn't do the Barley Cake activity.

In Science, we didn't do the support project with the fettuccine noodles nor the hyacinth project. But, we did measure how many pennies spaghetti noodles could hold. First, we counted out how many the paper cup would hold. Then we just tried one spaghetti noodle and saw how many pennies before it would break. Then we did two spaghetti noodles, and I guessed it would hold twice as many pennies. It did plus one. So then, using that, we figured how many noodles it would take to hold the hold cup (in our case, 8). Sure enough, eight was enough. We tried 7 noodles. and the broke instantly. We had to use stacks of nickles on each side of the spaghetti noodles to keep them from rolling around on the chair until we got a few more pennies in the cup. Here's a picture - you can see how much the spaghetti noodles bent:

We're continuing on in The Children's Homer. It is kind of nice to find out what has been happening to Odysseus.

Otherwise, school has been going well. Although, keeping motivated through the end of the year is a challenge.

Crying out for Help

2010-03-30T21:01:00.002-06:00

"They were helped in fighting them, and God handed the Hagrites and all their allies over to them, because they cried out to Him during the battle. He answered their prayers, because they trusted in Him." - 1 Chronicles 5:20

I was reading about King Saul this morning, and came across this verse. It reminded me that I need to cry out to God in my battles, and He will answer my prayers because I trust in Him. I so often try to do things in my own strength and my own way. I can do it for a while, but then I wear down and really struggle. And then He sends a great verse like this.

A neat thing, doing our school Bible lesson this morning, was the story of Elisha in Dothan, and the Aramean army had surrounded the town (in 2 Kings 6). Elisha's servant got up early, looked outside and got a little worried, to say the least. Elisha prayed that his servant's eyes would be opened. What did he see? Chariots of fire surrounding the Aramean army.

And I think of my battles. Battles with patience. Battles with doing the right thing. Battles with my flesh. And I wonder, what chariots does God have around me to help me fight my battles?

Seder Supper

2010-03-29T21:34:00.004-06:00

Tonight is the start of Passover, so we did the Seder Supper. (We're not having a Spring Break, so we didn't do a full blown supper.)

We had gone to a Seder Supper a couple weeks ago (Rabbit and I, that is) with our Keeper's of the Home group, so I kind of knew what I was going to do. A Messianic Jewish family hosted it. They did an abbreviated version. It was neat, because they would say the words in Hebrew and then in English. The Hebrew sounded like singing. It was also neat to get a Jewish person's perspective on the traditions and meanings in the Seder Supper.

Tonight, we had a regular dinner first. The Seder isn't suppose to start until sundown, but that would have been pushing it for my kids. Plus, there is a bunch of ceremony to get through before you get to the meal. So, we read through the ceremony. The kids tried some of the things - like the parsley in salt water, but were afraid to try the horseradish. They loved the Matzo bread. I bought a Matzo Ball & Soup mix from the grocery store, and made that to eat during the "meal" part. Rabbit and I and Dad ate the soup, the boys just munched on Matzo bread.

I did hard boil an egg for the plate, and then the kids made a "lamb bone" from a paper towel tube wrapped in masking tape. So, we tried to have all the symbols, even if they weren't exact. (I find it interesting that the egg was the "peace" offering, and then Easter coming up with candy-filled eggs...)

We skipped a lot of the alternating leader/family parts of the ceremony, and it still took us over an hour to do. So, if you do all of it, be prepared for it to take a while

I made the Charoseth by the book. Then for horseradish I just bought some horseradish root and peeled it and cubed it and ran it through the food processor. The interesting thing about horseradish is it has some bite, but it doesn't linger like chili or other spicy foods do. Making the Matzo sandwich with the charoseth and horseradish together also helped keep the bite down.

The symbolism of the broken bread and Christ's body broken for us, the symbolism of the lamb for the Israelites and Jesus as our sacrificial lamb, the message of God's love and grace to us through-out history is just precious. This is a festival worth doing, at least part of it.

Week 26 in CTG

2010-03-28T20:52:00.002-06:00

I had to do some adjusting to get our lighter days to line up with Wednesday again. With P.E. class for the boys and dance class for Rabbit, it is just too much to have a "regular" day on Wednesday. So, we ended up doing 3 days of mostly just the 3 "R's" and then catching up on some art project we hadn't done yet. So, it work out great getting caught up.

This week we covered Elijah's life in Bible history, and then learned about India in World History. we covered Hinduism and Buddhism. It is great to know that Rabbit has such a firm foundation in God's word and can see the holes in these religions.

For science, we didn't do the smell and taste activities. They seemed too complicated. We read the book and discussed. However, we did do "Seeing through Things" and "Where Was That Again?" They were both easy to do. The "Where Was That Again?" experiment was interesting. Rabbit could see from one eye better when the cup was closer and when the cup was farther away, but when it was in the middle (about 2 feet away) she had a hard time judging distance.

We started on Part II of The Children's Homer this week. It has been interesting to get to hear Odysseus' adventures.

Otherwise, we've been cruising along pretty well in the rest of school. In writing, I counted a letter she wrote to her pen pal as writing one day. Then we started on the next Writing Strands lesson. And we love listening to Handel. A lot of his music seems real light and airy.

Field trip to NCAR

2010-03-14T21:04:00.003-06:00

On Tuesday of last week we took a field trip with our home school support group to Boulder to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. This was a great trip. We had a huge group, so they split us up into two. Our group got to go to a classroom first for hands-on experiments. The first experiment was to show that there is air pressure. They did this by pushing two plungers together (squeezing all the air out) and then having the kids try to pull them apart without twisting or pulling at the edges. It couldn't be done.

Next they learned about high pressure and low pressure. They took a small piece of wadded up paper and put it in the edge of a water bottle held horizontally. Then they tried to blow the paper into the water bottle. The paper jumped out every time! This showed that when they blew air into the bottle, they were creating high pressure in the bottle.

Finally, they did this experiment to show how hot air rises and cool air sinks. They had long, skinny tank with a divider in the middle. They put hot water (colored red) in one end, and cold water (colored blue) at the other. When the colored water reached the divider, the instructor pulled out the divider. It was neat to watch the cold water push it's way across the tank. The red water stayed up high, and the blue water stayed low.

After that, we went to a small theater to watch a short video about NCAR. Then, we got to play with the hands-on activities in the Exploration Hall. The favorite was the mini-tornado generator.
When we had spent about 20 minutes in the Exploration Hall, we got to go on a tour of the rest of the building. The best thing was seeing the computer they use to generate all their atmospheric models.

I think if you sign up in advance as a group (you have to), you can pick which topic to have them teach for the classroom time. We had such a broad range (from K all the way up to junior high at least, if not high school) that we picked Weather Forecasting. But, if you had a narrow age range, or could split your kids into narrower age ranges, you could pick even more interesting topics. Well worth the trip to Boulder.

Week 25 in CTG

2010-03-14T20:50:00.004-06:00

It actually took us a week and a half to do this week. Rabbit got sick, and we had a field trip thrown in there too. Unfortunately, now our light and independent Fridays fall on Friday. I need them to be on Wednesday. But, I don't want to skip any days. Maybe I'll have to do some art catch-up days or something.

Bible covered from Solomon turning from God to Elijah and the Prophets of Baal. We learn how God keeps His promises - both blessings and curses. We see God faithfully providing. We also find that even in the midst of evil (Ahab and Jezebel), there are believers (Obadiah).

We did do some of the science experiments. We didn't build a stethoscope. But, we did use the ball of clay and toothpick to "see" our pulse. We didn't build the model of the brain, either. Instead, I went online and found a cut-away drawing of the brain that was labels and we compared it to what it said in the book. We did try the "Match the Mark" and "One or Two" experiments - those were easy and worth doing. I think the favorite experiment of this week was the "Drum Solo" experiment. We used Italian Seasoning. I think you can use even less of the recommended amount of herbs. I have a small boom box, and we used that. We had to plug our ears, though, to turn it up loud enough to get the spices to jump around on the plastic wrap. But, a cool experiment to try for sure.

We finished the first half of The Children's Homer this week. It was an interesting way to learn about the Trojans and Greeks.

For art, we were suppose to start learning how to paint, but Rabbit's sickness and other scheduled things cut that to a halt. I was planning on trying to do them this weekend, but alas, that didn't work either. I think we'll do last Monday's painting lesson tomorrow, so we at least get started on it, thought tomorrow will be busy too.

Everything else is going well. For the writing assignment, it has been a lot of me writing and just discussing with Rabbit. We done a little double dictation. I think part of the reason this particular assignment is hard for her is because she is not an organized person herself.

Now, how is this for a great "God" thing... Tomorrow night at our Keeper's of the Home meeting, a couple of families in our group that are Messianic Jews are going to do a pared down version of a Seder dinner. We're suppose to celebrate Passover as part of our curriculum. I'm not sure that we'll be able to do a full Passover week. But, I think it will be neat just to learn the symbolism. Rabbit hasn't always got the symbolism of the other feasts. So, this meeting tomorrow will give me a feel for how much of Passover we want to try to do this spring.

Week 24 in CTG

2010-03-14T20:39:00.003-06:00

Week 24 in Creation to the Greeks covers from David and Bathsheba to Solomon. We learn first about the consequence of sin and the forgiveness of God toward a repentant heart. Then we see Solomon made rich, but by violating the rules God laid out for the kings (taking many wives, having many chariots and making much gold). History is basically the same as Bible this week, with a couple of extra readings on Israel during Solomon's reign.

We are still taking The Children's Home a chapter at a time. It is an interesting story, and Rabbit is finally getting better at narrating it back to me.

It wasn't a great science week - we just read most of the experiments, except "Oxygen In, Carbon Dioxide Out." This was a great experiment to do. Now, we modified it a bit. We didn't have any balloons large enough to go over the bottom of a 2 liter bottle. But, I had an old 12oz water bottle and that worked perfectly. Basically, we scaled down the model in the book. Also, taping the string to the bottom balloon to use it to pull it down didn't work - the tape pulled right off. But, we were able to just pull the balloon with our fingers and get the same effect. I have video of this, but I don't know how to where to put it online so it can be viewed. I'll try to do that. The kids loved this experiment - there were lots of ooohs and ahhhs.

The rest of school has been fine. We are progressing through All About Spelling Level 4 nicely. Usually 2 days to complete a step. Writing Strands has been a bit more of a struggle. This next assignment was to write about the things in her room in some order of importance. She didn't want to do her room, so we're doing the family room (or living room) instead.

Week 23, Days 3-5 in CTG

2010-02-28T20:50:00.000-07:00

Let's see... The rest of the week went good. It was nice to be back to our regularly scheduled programming.

In Bible time, we read about when David was moving the Ark of the Covenant and the first time he did it on the back of the cart, and one of the priests was killed. That was a little shocking, but just understanding how God wants us to follow what he says, exactly. Then we read about God's promise to David that from him would come an everlasting kingdom. It was neat to make the connection to Jesus. And finally we read about Mephibosheth and how David honored Jonathan's son by having him eat at the king's table. It showed us that keeping your word is important.

I've been using Easy Test Maker to make Vocabulary quizzes for Rabbit to do. It's really easy to use, and they have a free version. I've been using it since about week 17. This weeks Greek root was petros, and last weeks was lithos. Petros means rock, and lithos means stone or rock. Those were the only ones Rabbit missed on her quiz this week.

We finally finished our Writing Strands story. I should type it in to be read. She did a pretty good job with it.

Rabbit was having trouble narrating back from The Children's Homer, so one day I had her narrate back paragraph by paragraph. That helped, and she has done much better since.

Otherwise school is going well. The boys still fuss about starting each day, but they do it. I'm amazed that missing so much school due to sickness didn't affect them in the reading department. In fact, at bedtime, they've been reading to me a little bit from their Usborne Phonics Readers (Fox on a Box, Big Pig on a Dig, and Frog on a Log). They haven't learned more than one syllable words yet, and there are some sounds we haven't covered yet (or, ar, and such). But it is fun to see them start to read other books. Pooh has some of the pages memorized, so I'm not sure how much he's really reading at this point.

Geography Fair Highlights

2010-02-23T21:25:00.001-07:00

Today was the Geography Fair. It went great. There were 13 presentations in our room, and we finished in just about an hour.

Rabbit dressed up in her Cleopatra Halloween costume for her Ancient Egypt presentation. She really read well with lots of voice inflections and everything.

For Tigger and Pooh I drew pictures on a sheet of paper to remind them of what to say. Tigger was so excited (and just about acted like a Tigger for his whole presentation) that he forgot to look at his paper and kept coming to ask me what to say. The other adults thought that his excitement was great, even if he couldn't remember what he was going to say. It probably would have worked better if I had just asked him questions and let him answer.

Pooh did great. He stood up there and looked at his paper and pretty well remembered. I helped him when he couldn't quite remember. His only downside was he turned and spoke to his board when he was pointing out the animal pictures.

The room we had was a bit noisy with big vent fans running the whole time, so that made it hard. Everyone did a great job and had a good time.

Yesterday we started back on Week 23 and we'll finish it up tomorrow. It is nice to be back in our "normal" routine.

Week 23, Days 1 & 2 in CTG

2010-02-14T21:30:00.000-07:00

The reason I'm writing this post is we're going to take a break from CTG for a week to work on the kids' Geography Fair presentations. They've all asked to participate, and each one chose a different area, so we'll need a good week to work on that.

So far we've covered up to Saul's death, and then learned about the Phoenicians. Rabbit loved the activity to write her name in the Phoenician alphabet.

We didn't do the science experiments - still no bugs around here, but we read through them.

Rabbit tried the God and the History of Art lesson from the first day of the week, but got frustrated at her drawing. She basically drew each half of the drawing on a different page in her new sketch book.

Everything else is going the same.

So, this week, we'll just do Math, Math Drill, T-n-T verses, Can-Do-Print, Spelling and Reading with Rabbit. The boys will probably do most of their usual stuff (they've been sick since last Wednesday). Then, we'll work on their Geography Fair things. Rabbit is going to present on Ancient Egypt, Tigger is presenting Russia, and Pooh is doing the Grand Canyon. I tried to convince the little guys to do their room or backyard or something, but no, they shoot for big. So, it will mostly be me putting things together and then helping them memorize their presentations. That's okay, they'll love it. Hopefully, they will get over this sickness soon. It's a bad cold that pretty much sits in the lungs. Poor little guys.

Blog Changeover

2010-02-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

I decided to move my blog from homeschoolblogger.com to here. Not that the other site isn't any good. But, I like having all my stuff in one place. Since google has my e-mail, my calendar, and now my blog, it is nice having only one place to "go" for all this. I'll leave the old blog up for a couple of weeks, point people over here.

It's probably taken me, oh, 5 or 6 days to move all the old posts and photos. But it has been a good thing. It's been good to go back and see where Rabbit was last year in things, and see where she has improved this year. The improvements in spelling. The progress in math. The improvement in attitude. The bad thing is I am now a couple of weeks behind on my school posts.

Week 22 in CTG

2010-02-10T20:44:00.000-07:00

Bible time this week focuses on Saul going after David up to the first time David spares Saul. It is interesting. David says he doesn't want to take the life of God's anointed (Saul), and make it look like he killed him in order to be king sooner. But yet, he's willing to go after Nabal just because he refused him food. Just an interesting contrast. Not sure what to make of it. We also took a look at a few of the Psalms.

We read a chapter a day in The Children's Homer. Rabbit still doesn't quiet get all of it. I think I need to perhaps discuss it more with her. This is kind of our Greek History right now.

In Science, we did a couple of the experiments. The first one was Fishy Moves. The idea was to see how the shape of the fish and the fins and tail helped the fish move. So, first we made a fin-less fish like this:

Then we set up our tub of water in the bathtub (too cold for outdoors). I used one of those shoebox-sized plastic bins. It is propped up on some other bath toys, so the water will flow out the other end of the box. It is also convenient that we have the shower head on a hose. (Water restrictions due to arid climate means we don't just run the water into the tub for 20 minutes to try an experiment.) Here's the tub all set up:

Then we made the head bigger like this:

Rabbit didn't think it really felt that different in the tub. Next, we added fins. She said it made a big difference on how it felt to go up and down:

Then we bent the tail like this:

Rabbit said it really made the fish seem like it wanted to turn in circles.

The other experiment we did was the Sink or Float. This is one of the things that bothers me in Genesis for Kids - they don't always give 100% clear instructions. For example, in the lesson, it said to make your foil like a "duck-bottomed boat." Well, I don't know what a duck-bottomed boat is. So, I assumed that meant a "flat-bottomed boat," but I don't know if that's really what they wanted, and the picture for that lesson wasn't clear. Anyway, like mfwrocks, the first time we dropped the ball of foil into the water, it didn't float. My guess was that there was still too much air in the ball of foil. So, I found a large flat object and pressed and pressed and pressed, and then we had a very small cube of foil. That did sink:

The other part of the experiment was to measure how much water was displaced by each foil object -whether or not it would be the same. So, we put our dish into a baking pan and topped off our bowl. Then I dropped in the boat. We had some overflow. Problem was, the bowl with all the water was too heavy for me to lift off the pan without spilling the water that was left in the bowl. Even if it had been a very small bowl, I don't know that I could have lifted a small bowl up and not spilled any, because not that much water overflowed.

The next problem with this part of the experiment is how to know if I've filled up my bowl with the exact same amount of water that I used the first time? I used a large bowl (actually a baking dish) and didn't think to try to measure exactly how much water I put in for the first piece of foil. Anyway, we refilled, and dropped in the little squashed square - no overflow. Anyway, if you do this second part of the experiment, use a very small bowl and measure how much water you put in.

We didn't do any of the bug experiments. I don't think we have fruit flies here in the dead of winter anyway. And bugs are pretty much non-existent with 4 inches of snow on the ground. That's alright, though.

We didn't do God and the History of Art this week. Oh, we read through the lessons, and talked about the Art Journal lesson. I actually bought all the kids a sketch book a couple of weeks ago, and they've really been getting into drawing in those.

The rest of school is going well. We're almost done writing our short story for Writing Strands. It has been a lot of me giving Rabbit starter ideas and such. Math is going well for now. And even Spelling is going pretty smoothly. My only thing against All About Spelling is that it is hard to stop at 15 minutes. Just doing the review section with Rabbit can take 7 minutes, and there is usually at least 7 more minutes of instruction, plus dictation and writing station. So, Spelling is usually going 20 to 30 minutes a day. But, I feel like it is something worth devoting that much time to.

All in all, not a bad week.

Week 21 in CTG

2010-02-03T10:51:00.000-07:00

This week's Bible covers Saul's sacrifice to David and Jonathan. It is interesting how quickly Saul's character flaws start emerging. He doesn't follow God's commands. Then, David is anointed secretly, and yet God works it out so Saul needs David to play his harp for him.

In History we learned some of the early Russians and Scythians.

We tried two of the science experiments. The first was "Designed for Living Underwater." I found an old medicine eye-dropper, but, it was plastic, so it didn't float in the water the way it showed in the book. However, when we squeezed the bottle, we could see the water moving up the dropper towards the bulb, and when we released, the water moved back out of the dropper. The other experiment we tried was "Motion: Things That Oppose It." This one was kind of neat. First, make sure you have 3 or 4 sections of your newspaper. If you don't, the newspaper will fall to the floor more slowly than the penny. (The Sunday paper would be real good for this one.) So, that was the first interesting thing - the paper and the penny hit the floor at just about the same time. Next, we dropped the toilet paper and the penny. That one was obvious - that the penny was going to hit the floor first. The last thing was to drop the newpaper with the toilet paper square on top. Rabbit thought that it would separate from the newspaper and drift down slowly. But that's not what happened! So, that was a good learning experience.

In Spelling, we finished step one and went on to step two. Rabbit is still having to re-master some of the phonograms, but it has been a good review.

We're making steady progress in everything else, and really enjoying Bach. Rabbit dances around the kitchen when we listen to Bach.

(I'm still catching up my blog, so this is from memory, which is why it is so short.)

Week 20 in CTG

2010-01-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

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

2010-01-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

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

2010-01-20T21:36:00.000-07:00

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

2010-01-17T21:32:00.000-07:00

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

2010-01-14T21:29:00.000-07:00

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

2010-01-12T21:27:00.000-07:00

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

2010-01-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

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.

School Over Christmas

2009-12-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

Originally, my husband's last day of work was going to be Tuesday of this week. But, then he found out he could still use some of his vacation days the first week of the new year, so he's going to take a few days off then. So his last day will be Friday. Since our weeks are out of alignment from the teacher's manual, I didn't want to do 3 days of school of a week, and then take 2 weeks off, and then finish off the last 2 days of a week. Rabbit needs a little more continuity than that.

The plan for Rabbit is to work on Math, Spelling, Writing and her AWANA T-n-T verses for the rest of this week. The boys are going to be doing Math and Reading/Phonics - focusing on word families for practice. And then, we're going to do a lap book I found at CurrClick called "The Arrival of a King." It is all about the birth of Jesus and all the people in the Bible story. That will cover our Bible and History and Writing and Art (cutting and gluing) for the next 3 days, and maybe even Monday and Tuesday next week. Plus, we'll throw in a little home-ec class with baking some Christmas treats for the neighbors. This will give us our 4 hours a day as needed by state law in order to count as school days.

I've been wanting to try more lap booking, but I didn't think I could design my own. I think doing a big one like this may give me more ideas on some to do next summer.

Week 17 in CTG - Halfway Done!

2009-12-16T21:18:00.000-07:00

Whoo-hoo! Half-way done! It is great to get to the half-way point before Christmas.

Bible this week was encouraging. Reading about Joshua's faith as he lead the Israelites into the Promised Land was just uplifting. There was one verse, when we read about when he died, he told the people, "Be very careful to love the Lord your God." I just thought that was so interesting. We usually say, "Be careful!" to our kids when we think they are about to get hurt or do something wrong. And here is Joshua saying, "Be very careful to love the Lord your God." Like you have to watch out for distractions and other things that might keep you from loving Him.

In History we covered basically the fall of Ancient Egypt. It was interesting to read how once the priests were in power, things seemed to deteriorate quite quickly. We read about the Senet game, but didn't make it yet.

We did all the Science experiments this week. We dropped different sized marbles into Moon Sand (tm) to see how craters are formed on the moon. We took a globe, softball, and flashlight into the bathroom to model solar and lunar eclipses. And, we taught Barbie how to bungie jump. That was the favorite - even Tigger and Pooh got into that one. The lesson said to have her dive into a bowl of water, we decided that would be too messy. One thing about Barbie bungie jumping, instead of pushing her off the "diving board" we dropped her from the height of the diving board. We noticed when we pushed her that the rubber bands would reach their maximum stretch at an angle rather than straight down. So, instead of doing that, we held her parallel to the board and then just let her go. For a fun "experiment" I attached another Barbie and asked, "Will they hit the floor or not?" (We had one Barbie stopping about 1 inch above the floor.) The children said they would hit the floor, and they did. Then we talked about how the rubber bands were kind of overcoming gravity when they pull Barbie back. We also talked about how perfect gravity is. It keeps us on the earth, yet we can briefly over come it when we jump. It keeps on on the earth, yet we can lift our hands over our heads. So, it was a good little discussion. Science got an A this week.

In Art, we talked about Warm colors. Rabbit really didn't like making the distinction between warm and cool colors. I had to explain to her that it didn't mean that one set was better than the other, that's just what they were called.

In Reading, Rabbit finished her Pathway reader. We'll start up in the Abeka readers again after the New Year.

In Spelling, we've finished up to Lesson 21 in book 3. Sometimes I'm not sure she has truely mastered a concept. She'll memorize a rule, and can pass the key cards and sound cards and everything, but it doesn't always come out in her writing. But, we keep working on it.

In Math, we're only at lesson 10. But, I am pleased with how she is remember concepts from last year - like multiplying 2 digit numbers together.

For Writing Strands, we are at the lesson describing the placement of furniture in a room. I tried to get her to do Crystal's suggestion of the bathroom, but Rabbit wanted to do the living room. It is fine. We're only going to describe the "major" pieces of furniture, as there is a lot of furniture in the room.

Treasures of the Snow is an awesome book. We are so enjoying it. The kids are always eager to find out what happens next.

Week 16 in CTG

2009-12-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

Well, the rest of the week didn't seem as intense as day 1. Whew! I guess sometimes that happens.

For Bible time we are working on memorizing Psalm 23. Rabbit has memorized it before - in Sparks at AWANA. We're doing the NIV version rather than KJV. This week we covered from the Twelve Spies going into Canaan, to Rahab.

In History, it was fun to study what was happening in the Americas during this time period. Some of the similarities and differences between the development of Africa and South America, versus what the North American Indians were doing. Very interesting how the religions between Africa and South America seem similar - with priests in charge, and worship centers and such. Rabbit made the remark at one point, "It just shows you how much they needed Jesus."

We didn't do any of the science. It was too cold to go outside for the Solar Weenie Roaster. And since Rabbit doesn't like fire, we didn't do Solar Peanuts, either. But we talked about how trees take in the sunlight just like peanuts, and when we burn wood, we're burning trees, which means we are releasing the sunlight captured by the tree.

I really enjoyed the lessons from God and the History of Art this week. Rabbit and I did them together, which made it more fun for her, and made it go a little faster.

I love Bach. So much of his music is light and upbeat. We enjoyed listening to the Concertos.

The rest of our topics (Vocabulary, Spelling, Math, Writing Strands, and English) are going well. Rabbit is struggling with divide by 4 and divide by 6, but we'll keep plugging at it.

Week 16, Day 1 in CTG

2009-12-02T21:12:00.000-07:00

Well, normally I don't do day-to-day updates, at least not this year.

I am today, just to give a heads up - to me, the Bible and History were especially long today. It took us a little over an hour to get them done. It was good stuff. Rabbit really enjoyed learning about how people first came to North and South America. And while reading the Ancient World book Rabbit dug out our Usborne Book of World History and we looked at some more pictures and ideas of what that time period might be like. So, not that it wasn't good, it just seemed to take a lot longer than usual.

For science, we were suppose to kind of map to scale our solar system. Well, it was snowy and cold, so we didn't do it. But, we discussed the distances and how Jupiter is twice as far away from the sun as the first 4 planets. We should try to do it in centimeters. I'm not to worried about comparing the scale of the planets. A couple of the books in book basket from last week (that we haven't returned yet) had models that showed the planets in scale to each other, but none of them showed distance comparisons.

You know, there's an old joke that goes, "Did you hear about the atheist-insomniac-dyslexic? He lays awake at night wondering if there is a dog." Well, in spelling today, one of our dictation sentences was, "We shopped for dog food and catnip." Rabbit wrote, "We shopped for god food and catnap." Sigh. At least she remember to capitalize and use a period.

English we did on the couch. It was Intermediate Language Lessons lesson 46. We didn't do the dictation part, but we talked about the rest and did the outline.

Math was the area of a triangle. So, I took a couple of pieces of paper, one like a rectangle and the other like a parallelogram and cut them in half to show how they make triangles, so the area is one half of the base times the height. She got it just fine.

We're back to the Pathway reader. The Abeka reader was great. We're almost done with the Pathway reader. I expect we'll be done by the end of this year. I have other Abeka readers, so it's not a problem.

In art, we did complementary colors. I did the lesson with her. I've read about color wheels before, and Primary, Secondary and Tertiary colors and such. But, this lesson with complementary colors just really made a lot of sense to me. I love it when I learn something. It was funny, we were trying to remember the different pairs, and this is what we came up with: red and green are Christmas; blue and orange are the Broncos' (NFL) team colors; and purple and yellow are the colors of the cleaning gloves I use. So, to remember the pairs Rabbit said, "The Broncos played at Christmas wearing Mom's cleaning gloves."

We're at lesson 15 in Spanish. Rabbit told me today she wanted to learn French. Now, why would she suddenly want to learn French? Well, she watched to Barbie and the 3 Musketeers in French in the car on the way back from Thanksgiving vacation. Don't ask me why. I know she sometimes watches her "Bella Let's Dance" DVD in the other languages. I guess she wants to be able to understand all the words. Plus, in ballet, most of the words are French. I said my only problem with that was that I don't know any French. I told her that in Jr. High and High School she could pick whatever language she wanted. She seemed happy with that possibility.

Sickness Finally Arrives

2009-11-30T21:10:00.000-07:00

Not that we wanted it to. While we were in Las Cruces, NM, visiting family for Thanksgiving, Tigger started running a 102.7 degree temperature (actually, that was Thanksgiving day). Thank goodness for 24x7 Walgreens. Later that day, Pooh finally started running a fever, too. Friday morning Tigger had 103.2, and Pooh was 102.3. They were eating well, and over-the-counter meds seemed to bring their temperatures down to "normal" so we went ahead and drove the 12 hour drive back (even though the nurse I talked to with our health care provider didn't seem to think like it was a great idea). Saturday, the boys had sniffles and coughs, but no fever. This morning, Rabbit has the fever and stuffy nose. The boys still have sniffles and coughs. Rabbit needs to get better by Wednesday, as it is her last dance class before the fall recital. They have practice/dress rehearsal again next Monday, but Monday night is the performance. Eeek!

Week 15 in CTG

2009-11-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

This week, History covered building the Tabernacle. A hands-on activity, and worth every effort. Now, we didn't have enough scrap fabric of the right size to do all the curtains - we used fabric for the curtain that separates the Most Holy Place and Holy Place, and then we used tissue paper and packing paper for the curtains over the top. The first day, you make the Most Holy Place and the Ark of the Covenant. Here's our Ark:

The next day you make the Alter of Incense, Table for the Bread, and the Lampstand. Here they are, placed in the Holy Place:

Then, you put the curtains over the top, kind of like this (you can see the purple tissue paper, then a layer of packing paper, then yellow tissue paper, and then packing paper again):

The last two days, you make the Bronze Basin and Altar of Burnt offering, and enclose it with the Courtyard Curtains:

(I just love how it fits perfectly on our coffee table.) We didn't glue the curtains together - and we forgot to color the front curtains. Not gluing will allow us to "pack it up" easier. The pictures in Victor and in my study Bible really helped give a feel for the whole thing.

For Science we are moving into studying Sun, Moon and Stars. We go camping in the summer, so the kids have seen the night sky. It's very cold here at night now, so Rabbit and I only spent a few minutes outside. We did try to spot a couple of constellations. For "Slow Motion in the Sky" - we went out to dinner one night, and before we left, we found a constellation and made note of where it was in the sky. Then, when we came back, we saw where it "moved" to. Then, the "Galaxy in a Cup" experiment - well, we don't drink coffee. So, I used warm water and blue food coloring. Stir the water, drop in a drop of blue food coloring, and viola! spiral galaxy:

We didn't really work too hard at memorizing the planets in order. What is really cool is next summer they will be redoing our local park. They are going to do a solar system/space theme. They are going to put markers across the park to show how far each planet would be from the sun to scale! I see that we're suppose to do that next week, and we'll still try, but I think it is going to be cool that we can go over to the park and see it too. The people designing the park said that the scale they are using will just fit all the way out to poor old demoted Pluto.

In Art, we did Tertiary Colors and Coloring with line. Rabbit didn't really do a great job on Coloring With Line.

We did a little school on Monday of Thanksgiving week - memory verse test, vocabulary test, and a Math quiz, so we wouldn't have a week off and then 3 tests. Rabbit did fine on all of those. Math-U-See added in reviewing of multiplication of 2 digit numbers, and Rabbit remembered how! And, she didn't miss those on the quiz. (She reverses 42 and 24, so she always gets 6x4 and 6x7 mixed up. Those were the problems she missed on her math quiz.)

Week 14 in CTG

2009-11-30T17:31:00.000-07:00

This week Bible and History cover The Exodus through all the laws. We talked about eating manna every day for 40 years. (What if we had to eat pop corn or Cheerios for every meal?) That would get old. We talked about why God had to give them the new laws.

(It was interesting, I found a book through the library by Gilbert Morris called By Way of the Wilderness - it is a historical fiction (with a little romance thrown in) of the account of the Exodus. It had some interesting points - true or not, I don't know. First, that the Israelites had been slaves for 400 years. They didn't know how to behave themselves without someone ruling over them. They'd rather be slaves and know what the day held, than be free and face the unknown. So, they needed someone schooled in being a leader (like Moses). Second, how Moses being a shepherd for 40 years (hmmm, weren't other great leaders, like King David, shepherds too) really helped him lead his people and care for them. Anyway, it was an interesting supplement for me to read while studying the Exodus.)

Science was a little better this week. We didn't do "The Little Guys...Again," but we read through it. We did try "The Good, the Bad, and the Tasty," but we weren't able to get any "bubbling" effect. I suspect our water may have been on the cool side. (I bake bread regularly, and use the hottest water out of the tap I can get for my sponge.) We didn't do "Floating in the Salty Sea." Rabbit said they had tried an experiment like that in Sunday School once as an object lesson, and they couldn't get it to work. We did do the "Parfait of Color" - using syrup, water, olive oil and rubbing alcohol (only 4 layers) - and that did work. I think we'll try the yeast experiment again someday, with a little bit warmer water.

Art lessons were more interesting this week. We learned about Primary and Secondary colors and filling in a color wheel. We tried mixing to get Secondary colors, and then "pure" secondary colors. It was hard to mix.

We'll be finishing up the Abeka reader we started several weeks ago. Rabbit is loving the story. We'll go back to the Pathway reader next.

Everything else is going well. Writing Strands is a bit harder for us. I'm not sure I'm doing it justice. Much of the time I'm writing and Rabbit is copying - we do discuss, but sometimes I wish she would come up with ideas. I have a friend who has IEW that I may borrow to review. Something more "formulaic" may work better for us. We'll see.

Week 13 in CTG

2009-11-30T17:28:00.000-07:00

This week we finished out the plagues. Starting with boils and hail... well, we didn't tape red paper patches on Pharaoh and his officials. But, we had a really bad hail storm earlier this summer, so we talked about that and how the Bible said it destroyed the crops. For the plague of locusts we talked about what they are and how they can eat everything green. An interesting note in my study Bible said that the plague of darkness may have been a horrible sand storm, "darkness they can feel" was the wording. The death of the first born was very sad for Rabbit. She doesn't like sad things happening.

Science was frustrating. The first experiment - getting string/thread to melt into an ice cube so it would stick - we could NOT get it to work. We must have tried 7 or 8 times, different strings, different amounts of ice, different ice cubes. Here is one picture of our many attempts:

We did the White Powders experiment. I didn't have any aspirin, so we used vitamin C tablets instead. It was easy to see what dissolved and what didn't. Actually, the vitamin C didn't completely dissolve. We didn't do the pH indicator with the cabbage. But, I do want to go back and do it sometime in the future. We just didn't have time to make our indicator juice.

The rest of our subjects (Math, Spelling, English, Writing, Reading, Spanish) are going well. We've moved writing to Thursday and Friday, as often there is writing in English, and that would be too much for Rabbit.

I'm not sure Rabbit is totally enjoying the art lessons. They take a bit of work, and I think she would like them to be easier. We did start learning about Bach this week, so that was good.

We started Treasures of the Snow. Yet another book that is going to be awesome to read to the kids.

Week 12 in CTG

2009-11-01T17:21:00.000-07:00

This week covers from The Burning Bush through the first five plagues in Egypt.

At first, the kids were excited to act out the plagues. Rabbit was Pharaoh, Pooh one of Pharaoh's priests/magicians, and Tigger was Moses.

However, by the end of the first day of acting out the plagues, well Rabbit was in tears about being Pharaoh, because he was the bad guy. This upset Tigger and Pooh, and well, things only went downhill from there. So, to ease tensions, I agreed to play Pharaoh for the rest of the plagues and Rabbit got to be Aaron. It went much better after that.

For the river turning into blood, I got a large cake pan, and just put about 1/4 inch of water in it. We set it on the floor, and then I dropped some red food coloring in as Moses pretended to strike the river. Very cool effect. We only made about 40 or so frogs, but did spread them out all over the living room floor. Here is our frogs piled into a heap, as described in Exodus:

We didn't do anything extra for the plagues of gnats and flies, but we did talk about how there is one rest stop in our state where we have stopped to have lunch has lots and lots and lots of flies. (My husband said, "Yep. That rest stop did have a plague of flies!") We decided it must have even been worse than that place in Egypt.

The plague on the livestock is the first plague where there was a distinction between the Hebrews and the Egyptians. So, we took half of our stuffed animals and put them in one corner of the room, and half in the other. After we "acted" our parts, I sent the priest to check on the livestock and report back his findings. We talked about how God protected the Hebrews from harm.

We didn't do any science experiments again this week. I think we needed a break. (As a side note, I've read ahead to next weeks experiments, and I think we will try those - they look interesting.) But, we read through them and discussed them as best we could.

The book basket list was light for this week, so I got books about the animals you might find in Egypt during that time - sheep, goats, camels, etc. Not sure that Rabbit really enjoyed those, though.

Rabbit got a little tired of our Pathway reader (we're almost done with it anyway), so we've switch to the Abeka 4th grade readers for now. We're reading Song of the Brook and enjoying it.

Rabbit is doing well with the vocabulary. Right now I'm just typing up matching quizzes for her to do by herself, but I help her with most of the steps of learning the new words.

We're already on step 13 in All About Spelling Level 3. One thing I started doing about 4 or 5 weeks ago during dictation is saying, "Sentence check," which is a hint for Rabbit to check punctuation and capitalization of her sentences. At first, I said it for every sentence. Then I started only saying it for sentences that she missed one or the other. Well, this Thursday or Friday, I didn't have to say it for a single sentence, and she didn't misspell anything on dictation that day. I am so proud of her. Slowly, I'm starting to see the spelling carry over to her writing some. Once, she knew something was spelled wrong, but she couldn't see how to spell it correctly. I am just glad she is beginning to recognize when she is making mistakes.

In Math, we finished lesson 6, and have started lesson 7. She seems to be doing fine with it, so we'll continue on.

In Writing Strands, we're working on a lesson to show how characters in a story "think." We have a story from personal experience, so it's going pretty well. Again, I'm helping a lot, but I think modeling how to do this stuff is a legitimate way to teach writing.

We didn't paint a stone, because by the time we got to a day to work on that project, we had 6 inches of snow on the ground. I told Rabbit we'd pick another day to try to do that lesson.

Star of Light was a terrific book to read. The kids loved the story and always wanted to know what was going to happen next. I'm looking forward to our last of the Patricia St. John books from the Deluxe package.

Week 10-11 in CTG

2009-11-01T17:17:00.000-07:00

I'm just going to do some highlights from these two weeks. (We actually juts finished week 12, so I a little bit behind on my updates.)

Rabbit is doing great with the memorization in Bible. We've had some good discussions, too. Basically, these two weeks cover from Joseph interpreting the Baker and Cup Bearer's dreams to Moses fleeing from Egypt.

Reading about the ups and downs of Egyptian history has been interesting. It is easy to understand why the Egyptians would have wanted to enslave the Hebrews after the Hyksos domination.

I want to encourage anyone who thinks making costumes for acting out the 10 plagues is too much work. We kept it really simple. We used our Pharaoh's crown from earlier in the year for Pharaoh. Then, I used one old pillow case to make a shepherd's head piece, and another one to make Pharaoh's priest's leopard skin cloak thing. I used some of the pictures from Ancient World to make them. Do they look authentic? Not at all, but I think it makes acting out the plagues more fun.

Another activity was to make a clay pot. We used Crayola Model Magic for this. Way cool stuff. We loved how easy it was to work with. We did let our pot dry for about a week before anyone was allowed to touch it. Here is a picture:

We haven't really been doing any science experiments for these two weeks. Some of them we've done before, and I didn't feel like doing them again. Others, I didn't have the supplies and wasn't sure where to get the supplies.

Rabbit continues to make progress in the basics, so not much new on that front. Writing Strands 3 is a big challenge for her, but I think it is good. I'm trying not to set my expectations too high. Yes, I want her to try, but I'm not opposed to helping her as needed, especially to avoid frustration.

Week 9 in CTG

2009-10-11T16:54:00.000-06:00

Bible

We covered from Jacob meeting Rachel to Joseph and Potiphar's wife. I wasn't quite prepared when I was reading from Victor's Journey through the Bible and the Bible, and ended up having to edit on the fly. Not sure the kids are quite ready for some of that adult stuff. The wording in the NIV is pretty mild, so it wasn't too bad, I just was taken by surprise. I almost wish there was a little note in the Bible square on the grid that said, "See notes before today's reading" with a little reminder. I know it's at the top of the column on the grid for the day, but I forgot to look.

History

We did some activities that looked at Abraham and his descendants and how they are all related to each other. Not sure how much that really helped Rabbit get the bigger picture.

We read about Egypt's Middle Kingdom, and then looked at what houses, games, and how Egyptians may have generally lived their daily lives. We did NOT build a house (an activity suggested in the manual), but we looked in detail at all the pictures. Plus, we had a book finally come in through the library that had some more pictures that Rabbit remembered applied to what we were studying, so we looked at those.

We added the 12 tribes and Joseph to our time line.

Science

Science was just a tad bit frustrating this week. One of our experiments was to fill a pan full of water, put a candle in it, light the candle and then place a jar over it. We were suppose to see two things: first, the candle going out because it used up all the oxygen in the jar, and second, the water level was suppose to rise inside the jar because the water would be taking the place of the air. We tried several different variations of the jar and pan and how much water, and just could not see it. The candle would usually go out before I could get the jar completely down in the water. So, the water in the jar would be lower than the water in the pan. Now, one time, after the candle went out, the water started rising - and we could see it - but it seemed like it was just the water back filling from in the pan.

Anyway, I want to try this experiment again. Perhaps getting a tall see-through plastic jar or cup, and cutting the bottom off straight. Set the cup in and make sure the water level is equal on both sides and then set a saucer or something on top that will close up the jar and then see if the water rises. I think our lower oxygen levels at a mile high may be the reason we weren't able to see everything the book said.

The other experiment for this week (called "Carbon Dioxide") worked great. We had a large grape juice plastic bottle to mix our solution in, and were able to blow out the candle twice with one mixture. The kids thought that was way cool.

We didn't do the weather balloon experiment as it was already too cold here, and I don't have a small thermometer or a bunch of helium balloons.

Language Arts

We are moving along in All About Spelling Level 3. There are days when I actually see Rabbit's spelling carry over into her writing, and other days, well, not so much.

Using Intermediate Language Lessons is working well. I like how it gradually works on skills and we can do it together, to make sure she understands.

Rabbit aced her Vocabulary test this week, but couldn't remember what pyrophobia meant for "extra credit," even though she is VERY pyrophobic (which made science a challenge, too).

She finished her story in Writing Strands (see my last post) and we looked at the next lesson, "Description of a Friend." She wanted it to be "Description of my Favorite Horse or Horses." Perhaps I should try to adapt it - she might enjoy it more. But, I'm not sure how. I don't know enough about horses.

Math

We finished Lesson 5 in Delta, and Rabbit got a 100% on her test. It was "flashcard" review week - which she really doesn't like all that much. I found some dice with numbers and math symbols and thought about using them for review time sometimes. But, usually I leave math review time to be "independent work."

Art and Music

We looked at Monday's Art lesson, but Rabbit felt overwhelmed by it. I didn't push - she's young for this book. Wednesday's lesson was a "Doodle" page and she had lots of fun with that.

Rabbit drew her picture for Vivaldi's Autumn this week. The directions said that the first movement was of the harvesters celebrating and then the second movement was them sleeping from drinking too much wine. So, Rabbit drew a Maypole with all the people dancing around it, and had all the dancers holding cups of wine (they kind of looked like martini glasses!) with the wine splashing out. It's amazing what they'll think of. We are enjoying the music.

Read Aloud

Of course, every day they ask for the next chapter in Star of Light. The story is wonderful. Sometimes the kids are in tears, though, worried about Hamid or Kinza and what might happen next. The kids are really connecting to the characters in this story.

It was a pretty good week, except for science. Just loving this curriculum!

A Writing Strands Sample

2009-10-08T16:51:00.000-06:00

We've been working on the "write a story about a kitten raised by a duck" lesson in Writing Strands 3. Rabbit is 9, and we did one paragraph a day. The first 3, we worked together, but today, K took a lot longer than usual with Tigger and Pooh, so Rabbit went ahead and wrote the last paragraph by herself. Then, together we did a little editing. I'm really proud of her effort, so I told her I would type up her story and put it on my blog.

The Adventures of a Kitten Raised by a Duck

Once there was a kitten raised by a duck. The first time the other ducklings ate corn, the kitten tried to lap it up off the ground. The kitten got dirt and hay on her rough tongue. It was funny to watch her spit out the dirt. She then asked the cow for some milk.

The ducklings gracefully glided into the pond. Splash! In went the kitten, spraying all the ducklings. The kitten decided she wasn't meant for water adventures.

The mother duck lead her sleepy ducklings back to the barn for a nap, and the kitten followed along. Suddenly, the kitten eyed a pretty butterfly. She got sidetracked and began to follow the butterfly. the butterfly was a friend of mother duck, and lead the kitten back to the mother duck.

Just before they fell asleep the kitten eyed a mouse. As all kittens, she wanted to chase the mouse and so she did. Now this frightened the other ducklings and they began to squawk and run all over the barn and the hay loft. In and out of the stalls the kitten and the ducklings ran, until at last the chase was over. When the mouse escaped, the kitten and the ducklings were out of breath and went to sleep.

The End

Week 8 in CTG

2009-10-04T16:26:00.000-06:00

Bible (and I suppose History) this week covered from Abraham offering Issac to Jacob's ladder. What a week of ups and downs! The faith shown by Abraham's servant to go and find Rebekah, and then the deception of Jacob and Rebekah. Yet, God is still sovereign and still has His way in His plans.

We looked at the projects for painting in Ancient Egypt and the Pyramids, but didn't do them. Rabbit did color the tomb painting notebook page. She also did a good job with her summary of Abraham and Isaac. I ended up having to make another copy for her as she got flustered with several mistakes on her page right from the start.

Science was a bit of a challenge this week. First, we went to the local hardware store and bought a piece of 1 inch x 1/4 inch x 8 foot strip of pine trim. Then I cut it down to 30 inches, as recommended for the Karate Kid experiment. We used 2 layers of newspaper over the stick, and Rabbit could still flip the stick off the coffee table. We also tried the kitchen island, as it had a smoother top, and still Rabbit could flip it off the counter. I noticed we had a real hard time pressing the newspaper around the stick and getting it to be really smooth. Remembering something I read over at the MFW message board, we tried a ruler instead. Since it was a 12 inch ruler, we had it stick out over the edge of the counter about 2.5 inches. Because the ruler was more rounded over the top, we were able to flatten the newspaper over it better. Plus, the newspaper was about 6 to 8 inches longer than the ruler (our newspaper was only about 1 or 2 inches longer than our 30 inch stick, which may have been part of the problem). Using the ruler and paper, Rabbit could not flip it off the counter. It bounced a little, but she definitely got the idea of air pressure.

The Straw Drinking Race was easy. Tigger and Pooh agreed to be the racers. Tigger had the straw with the holes, and it took him about 5 minutes to get all of the water out of the cup. The Old Updside-Down-Glass-Of-Water Trick was a bit different. We tried the clear disposable plastic cups that we got for last week's experiments, but the sides were too flimsy when we flipped the cup over. So we went ahead and tried a glass cup. Sure enough, it worked. Later on I tried with a hard plastic cup (to show my husband), and I could see the "vacuum" bubbles at the top of the cup. (My hard plastic cup was a yellow First Years cup that have the spout lids - not clear, but you can see into them.) We didn't try to do any larger cups or containers.

We finished another Math lesson this week, and started All About Spelling Level 3 for Spelling. Using Intermediate Language Lessons has been going well, although some of the lessons seemed a bit archaic (we don't know all that much about birds). We're writing "The Kitten Raised by a Duck" story in Writing Strands, basically doing a paragraph a day. Rabbit is actually kind of excited about it, and has been reading it to her brothers and dad as she finishes each paragraph. I've been trying to give her ideas to get her jump started, and it goes pretty well.

In God and the History of Art, one of the lessons was to do cross-hatching for shading. She did a pretty good job, be we talked about how hard it is and how much practice we need. We listened to "Autumn" from the Vivaldi CD, and she did the cross-hatching while we did that.

So far, Star of Light is an interesting story. The kids are asking a lot of questions about why the little girl, Kinza, was born blind. I've read ahead, so I know how the story ends. Oh, what good stuff is in this book! Don't skip it.

One interesting side note... I was cleaning up the school room, and found a paper Rabbit had written on. She basically summarized what she had learned about pyramids. Now, the spelling wasn't that great (pyramids was spelled "pearumids"), but I loved how she summarized. She got that the base of the pyramids were perfect squares, and the sides perfect triangles and that we really don't know exactly how they built them. Anyway, I never told her to write it, she just did. That is so encouraging to me that she is trying things on her own like that.

Week 7 in CTG

2009-09-30T16:23:00.000-06:00

Boy, school is going so well so far. Yes, we have our ups and downs, but overall, things are going well.

Bible this week was about Abraham - from God making his Covenant with him to Hagar and Ishmael being sent away. One of the things that I thought was interesting about Hagar is she wasn't really seeking God - yet he found her twice. He sought her out. God seeks us out.

History was about writing and reading. It was quite interesting how they made paper from papyrus reeds. Rabbit made a Cartouche and hung it on her door.

Science had some fun experiments. Everyone joins in. I really worked hard at just guiding Rabbit, and only helping her when she was really doing it wrong. We bought those clear plastic cups that are like the Solo cups, only smaller for our experiments. We were able to do the experiments in the sink. (The bathtub is out of the question due to water restrictions. If anyone ever offers you an aquarium - accept it. They will come in handy for science experiments even if you never have any fish.) Rabbit was really surprised that you could keep paper in a cup dry if you put the cup in the water upside down. Even after doing the "pouring air" experiment, she did not expect that result at all. Seeing that air has weight (or mass) was another interesting experiment. Blowing up the balloon and watching our scale "tip" toward the air filled balloon was another surprise. Rabbit expected the balance to stay equal.

We've almost finished All-About-Spelling Level 2. It has been a good review for Rabbit, and I see some of her spelling getting better. She's starting to recognize when words "just don't look right." Now, that doesn't always mean she can fix them right, but she's learning.

Math is going well. We've finished Lesson 2 and began Lesson 3 in MUS's Delta. She's doing great with it. She really remembers the division facts faster than multiplication at this point. I think when she sees a product and one of the factors, she easily remembers the other factor that goes with it - kind of like a number bond. Just seeing the two factors doesn't always help her remember the product, though. However, she is getting faster with her multiplication facts. But, her addition and subtraction facts have gotten slower.

Art and Music continue to be fun. She didn't quite finish her picture for Vivaldi's "Summer," so no picture for the blog. The art lessons are good for her. They make her think and try new things. She gets a little frustrated, "because I'm not that good at it." But, I think the skills build on each other, and long term will make a difference.

The kids caught colds toward the end of the week, but we still managed school every day.

The boys are doing well with Abeka's K. We've done up to lesson 31 now. It is funny, Tigger sounds out each sound and then blends them together - he still gets the blends/words right, but he will say "/c/-/a/-/t/ cat." Pooh, on the other hand, blends each sound right from the beginning. He stretches the sounds out a little slower, but he still does it. Sometimes, though, he adds a sound onto the end of a blend that isn't there (most commonly /t/), but he is getting it. They love the silly games in Abeka. (Rabbit didn't really get into them all that much when she did this program.) One thing I did for "review" drills is opened a manila file folder and drew a race track, with spaces that are just the right size for a matchbox car. Then, each one picks their favorite car, and when the say the right sound/blend/whatever, they get to move their car one space. They LOVE this, and it was so easy to do.

Another thing I am doing for the boys is focusing on writing numbers for the next 2 weeks. I never did for Rabbit, we just plowed into Primer and she didn't really know how to write the numbers. We had got through lesson 5 in Primer with the boys, and I realized I hadn't taught them how to form their numbers. So, I made up some worksheets, and each day we practice one new number, and review the two previous. We'll do 0 - 4 this week, and 5-9 next week. Primer will have lots more practice for them, but I just really wanted to focus on forming those numbers correctly before we got too far into the year.

Abeka K5

2009-09-20T16:21:00.000-06:00

Well, mostly my blog has been focusing on MFW's programs. This year, I am doing Abeka's K5 program with Pooh and Tigger. I used it with Rabbit, and still have all the games, flashcards, and other things I made to go with it, so I thought I might as well use it. Some people have said that you shouldn't teach your twins together. So far, though, it is going okay. Their desks are right next to each other, with a lamp in between.

We start out with phonics. Usually it is some game, or song, or review activity. Doing this together works pretty well. Sometimes it is a blend ladder (or ladders), and those I do one-on-one.

Next we do handwriting. If we are learning a new letter, I get out our Handwriting Without Tears hands-on activities and we do those together. But, when they practice writing the letter on their slate, I watch them each one at a time, to make sure they are doing correct formation. If it is a review of a letter, then I have a Rubbermaid container of sand that they each practice in. Usually, I sit with Pooh when they actually do their worksheets. (Tigger has much better fine motor skills.) I talk him through the letter formation. Now, we're using Abeka's manuscript pages for handwriting worksheets, but we do single-stroke formation instead of ball-stick. Most of the time, I've crossed out the arrows and numbers and put in the way I want them to do it. They think it is fun that we're breaking the rules. Tigger actually goes slower than Pooh when doing his handwriting worksheet. So, after I'm done with Pooh, I go assist Tigger. Usually, it is to keep him from getting upset over little mistakes.

After that, we do our Phonics Review time. Again, this is usually some kind of game, or song, or other fun activity. I do try to do these together, but make sure that both of them get a chance at all the flashcards. If it is blend ladders, though, we do those separately.

Then the boys do a math page from Math-U-See's Primer. (Though, the next two weeks, we're going to stop and focus on learning to write our numbers.) This usually takes 5 minutes, tops. It is funny to see how different they are. When Tigger is counting items on a page, he numbers each one so he doesn't lose track of where he is. Pooh just puts a mark through each one and counts as he goes.

Some days we add in the Cuisinare Rods Alphabet book. They enjoy doing these activities. I don't normally sit with them while they do these. I could, and have them do all the questions/suggestions on the pages, but they just prefer to build. It is still problem solving skills, so I'm okay with it. Most days that takes about 1 hour. Sometimes 1 1/2 hours.

The boys can get on each other's nerves playing with each other all day. I'm thinking about scheduling time for one of them to go play, while the other does an activity from our old preschool toys, and then switch off again. I'll probably really need to do this when we start reading the little Abeka books for K5 - I'll need some activity to keep one occupied while I work with the other. I realize that's what the "seatwork" is for, but I can see my boys finishing that stuff pretty quick.

We'll be on day 27 tomorrow, so I feel like were making good progress.

Thoughts on Science

2009-09-19T16:17:00.000-06:00

Doing Science with my kids for home school has been a real struggle for me. You’d thing a Computer Science major with a Math minor would have no problems. I think I had a lot of negative experiences in school. I remember trying to do a “making crystals” experiment in elementary school. We never got any crystals to grow on our screw – we only got rust. Then, I remember doing dissections in 7th grade biology. I always got C’s or D’s. I could never really tell the animal’s body organs once we opened it up – they were never in the same place as the drawings in the textbooks. Experiments in Chemistry class were always hit or miss. I think the only class where most of the experiments actually worked was Physics. Even in college, I think I just got B’s in my Physics lab class.

So, when we’ve been doing our Science stuff for school, mostly I’ve been reading the book, and doing the experiments with Rabbit (and Pooh and Tigger as observers). And really, it is me doing the experiments. Now, some of that is because Rabbit is afraid of something “bad” happening (like she was scared of the sparks from squeezing the mints). But, the other part of it, I’m not sure.

Well, the other day, my friend mfwrocks posted some thoughts about doing science in the elementary years:

Let them read the material with you.
Ask them, “What do you think will happen?”
Then say, “Ok, let's find out.”
Have them try the experiments on their own, as much possible.
Let them go "cool" and "wow" and laugh at science nerd jokes.
Teach them to observe what is going on.
Make them clean it up and put it away.
Ask them, “What did happen? Is that what we expected? And why?”

Now the other observation that my dh made was that we need to teach the Scientific Method without being hung up on the teaching the terms and phrases of The Scientific Method. You just want the kids to be so comfortable with asking, “What will happen if I do this?” Set it up, observe and figure out why --- that it becomes how they think about science. And not a check box to say, "Ok. I covered scientific method in the curriculum and that's good, right?"

See, I’m the one doing the experiments. I should really be letting Rabbit try the experiments, and just being there as a guide or assistant. It is usually the other way around. Then I get frustrated when she doesn’t do anything but stand there or sit there. I also have a hard time with #7, as my kids aren’t really that good at cleaning up. But, that’s part of the training process and I just need to get over it and start training them.

Anyway, it was just such a timely post, and it really made me think about what I’m doing as a teacher that is either helping or hindering the kids.

Week 6 in CTG

2009-09-19T16:13:00.000-06:00

I’ll start with Sukkoth. Ends up we didn’t even put up the tent. Rabbit was getting tired of the readings every day, and she doesn’t quite get the idea of the feasts. So, we basically read the readings as a part of our Bible time. Some of them were quite long, which was part of the issue. I tried to explain to her the connections between the feasts and how they were looking forward to the Messiah, but I don’t think it has sunk in yet. But, I learned a lot. I loved the connection between pouring out the water and God pouring out His Holy Spirit on us. The other thing I thought of was Jesus pouring out His blood for me.

Science has been more intense than last year. We’ve been doing pyramid and ancient Egypt science 3 or 4 days a week. It is tough for me to stay on top of that. (But, I better get prepared, as others have told me that Science steps up to 4 days a week next year.) We have tried the growing crystals experiment. We got some on our beaker, and a few on our string, but none on our paper clip. I thought about doing one with baking soda and another with dishwasher soap, but there are warnings all over the dishwasher soap box, and that scared Rabbit off from trying that.

It has been interesting reading about how all these ancient civilizations developed in History. Basically, they each developed by a fertile river valley. The river would flood each year, leaving silt deposits that were very fertile. The people would plant and harvest each season. Because they could grow so much food, not everyone needed to be farmers, so lots of people had time to develop other skills – like architecture, writing, metal work, pottery, etc. It was just neat that all these places developed separately from each other, but similarly.

In Bible we are going to be memorizing The Ten Commandments over the next ten weeks (on top of our regular readings that follow along with where we are studying in History). We have a box of packing paper that kids use to paint or do other large art projects on. So, I took a sheet, folded it in half, and then cut an arch at the top. Then I crumpled it up in a ball and then undid that and flattened it out. Now we have our stone tablets:

I used Photoshop Elements to type up the commandments, and then used some bevels and shadows to try to make the words look like they were carved. Probably more complex than what the teacher’s manual said to do, but it was more fun for me to make it this way.

We studied Job one day, and now we are reading about Abraham, or Abram as his name hasn’t been changed yet. I thought it was interesting that Hagar runs away, and she’s not even seeking God, yet He seeks her out. Isn’t that just like God? He seeks us out, even when we aren’t necessarily looking for Him.

This week, the curriculum added in copying the memory verse and dictation of the memory verse. So, on the days we do that I’m not going to have Rabbit do her Handwriting Without Tears book. Learning the Greek roots has been good. We now have enough words where we can start to see how other words are put together. What is really neat is when a root comes up in our Reading time.

English has been pretty good. We do most of it orally, or she dictates to me and I write it – especially on days where there has been a lot of writing already. Writing Strands has been more of a struggle. We got through the second lesson, but it was sure hard for her. I’ve been trying to explain that we don’t just write once and get done with it. But, she just doesn’t like writing. I need to get more consistent about teaching her typing.

This week we finished Step 22 in All About Spelling Book 2. If she can just keep her attitude good, we get through the lessons just fine. It’s when she has a bad attitude, or misses too many words during review time that she gets upset. I’ll need to be ordering Book 3 soon.

Rabbit pretty much likes God and the History of Art, but she said this week she wished it was more drawing and art lessons and less history. She had to draw a picture of her family for her AWANA section this week, and I see a lot of what she is learning from art carrying over.

We listened to Vivaldi’s “Summer” - what a wide range of musical style in one song. It was quite interesting. And Spanish is going well. I like that it is really low stress. And the stories are quaint.

We finished The Tanglewood's Secret. I read ahead in the book so I would know what was happening, and yet I cried again reading it out loud to the kids. They loved the book, and were always interested in what was coming next. I love how you could see everyone’s change of heart as they met Jesus, or re-established their relationship with Him. The book made the comparison of Jesus being the Good Shepherd so real. It was just an excellent book.