Week Three Recap

I had enough "demo-skipping" when I was in school.

We are using AmblesideOnline curriculum, Years 4 and 6.

Dad brought home a super-fancy little scale home from work that would measure in grams so that Peanut could do one of her science demonstrations. The demonstration did not work out as planned, I think maybe the scale was too sensitive. She actually has had a few demonstrations this year. We try to always do anything mentioned in our book. I had enough "demonstration skipping" when I was in school. I am sure we did less than 10 hands-on projects in science, and that counts watching something the teacher did, at least up until high school.

We got an audiobook of Robinson Crusoe. It is better that way, I don't have to stumble over words, etc.

We did some nature study at the local park. Each kid picked a tree. We took samples of the leaves home for identification, then by the time we all got time to look ours up, the samples had deteriorated quite a bit. Ooops. Guess we'll repeat next week. We did see a ground squirrel sticking his head up out of his little hole, so that was fun. I am not a fan of ground squirrels and moles, but this one was at the park, so I can live with that.

This is not the one we saw, it's just a picture off the ol' Internets. We couldn't get to our camera quickly.

Week 11 - Review

Our week has been very similar to last week.

Bible: We are still in 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, and Isaiah.
History: We are reading our George Washington biography.
Readers: Peanut finished the book A Llama in the Family, and began A Lion to Guard Us by Clyde Robert Bulla. She really enjoyed the first book, but the second has not grown on her yet. Our strategy is that I read the first chapter to her, which helps her to get a feel for the book. Then she's on her own for the most part.
Junior read The 18 Penny Goose. This was a good book. It had a girl as the main character, and sometimes he does not like a "girl" book. However, this one was not really girly. And it was based on a true story.
For an extra read-aloud, Peanut and I are reading Black Beauty. Junior and Dad are reading an old Hardy Boys book. I don't really keep up with which one they are on, but this is an enjoyable part of the day. We usually do it before bed, and that feels like you are getting to stay up a bit later!

Week 10 - Review

We took the week after vacation as a catch-up week. We got our closets cleaned out and our winter clothes out of storage.

Bible: We read out of 2 Kings, 2 Chron., and Isaiah in the Day-by-Day Kids' Bible

History: We are reading George Washington: Our First Leader and we read Can't You Make Them Behave, King George? That was a very good book. It was a quick read and gave some details from the other side of the ocean that you don't always hear much about when studying the Revolutionary War.

We also did the taxation activity I mentioned the other day.

Reading: Peanut is reading A Llama in the Family. Junior is reading The Long Way to a New Land.

Language Arts: Peanut - LLATL Orange Book and HWT. Junior - HWT.

Science: Peanut - Human Anatomy, using Easy Make & Learn Projects: Human Body. Junior - Water experiments from library books.

Week 9 - Review and Field Trip

For week nine, we did an extended field trip. Well, honestly it was a vacation with hubby's dad to Branson, MO., specifically Silver Dollar City.

There was a good deal of educational value to this trip, so I am putting it down as an extended field trip. Here are some of the educational highlights:
This is a old-fashioned sorghum mill, being powered by a mule, as you see. I failed to get a good picture of this, so I have to rely on my nice sister-in-law's picture. However, she is an animal lover, and got a better picture of the mule than the actual mill.

This was quite fascinating to me. The mule is guided around and around in a circle and turns the mill. A person stood there and fed stalks of sorghum through the mill, and the juice was drained into a bucket. The syrup is made similarly to maple syrup. The juice is boiled until it condenses down into a thick syrup. Samples of syrup were available. Apparently, syrup is an acquired taste, because everyone around was not lovin' the sorghum syrup. Including my daughter. Oh well, more sorghum for me, I guess. I grew up loving the stuff. It is similar to molasses, but it just has a nicer taste. I'm not sure how to describe it, but the taste is strong like molasses.

Here we have a butter sculpture. I have seen this phenomenon on TV, but never in person. It was in a large refrigerated trailer, and you could look in the glass window and watch the artist at work. Well, I do like to watch a work of art in progress, and this was definitely a work of art...but something about butter as a medium is surreal. Oh well, it is along the same lines as pumpkin sculpture, and we are big fans of that.


Here, Peanut (pink shirt) is getting to help with a demonstration of Border Collie training. This was another fascinating thing! Sorry I couldn't get a dog picture, too. I was being pestered by a bored one-year-old. Anyway, the trainer demonstrated how the dog is trained to go clockwise and counter-clockwise. That is the basis for all of her herding. She herded sheep, and then geese. They had the volunteers come up during geese herding.

We had a wonderful time. Learning opportunities abound, and those were some of the highlights for which I found pictures.

Week 8 - Review

I have not been able to get onto Blogger all week. I tried a lot of things, but the thing that finally worked is uninstalling BSafeOnline from my computer. That program has been quite a hassle for us, does anyone have any suggestions for good blocking software for computers that children use from time to time? I like the format of BSafe, but it definitely uses a lot of resources, and slows our computer down.

We were on vacation last week, so that is why I didn't post my update for week 8. Here are the highlights:

Bible: Day-by-Day Kids' Bible - We have been in 2Kings, Isaiah, and Micah. We have memorized Joel 2:13, and ready to move on to something else.

History: We did a lesson on music in the colonies. We used Popular Songs in American History to listen to some midi files of folk music that would have come over from the British Isles. Then the Bay Psalm Book has text and midi files that would have been used in the Church in colonial days. Then, the kids learned a simplified version of the minuet. Here they are in all their anonymous glory!


Reading: Peanut finished The Boxcar Children. She tried to begin another Boxcar Children book, called The Pilgrim Village Mystery. She didn't like it as well, I think it may be a more modern version of the books. Junior finished Clara and the Bookwagon, and we had trouble finding something appropriate to read after that. Most of our kid books are a little too hard for him still, and we are waiting on a couple of readers from the library that go along with our history period. We finally chose The Kitten Who Thought He Was a Mouse from our bookshelf.

For week 9, we did our field trip to Silver Dollar City in Branson, Mo. We'll share a few pictures soon.

Week 6 - Review

We are taking about 8 weeks for our Colonial unit. The original unit study from Homeschool in the Woods took about 5 weeks. We are tagging on some extra weeks to read some extra material and do a couple of projects that didn't get done. We are taking break the first full week of October, so our break will be at the same time we switch units. Next we will do a unit on the Revolutionary War.

Bible Lessons - One of our lessons was the book of Jonah. Then we started the book of Hosea. We began memorizing Joel 2:13.

Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and He relents from sending calamity.

History: We read The Story of the Pilgrims by Katharine Ross, and made paper models of the Mayflower from Easy Make & Learn Projects: The Pilgrims, the Mayflower & More. The kids enjoyed this activity. The Mayflower model was not hard, and we are thinking about making some for Thanksgiving for table decorations. We will definitely save the two we did for that purpose. The Story of the Pilgrims would be a good book to use if you were doing a short Thanksgiving unit.

Language Arts: We used Bible verses for copywork. Peanut started on Learning Language Arts through Literature, the Orange Book (LLATL). It seems a bit easy for her, but maybe that is only the beginning of the book. I am not worried though. It seems to be a good book, and not a lot of repetition.

Read-aloud: We finished The Matchlock Gun. The kids turned out to really like the book, and the chapters were pretty short. The did not want to be left hanging, so we ended up reading a few chapters a day instead of just one. We finished sooner than I had planned, but that's okay. I read some reviews on Amazon.com which complained that this book was racist. Hmm. I don't really think it was. It was based on a true story about an Indian attack on a woman and two children. The little boy defended the family with a gun. It didn't say all Indians were savages, but these three obviously were. The Warrior's Challenge showed a very different type of Indian, not bent on killing others, and they were definitely shown as being mistreated. I think kids need some balance in these things, but The Matchlock Gun is too good to be missed.

Reading: Peanut began The Boxcar Children. It goes along with LLATL. At first she balked, she thought it would be boring, and we read it a long time ago as a read-aloud. After the first couple of chapters, she realized that it was her kind of book. She and her friends love to play that kind of pretend game, like they are having to survive and make things for their houses out of what they can find. So she will finish it early, most likely. Junior finished Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie and started on Greg's Microscope.

We also went on a trip to the State Fair this week. That was great!

Week 5 - Review

This week was our first week going to co-op. It really made me scramble, as there is not a lot of time between co-op and band rehearsal. We have 3 hours including travel time, and I have to spend part of that time lying down with Baby Bubby so he can get a short nap.

We may need to split one school day between Monday and Friday. Currently, we just do our errands and dance classes on Friday.

So here's a rundown of this week:

Bible Time: We read 2 Kings chapter 6 and 7. Part of this deals with a story about cannibalism, which was kind of disturbing. My kids are kind of young to deal with something like that, so I did explain that there was a conflict between two women because their sons had died and they were talking about eating their bodies because they were so hungry. This showed how bad the starvation in the city really was. We also talked about how the enemy strategy to block off the city so no one could get food.

Another chapter from Joel told about a plague of locusts. Peanut and I had read On the Banks of Plum Creek last year, which had a story about a grasshopper swarm that destroyed their crops, so we related back to that story and how awful it was.

History: We watched a video called What's the Big Idea, Ben Franklin? It explained a little more about colonial trades and apprenticeships, and a little about sea travel as well. Even though this video went on into the Revolutionary War and the founding of the nation, it had a lot of information about Colonial life, so I'm glad we went ahead and watched it in this unit.

Language Arts: We ran out of copywork with our unit study, so we have started copying some Bible verses.

Reading: We finished The Warrior's Challenge, and it did end up being sad, but the book was very positive and showed a great father/son relationship. The son and his father both made mistakes, and had a strained relationship because of this, but everything was resolved nicely in the end. We began The Matchlock Gun at the end of the week.

Peanut is still reading The Courage of Sarah Noble. Junior finished Prairie School and began Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie.

Week 4 - Review

This week was a bit shorter. Dad was home for Labor Day, so we didn't do school on Monday. We had also noticed Baby Bubby rubbing his ear, and just being generally cranky. So Tuesday we had to take him to the doctor. So we abandoned our regular schedule and just got our music practice and chores done.

We still had a nice week, though more relaxed.

Bible: One of our Bible readings was on the story of Naaman. The kids put on a puppet show to tell the story.

Here is Naaman.

In this picture, Naaman thanks Elisha and says he will now serve the true God.

This was special to me, because this kind of thing is what I had in mind even before we started homeschooling as kind of a mental picture of homeschooling. It doesn't happen all that often, and I enjoy a lot of other things about homeschooling, but I love it when my kids will put on a puppet show or otherwise act out a story that we are learning about!

They did the same reading books as last week.

For science, Peanut got a new book about the moon from the library, called What the Moon is Like. Junior did an demonstration of how hot water moves in cold water, which was in one of his library books.

Week 3 - review

Bible Time: We read from 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles this week. The most important story in our opinion as parents is the story from 2 Chronicles 19-20, where Jehoshaphat led his people into battle with praises. However, even though I really talked this story up and reviewed it with the kids each day, two days later no one really knew anything at all about Jehoshaphat. Junior wasn't even sure if he was a good king or a bad king. *Sigh* I want to go back to this story later on in the year and see if I have any fresh ideas for it.

History: We are doing Colonial Life from Homeschool in the Woods. This week we made fortune catchers and silhouettes. The kids love, love, love the fortune catchers. Junior ended up making one for his grandpa and Peanut made one for a little friend who was coming over.

The silhouettes were more difficult. I will put up a post with silhouette tips later. Dad will take them to work and shrink them on the large copy machine there, and they will make a nice framed piece, I believe.

Our read-aloud is still The Warrior's Challenge by Dave and Neta Jackson. I like it. There are some themes that I feel my kids would better relate to if they were older, but it is not a big deal. The subject of cruelty to Native Americans is dealt with without being disturbing to young kids.
In the evenings, I do read-alouds with Peanut by herself. We love reading the Burgess Animal stories, but we just started on Emily's Runaway Imagination by Beverly Clearly, and we are enjoying it. Somehow I missed it growing up.

For language arts, we are still doing copywork using the Rules of Civility from our unit study.

Reading: Junior finished up Nate the Great and started on Prairie School. Peanut finished The Skippack School, and she really liked it. After the first few chapters, I did not have to share the reading with her. She got into it on her own, and didn't want to wait on me to finish what I was doing.

For science, we got a lot of books at the library, but we haven't gotten started on them yet. Junior is wanting to study buoyant forces. Before I got to the library, I found some directions online for making a Cartesian Diver, so we did that. It was a bit tricky, but we got it to work. The cartesian diver doesn't exactly demonstrate buoyant forces, but it is close enough. My opinion is that when he says "buoyant forces," he means that he wants to do water experiments, and he did enjoy the Cartesian Diver.