August 26-30 : Our 1st week back to school

We took pictures early Monday

 morning to start off our school year.

 This is year has 2 new "firsts" for me: 

1.     my 1st time not using a "boxed" curriculum
2. my 1st time homeschooling a preschooler

#1. The first year I homeschooled {Thomas only} we used all Abeka. It was kindergarten, and simple to follow and keep up with lessons. The next two years, I used Heart of Dakota, {both boys did 1 guide together} and I loved it because I could open my teacher manual and there was my whole day planned out for me in 9 square boxes.

#2. I sent both of my boys to preschool from the time they were 3 until it was time for kindergarten, and last year when Sarah was 3, she went to preschool. This year I decided to preschool her at home. 

So far this week I've learned that:

1. I think I have put a lot on us this year {click here to see what we are using}

and

2. I thought I had everything planned out as far as a lesson plan, and quickly learned by day 2 of this week that I need a better system {after forgetting to do a few things on the 1st day}.

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This week was a little slow with us trying to figure out a new routine and understand our new books and how they each work.

I'm not sure how I want to go about the weekly reviews so I'll try a few different ways until I find one that I like best. This week I'll go by  each child. And, I'll just post highlights, and try not to go into too much detail.

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{I didn't take a lot of pictures since the days flew by and we were trying to get the hang of things again. I will try to get more next week!}.

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All together:

     We started out each morning with prayer followed by reading our Bible. We read 1 chapter of Proverbs per day, and we also read Psalms 91 every day. I read in our devotional book, and a Bible story. They also worked in their daily notebooking journals everyday together.

The boys:

   We started the book Little House in the Big Woods and read the first 4 chapters {1 chapter per day}.  After each chapter, we did activities that corresponded with our reading from The Prairie Primer, and also from the Binder Builder that I bought to go along with it.

Examples:

*I mixed Epsom salt and water, boiled it, then let it cool. Once it was cooled the boys painted designs onto colored cardstock. Once the paintings were dry it look like Jack Frost had left a pretty picture on the window.

*We watched a YouTube video on someone whittling. Of course, Thomas LOVED this and was amazed at the things that can be made.

*The boys wanted to watch someone make butter, so we pulled up a YouTube video of that, and now the kids want to make butter. {I have to get the "stuff" at the store, but we will be making butter in the near future!}.

*We looked up what a Brindle Bulldog looks like and also talked about bears, owls, and panthers.

Thomas:

 Thomas started his cursive writing and he is really enjoying practicing everyday. So far, he's learned lowercase i, u, and t.

My only form of planning this week has been these sticky tabs. Thomas wanted to keep them after each lesson.
























Nathaniel:
    I am happy so far with my phonics choice for Nathaniel. I put him back in Kindergarten phonics {for the 3rd time}. He keeps telling me how easy it is, and how much he is enjoying the games and simplicity of the work. {He didn't actually say it that way, but you know what I mean}.

He also started lesson 1 in Math U See Alpha and will be ready for lesson 2 next week. He loves the blocks, and I am amazed at how fast he picked up the place value and the meaning of it. 

 Nathaniel saying his numbers and their nicknames. 

Sarah enjoys this part too. She tells everyone about the numbers "one-ty, one-ty one, one-ty two etc."























Sarah:
    Sarah has worked on the letter A this week. She has had so much fun with "school" and always asked for more "work". Some of the things she has done are:

• sticker art
• coloring
• cutting/pasting
• dot art 
• find the letter A in a paragraph
• making an A with the geoboard

I ordered her the Leap Frog movie Letter Factory and in 2 days she has probably watched it 6 times. I have also found her in her room making the shape of an A with different objects. She is so sweet and so eager to learn.

Okay so this is the only picture I have of Sarah from this week. She is watching her new movie.































Hattie:
   Hattie has really surprised me this week. She wants to be right in the middle of  everything. She wants to color, make "dots", and build with blocks just like the rest of the kids. I dont remember the boys ever doing this, and Sarah always entertained herself at that age, so this was new to me. She was even watching the Leap Frog Letter Factory movie and saying the letter sounds along with the rest of us. 

 Hattie playing with one her new babies she got for her birthday.

Thank you for stopping by to see some of the things we did this week. I'm happy to be back in the blogging world once again.

Back To School Interviews

I'm back to blogging! We've been "out of school" since the beginning of May and I took a blogging break! I'll start back with interviews I did of the kids today. I found this interview idea on a fellow homeschool mama's blog and knew right away that I wanted to start doing this yearly!!

{I typed as they answered, word for word}

Thomas 
Age: 8
Grade: 3rd
1. What is your favorite color? blue

2. What is your favorite food? chicken legs

3. Where is your favorite place to go? Eli's house

4. Who is your best friend? Eli

5. What do you want to be when you grow up? police

6. What is one field trip you'd like to go on this year? Science Center

7.What are you most excited about for this year? cursive writing

8. If you could be any animal, which would you be? shark

 

9. If you could be granted one wish, what would it be and why? we would go to Heaven because I really want to go

10.What makes our family special? we live close to our cousins

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Nathaniel 
age: 7
grade: 1st

1. What is your favorite color? red

2. What is your favorite food? steak

3. Where is your favorite place to go?  Lonestar Steakhouse, even though I've never been there

4. Who is your best friend? Josh

5. What do you want to be when you grow up? firefighter

6. What is one field trip you'd like to go on this year? the beach

7.What are you most excited about for this year? going to Discovery Place

8. If you could be any animal, which would you be? bear

9. If you could be granted one wish, what would it be and why?  probably that I could play baseball because I love it

10.What makes our family special? because we were all born in the same hospital 

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Sarah

age: 4

grade: preschool 

 1. What is your favorite color? purple and my favorite color is green, but not dark green

2. What is your favorite food? grapes

3. Where is your favorite place to go? Discovery Place

4.Who is your best friend? Sophie and you, Mommy

5. What do you want to be when you grow up? a princess

 
 6. What is one field trip you'd like to go on this year? wherever we want to go

7.What are you most excited about for this year? learning about crocodiles and butterflies

8. If you could be any animal, which would you be? butterfly

9. If you could be granted one wish, what would it be and why? I would have my new dog because I want my dog to marry Jake 

10.What makes our family special? because God made all of our family and all of the people and everything, he made the dogs, he made the family and every boy and girl.

 

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Hattie

age: 2
grade: totschool

Hattie wasn't interviewed, only because her answers wouldn't have made sense with the questions, so I'll answer a few for her.

*favorite color:she favors purple things

*favorite food: loves yogurt

*favorite place to go: outside 
 

Unit 34 review {BLHFHG}

Unit 34 review Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory {+ extras}

Bible Verse:

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing.  

I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto

those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize 

of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ.

Phillipians 3:13-14

History:
This week's focus was on Abraham Lincoln and the Transcontinental Railroad. Here is a little about what we learned about Abe.

Abraham Lincoln:
*born in Kentucky
*born in a log cabin
*moved many times as a child
*16th US President

We also looked at a comparison chart of Abraham Lincoln and Bro. Branham and the boys were amazed at the similarities.


While Lincoln was president, he approved of the Transcontinental Railroad that would cross America. Two groups of people worked on the railroad, the Irish and the Chinese.  We read a story about a boy named Mike, who was from Ireland. Mike was a "water boy" and helped carry water to the men, including his father, that worked building the railroad. The water the men drank was hot and stale {yuck}. As the railroad was coming to completion, the 2 groups of men had a race by trying to "outlay" the other group. The boys had a sock race to see who could get more socks in a basket.

We filled in the last of our timeline this week as well.

When the track was finished people from all across America came to celebrate.

Science:
We filled 2 cups with water. One with HOT water and the other with COLD. Then we put food coloring in both at the same time. We could see that the food coloring in the HOT water went to the bottom faster. This is because when something is hot, the molecules move more quickly.

We also read where the Chinese workers had to blast through mountains to build the track. We learned about the 3 layers of the Earth.  And then we made our own example of the Earth.

Storytime:
We finished our Folk Tale, The Apple and The Arrow. The boys really enjoyed this book. We talked about virtue, and compare/contrast again.


Art:

We also pained some clouds with sweetened condensed milk.

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Extras:

Thomas made his own pizza

Sarah eating her favorite {french toast} before going to preschool

Thomas made this for one of his scout requirements....it says: cool lego ship

Lunch with a friend and some legos

Unit 33 review {BLHFHG}

Unit 33 Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory {+ extras}

{I'm sorry that there are no pictures for this week's review, blogger isn't uploading my pictures for this week}

Bible:

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine:

but a broken spirit drieth the bones.

Proverbs 17:22

We talked about our attitudes, and how having a positive attitude will make others happy, and a bad attitude with make others sad, and not want to "play" with us. We talked about what a "good medicine" does, and how we want to stay healthy and happy. We named some people we know that are always cheerful and how it feels to be around cheerful people.

History:
This week we talked about a little girl named Hilda that had came from Norway with her family {dad, mom, and 2 brothers}, to live on the Great Plains. In Norway, Hilda had a really nice house and lots of friends. When Hilda's family moved, they had to live in a sod house and she had no one to play with, and she complained a lot, missing home. In the winter, Hilda's dad and brothers went to town to get supplies, and on the way back they were caught in a snowstorm. God was watching over the men and the oxen led them back home. In the spring, a group of  covered wagons came through and stopped at Hilda's house. Hilda fogot how sad she was {missing Norway} because she was busy playing with the babies that were in the wagons. Hilda's mother told her that one of the wagons would be going back to Norway and that she could go back with them and live with her grandmother. Hilda decided to stay with her family.


Science:
We talked about different kids of dirt and colored a map to show what kind of dirt the western states have.  We learned that in the Great Plains the dirt was dark black which was good for growing crops.
The Indians taught the pioneers how to grow corn and wheat. We read about seeds and the different parts of a seed. When found the little "helicopter's" outside {aka maple seeds} and broke a few open to see what we could find. We also made a replica of a seed with playdough and covered it in saran wrap to be a coat for the seed.

Art:
We talked about snowflakes and how that no 2 snowflakes are exactly the same. We also made paper snowflakes and compared them.

Geography:
We found Norway on the globe, and seen how far it was from the Great Plains. We talked about how different the land was in Norway and the Great Plains.


Storytime:
 We started our last book genre today: Folk Tale. Our book is The Apple And The Arrow. To introduce the folk tale genre we played telephone. I told a story to Thomas, he then told Nathaniel and then Nathaniel said it aloud. The story was basically the same, but with some details added or taken away.  Folk tales are often changed as they are retold. 
We talked about the words: compare and contrast. We talked about the differences and similarities between the setting of the story and our home.
We talked about virtue, and found that in the story the father wouldn't bow to the pole and hat and thought he was showing virtue.

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Abeka:
In our Abeka studies, we learned about percipitation, and about the atmosphere. We also talked about slaves and America's future.

Sarah's 4th Birthday

 Happy Birthday Sarah Hope

On April 21st, 2009, my boys became big brothers to a little princess. We named her Sarah Hope. She was born a toddler, I say, weighing in at 9 lbs and 12 oz.

Sarah with the midwife

1 year old

2 years old

she was almost 3

4th birthday party

I cant believe she's 4 now. Time surely does fly when you are having fun! Sarah means princess, and she definitely  lives up to her name. She's a very sweet, loving, caring little girl. She loves her brothers, that we call "the boys", and her little sister, Hattie. I pray that the Lord continues to bless her, and gives her many more happy, healthy years with us.

Unit 32 review {BLHFHG}

Unit 32 Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory {+ extras}

Bible:

A man that hath friends must show himself friendly: 

and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

Proverbs 18:24  

 

We named our best friends, and talked about our BEST friend, Jesus. He cares for/about us when it seems that no one else does.

History:
This week our focus was on the Oregon and the California Trail. 

 We started the week off with a story about a little girl named Nell, who had traveled the Oregon Trail with her family. She was 10 years old and was left alone by her father to take care of her twin siblings for a few days. Why, you ask? Her mother was sick and her father needed to take her to a nearby town to get medical help. While caring for the twins, Nell gave them some molasses and a feather to play with until they fell asleep. Nell accidentally fell asleep along with the twins, and awoke to strange noises outside. It was a BEAR!! He had smelled the molasses and opened to door to find it. Nell threw the molasses jar outside and then shot the bear with a pistol.

Nell shooting the bear

After reading about Nell and the Oregon Trail, we read a story about a boy named Ken. Ken traveled alone to meet his father on the California Trail.  Ken's father had went to California to find gold, but he didn't find very much and opened a store instead. During Ken's journey west, California became the 31st state in 1850. 

We made a bar graph of the population in California in the years: 1848,1849, and 1852.

kinda hard to see, but this is an overhead view of the graph

upclose view of graph

*The huge increase in population is because gold was found during that time in California.


Geography:
We found a map with markings of the Oregon Trail and studied it . 

We remembered that the Oregon Trail started in Missouri. 

Some other places we talked about were:

Platte River

Mississippi River

Great Plains

South Pass

Snake River

Columbia River

Oregon City

Science:

We read about bears and learned that black bears can grow to be 10 feet tall and weigh up to 1,700 pounds.

Bears dont have hands like we do, but they have paws. What would it be like to have a paw instead of a hand? We found out......with paws you cant pinch things!! 

it would be hard to write with a paw

Sarah's paw

picking up an eraser

Boots picked up a paper clip

Artistic Expression:

We talked about how God watches over us all the time. He NEVER sleeps, and he never gets sleepy or tired. 

Storytime:

We finished our realistic fiction book, Mountain Born, this week. The boys really enjoyed this story.  We talked about our favorite character{s}. We talked about problems in the story and what we might have done to solve the problem. 

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We learned about wind, storms, and weather in our Abeka studies.

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Extras:

The boys finished up their Horizons studies this week. They are excited to be finished up with those. Thomas will be taking his end of grade testing as soon as I order it!! 

We won a set of Toob toys from a giveaway on  Grace Filled Homeschooling's blog. The boys were allowed to choose 1 Toob. They were torn between the Powhatan Indians and the Jamestown Settlers, but choose the Indians. When the Toob arrived from Safari Ltd. inside we found lots of goodies.

Toobs:  
*Powhatan Indians
*Jamestown Settlers
*North American Wildlife

Also, an egg with a baby dinosaur inside, a calendar, and also a pack of good luck mini's. 

These have been a big hit here at the house!!

"Hattie, dont mess with them". ~Boots

Indians VS Settlers

Hattie fell asleep eating!

Thomas reading his ER book.

 

unit 31 review {BLHFHG}

Unit 31 Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory {+ extras}

Bible:

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life,

what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your

body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, 

and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air:

for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns;

yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. 

Are ye not much better than they?

We talked about how worrying doesn't help anything or anyone, and how it can make your body weak and sick. We talked about how God loves to give us things, and that we should always remember to praise and thank him as often as we can.

 

History:

The Pioneers that traveled in covered wagons lived in wagons as they traveled West. At night, they stopped the wagons and made a circle and a few Pioneers would guard them from Indians and wild animals. 

We learned about 3 westward trails that started in Independence, Missouri:

1.The Santa Fe Trail
2.The Oregon Trail
3.The California Trail 

We focused on the Santa Fe trail this week. We found a map in our book and traced the trail with our fingers. Some words we studied were: plain, Great Plains, pass, Raton Pass, source of a river, and the Rio Grande. We didn't go into much detail on those, but they did "hear" the words. 

We read a story about a boy named Nick. Nick took a trip West with his dad on the Santa Fe trail. On the way, a storm came and Nick lost his hat. When Nick and his father got to Santa Fe he seen the men wearing sombreros and he wanted one. He didnt have any money but he had a few items in his pockets he was willing to trade for a hat. He was about to trade his pocket organ {harmonica} with a little boy when his dad came and gave him a hat. 

Nick was playing Yankee Doodle on his pocket organ. The boys pretend to be in Santa Fe and dance as the spanish people danced. We learned that the men wore sombreros and the women wore bright-colored skirts. They enjoyed dancing in Santa Fe, and danced around the sombreros.

Here are the boys dancing around a hat {we dont own a sombrero,yet .....}

We also added to our timeline this week!!

 

Science:

 We studied fireflies, or lightening bugs as we call them.Lightening bugs are insects and have 3 body parts, 6 legs, and 2 antennae. We learned that fireflies light up when they are searching for a mate. 

  

Storytime:

We are still reading our realistic fiction book, Mountain Born. 

We talked about the setting of the book, and how this story could very well have happened.  We also talked about integrity {being honest and doing what is right, even when no one else is watching, so that you may be blameless in the eyes of the Lord. Self control was another topic this week. Sometimes its hard to have self control. Here are some things the boys listed that are hard to control:

• biting fingenails
• wanting to say mean things to my brother
• wanting to say bad words    

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Thomas:

Thomas got a special treat this week. He finished 3 Diary of the Wimpy Kid books recently so his daddy let him rent one of the movies from Amazon. 

He is doing well with his math, and has 6 more lessons and he'll be done with his math. He is also almost finished with his emerging reader books. I am so proud of the progress Thomas has made this year with is reading.

Nathaniel:

Nathaniel is enjoying reading and is progressing with his words. He 5 lessons left of math and phonics for the year.

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Abeka

This week in our Abeka books we learned:

health: manners at school and church

science:we talked about energy, gravity, and friction

history: American Cowboys

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Extras:

my laundry helper

Hattie wearing her sisters shoes

sisterly love

"Hattie, get on my back and ride"~Sarah

"Hattie, get UP"~Sarah

 Until next week................