Through the Narrow Gate

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Book 4 of 52 in 52

2012-01-29T12:12:00.000-08:00

It's been several years since I last read Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. I remember reading aloud in class, analyzing, stopping every few lines to discuss literary devices or allusions, etc. It was a slow painstaking process, and I think back then I vowed never to read Shakespeare again. Never say never I suppose.

DD1 and I have been reading the play as part of her Omnibus work, and I'm surprised to say I actually enjoyed it. It took some time to get used to the style; but there is definitely something to be said for just taking time to sit back, read, and enjoy the work in its entirety apart from the analysis. To laugh at the silliness of the play within the play. To shake your head at the mischief caused by the fairies. To cheer the final outcome when all is put to right again. It's been great to simply enjoy Shakespeare together. We'll top it off with a video of the play later in the week. Dare I say I'm actually looking forward to the other Shakespeare titles on our list for this year.

Week 20: A Brief Week

2012-01-27T11:43:00.000-08:00

We had a bit of a short week due to a two day visit by my parents and Henry being sick. Overall, it was still a pretty good week.

Jessie's 7th Grade

Jessie's finished up her 6th chapter of Lial's this week and began working with percentages in chapter 7.
In CW, she finished analyzing FDR's speech and wrote her own imitation of it changing the event from the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
We squeezed in one of her CE chapters, a bit of logic, and three grammar lessons on adjectives.
She finished reading Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream but otherwise had the week off from Omnibus as we wait for the next primary book to arrive.
She worked with the dative case in Greek and completed four days of Latin assignments.

Violet's 5th Grade

Violet began her new Singapore 5B books this week working with decimals.
She did three days of reading from Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Brill's Madeline Takes Command.

In CW, she rewrote "The Wooden Horse" from Colum's The Children's Homer and practiced working with adjectives.
Three days of spelling, dictation, and grammar rounded out the week for language arts.
She did complete lesson 19 in LfC B and three days of logic as well.

Benny's 2nd Grade

Benny worked on mental addition in Singapore and the relationship between multiplication and division in Miquon.
We continued reading Ginger Pye by Estes together. He read a few more chapters in Speare's The Sign of the Beaver to me, and in our Bible reading we began the book of Acts.
He did three days of spelling, copywork, and cursive handwriting in which he is now up to the letter L.
He did complete all five days of his critical thinking in three days.

HISTORY

No notebooking pages this week. The girls learned about slavery and wrote a summary of Haskin's Bound for America. They took a closer look at pioneer life by reading Jared's Island by de Angeli and The Golden Horseshoe by Coatsworth. On Wednesday, they summarized a chapter from Trial and Triumph on the missionary David Brainerd. Benny got the week off from history because I couldn't really find anything appropriate. We will read Jared's Island next week once we've finished Ginger Pye for literature. No notebooking pages. We'll do both weeks next Friday.

SCIENCE

Jessie finished up the second chapter on invertebrates this week learning about arthropods and mollusks, complete and incomplete metamorphosis, and did a fair job on her test. We also completed an investigation of the cuttlefish comparing the actual facts about the species to the description from Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Violet learned about centripetal and centrifugal forces this week. Here she is spinning a cup half filled with water over her head. (Even though she had already read the lesson, she still thought she might get wet.)

She also tied one of the dog's tennis balls to some yarn and compared the speed and force necessary to spin the ball on a short string versus a longer one.

Benny and I read more about fish.

ART

Violet wanted to complete some art this week, so she chose a lesson on drawing a beach house from my folder.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry started out the week with his normal energy riding on Jessie's shoulders so he could tower above everyone else,

building towers out of Battleship pegs when Benny forgot to put the game away,

and teasing the dog with the Violet's tennis ball on a piece of yarn until the yarn finally slid off.

By the end of the week, he was running a fever and didn't have the energy to do much but listen to books or watch television. Hopefully, it will pass quickly.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth - Book 3 of 52 in 52

2012-01-22T12:57:00.000-08:00

Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne is a classic story by the man some consider the father of science fiction. Professor Lindenbrock, a famous geologist, rushes home one evening ecstatic over his latest discovery of a very old Icelandic manuscript at the local book store. His excitement increases as a piece of parchment written in code falls out of the book. Once decoded the professor is determined to follow in the footsteps of its author and journey to the center of the Earth dragging his rather reluctant nephew along for the expedition. They journey to Iceland where they hire a guide to take them into the crater of an extinct volcano. Then the descent begins. They take wrong turns, get separated, and run low on supplies for a time; yet they continually overcome each new difficulty, press on their way, and are astounded by the marvels they encounter along the way.

It's great classic work for age 10 and up. Some of the geology and description can be a bit tedious at times, but their is plenty of adventure to move the story along. Definitely worth the effort to read.

Week 19: Still going

2012-01-20T13:06:00.000-08:00

Jessie's 7th Grade

Jessie worked on rate, ratio, proportion, and angles this week in Lial's Prealgebra. Many of the concepts were review, but there was some new terminology to learn.
In R&S, she completed all but the test for her unit on adjectives and gave an oral report on the Mayflower Compact.
In CW, she paraphrased Portia's speech in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, learned about deliberative speech, and began analyzing FDR's congressional address in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
We completed Beowulf by Heaney for Omnibus primary and began A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare for Omnibus secondary.
She completed another lesson in CE and her regular logic work.
For Latin she finished up personal pronouns and began working on demonstrative and imperative pronouns. In EG2, she worked on the second person pronouns.

Violet's 5th Grade

Violet spent her week in math working on the semester review in her Singapore IP book, completing word problems covering area and perimeter, and continuing to work on her math facts with the Flashmaster and multiplication charts.
In R&S, she learned about demonstrative and indefinite pronouns.
She completed a review chapter in SWO G, her dictation, and her regular logic assignments.
In CW, she rewrote "Damon and Pythias", focused on adjectives for analysis, and practice paraphrasing by expanding.
In Latin, she had a review chapter with some more practice with Roman numerals.
Her literature continues to be Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Brill's Madeline Takes Command.

Benny's Second Grade

Benny finished his last page in his 2A IP book this week and began his Singapore 2B math books. YEAH!! His Miquon Green book had him focusing on patterns in multiplying like 3x4=12, 3x40=120, 3x400=1200.
In grammar, we learned about state of being verbs and worked on memorizing the chant. He also finished copying the definition of a verb and the list of state of being verbs for his manuscript copywork. In cursive, we're up to the letter I.
He finished reading Farley's The Black Stallion to me and began reading Speare's The Sign of the Beaver. We're still working through Ginger Pye by Estes as our read aloud. In Egermeier's Bible story book we're finally into the book of Acts.
On the right is one of his Mind Benders pages from his critical thinking work. He also completed another one and a half lesson in SWO B.

HISTORY

The girls read and summarized John Peter Zenger: Free Press Advocate by Westermann, outlined a portion of a chapter from Guerber's The Story of the Thirteen Colonies covering the War of Austrian Succession, and summarized two chapters from Marshall's Our Island Story covering the failed attempt by the Jacobites to place a Stuart back on the throne of England. Jessie's summaries were of much better quality this week after I had her revise some the previous week. This week I focused on Violet's writing. She was not happy to revise her first summary and completed rewrite her second summary twice, but at least I know she comprehends the material and can give a well ordered summary with detail when she chooses (or is required) to do so.

I couldn't find any books covering the same topics for Benny, so we learned about Edmund Halley using Halley's Comet by Fradin. He got a break from narration this week.

SCIENCE

Jessie finished chapter 15 in BJU, dissected an earthworm, and began learning about mollusks in lesson 16 this week.

We also checked back up on her bean seed experiment. There were 4 control, 1 refrigerated, and 2 frozen bean sprouting.

Violet completed unit 4 this week. One of the lessons covered gravitational acceleration and challenged her to design a parachute for an egg. She used a Tupperware container with a folded paper towel attached to a fabric parachute.

Then we dropped it about 5 or 6 feet. The shell did crack, but most of the egg stayed inside the shell. She was thrilled to take it inside and scramble it for a second breakfast.

Benny and I read about ichthyosaurs and began learning about fish this week. There weren't any activities to go along with the reading.

GEOGRAPHY / ART

Jessie has started learning the countries of South America. Violet is on level 4 of her states game. Benny has made it to Texas in his state song and has almost mastered all of the midwestern states.

Violet drew a duck and colored it in with watercolor pencils. Benny's art for the week is in the Wednesday post below.

BENNY'S PRESCHOOL

We stepped it up a notch in Benny's preschool this week. We added a couple of songs to our reading time, acted out the Jack be nimble rhyme by jumping over candlesticks, and made sure to fit in a few Kumon pages as well.

WW: Benny's Creations

2012-01-18T13:33:00.000-08:00

Benny decided to test out the art kit that he received for Christmas and drew a picture of a catfish.

He was also very proud of his extremely long plane.

Beowulf - Book 2 of 52 in 52

2012-01-15T12:13:00.000-08:00

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Heaney is an excellent rendering of the enduring ancient tale (far better than whatever version I read excerpts of in high school that I detested). Beowulf, who as a youth first proved his strength in fending off and slaying a group of sea monsters, travels to the Danes to offer his assistance to King Hrothgar whose hall is under nightly attack by the monster Grendel. After proving his strength and heroism against first Grendel and then Grendel's mother, Beowulf returns triumphant to his homeland. Later after the death of his king and the king's son, Beowulf is made ruler of his people and reigns wisely for 50 years until a foolish slave stumbles upon a dragon asleep on an ancient hoard and steals a golden goblet. The dragon awakens and begins to lay waste to the surrounding land in his anger. Beowulf once again steps forward to defeat this latest monster, but his sword fails him. The dragon is able to inflict a mortal wound before Beowulf slays the beast with his dagger.

I confess that I started reading Beowulf simply because it is one of those great books people say everyone should read and because it was on the list for my DD's Omnibus lessons. I have to say I have truly come to love and appreciate the tale. Yes, there is plenty of action to draw the reader's interest, but there is also beautiful imagery and description of a world that disappeared long ago. The juxtaposition of the obvious Christian worldview of the original author and the futility of the pagan culture with its constant feuding and warfare has made for some excellent discussion with DD. I would encourage anyone who has not read it to set aside their preconceived notions and read it for themselves. You may be surprised and actually enjoy it.

Week 18: Midway Point!!

2012-01-13T14:52:00.000-08:00

Jessie's 7th Grade

Jessie finished up the 5th chapter of Lial's this week on decimals.
She analyzed two excerpts from Shakespeare's King Lear and The Merchant of Venice for CW.
In Omnibus, she completed Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and made it through another third of Beowulf by Heaney.
Grammar covered demonstrative and indefinite pronouns as well as writing an outline from notes on index cards.
As always there was vocabulary, logic, and memory work.
In LA1, she completed chapter 18 and moved on to Latin pronouns in chapter 19.

Violet's 5th Grade

Violet finished up her Singapore 5A textbook this week.
She worked on pronoun cases in grammar and did well on her spelling test.
For writing, she rewrote "The Retreat of the Ten Thousand" for CW and did some dictation from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
She continues to progress through Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Verne and Madeline Takes Command by Brill.
She completed the second Mind Benders book and moved on to B3 this week in logic.
In Latin, she learned to decline tres, tria and a couple of more uses for the genitive case.

Benny's 2nd Grade

Benny completed the final pages in his Singapore 2A textbook and workbook this week and began his new Miquon Green book.
In grammar, we began discussing verbs and copied the first portion of the copywork.
Copywork was random Bible verses. We also worked on cursive Ee and Ff and spent a few days practicing putting the letters he has learned so far together in words both for him to trace and to copy.
We contined with The Black Stallion by Farley for phonics practice and began Ginger Pye by Estes for our read aloud.
He also did his regular memory work and critical thinking.

GEOGRAPHY

Jessie continues to work on North American landforms. Violet is working on capitals. Benny added Oklahoma, Oregon, and Pennsylvania to his song and Oklanhoma and Texas to his mapwork.

HISTORY

Jessie and Violet outlined a chapter of Our Island Story by Marshall covering the death of Queen Anne and the reign of George I and wrote summaries of the colonies of New Orleans and Georgia based on chapters from Marshall's This Country of Ours. Jessie learned about the First Great Awakening by reading Trial and Triumph by Hannula to cover John Wesley, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and John Newton. Violet read some background information about the Great Awakening, two chapters covering Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley, and a few pages covering hymn writing during the period from Hearts and Hands by Withrow. Each of the girls wrote summaries of their reading. Benny and I read the same information from Hearts and Hands spread over the week and also enjoyed the chapter on Bach for fun. Benny answered questions on the First Great Awakening and hymn writing for his first narration and told me about Jonathan Edwards for the second.

SCIENCE

Jessie took her chapter 14 test in the A book of BJU Life Science. She was very excited to started book B this week. (I was very excited to finally move on to animals.) This week we covered sponges, jellyfish, flatworms, and roundworms.

Violet worked on the laws of motion and gravity this week.

She observed the first law of motion by pulling a basketball in a wagon and observing the basketball first try to stay at rest when she started pulling the wagon and then try to stay moving when we stopped the wagon.

To illustrate the second law of motion, we first tapped two identical rollerskates with different forces and observed that the skate receiving the great force moved the greatest distance. Then we added a can of fruit to one skate and applied the same force to each making the lighter skate travel a farther distance.

Benny and I read about aquatic frogs, toads, and salamanders. We also started the 5th chapter reading about nothosaurs, monosaurs, plesiosaurs, and pliosaurs. We laid out a 9 foot head for a pliosaur with a tennis ball to mark the eye and the sock to mark the nostril and imagined banana sized teeth in its mouth.

Benny also tried to hold the broom out by one end as we tried to imagine how a plesiosaur manuevered with its extra long neck.

ART / MUSIC

Violet completed a painting of a winter scene.

Benny chose a couple of projects out of his Kumon art book.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I read an assortment of books this week. We also spent a portion of our time two days this week building the horse and then the pig with our 16 cube puzzle set.

He snuck Jessie's bird book from her room and quite happily pushed buttons and listened to different big calls for half an hour one morning.

Today, he gave Jessie a good workout by making her drag him through the house. I was impressed at how long he managed to hold on.

WW: Imaginative fun

2012-01-11T13:36:00.000-08:00

I think the boys had a distinct advantage in position, number, and arms.

Weeks 17: Starting Back Up

2012-01-06T11:19:00.001-08:00

Jessie's 7th Grade

Jessie continued working with decimals this week in Lial's Prealgebra. The final section on mean, weighted mean, median, and mode gave her a little trouble, so I'll have her do the even problems Monday after a bit of review.
In R&S, she moved on to a new unit on pronouns and worked mainly with the proper use of different cases.
She focused on the opposite and cause paragraphs for CW Diogenes and did her regular vocabulary.
We continued with Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood for Omnibus secondary while beginning Beowulf by Heaney for primary. The picture to the left is an omnibus writing assignment for a 4 stanza ballad with a 2 line refrain.
In addition to regular logic, she completed lesson 15 in EG2 and after 2 days of review began working on lesson 18 in LA1.

Violet's 5th Grade

Violet began working with angles this week in math. She did a bit of measuring with a compass and lots of calculating based on the information given. In CWP 5, she's begun working on problems of area and perimeter as seen on the right.
She also began a new R&S unit on pronouns and completed another spelling chapter.
For CW, she analyzed and rewrote the model "The Defeat of Cyrus".
Her new literature selections are Journey to the Center of the Earth by Verne and Madeline Takes Command by Brill.
She finished her first Think-a-Grams book for logic and worked on the declination of duo in LfC B

Benny's 2nd grade
Benny completed his IP unit on multiplying and dividing by 2 and 3 this week and has begun the midyear review exercises. In Miquon he used a hundred chart to answer questions of where he would end up after starting on a specific number and moving different ways.
We reviewed sentence types in FLL.
In addition to his regular spelling assignments and copywork, he began learning cursive this week as well.
We finished The Story of the Amulet by Nesbit as our read aloud and continued on The Black Stallion by Farley which we take turns reading.
He completed his critical thinking as well.

HISTORY

This week's topics for history included the Salem Witch Trials, Queen Anne's War, and the composers Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi.

Jessie read The Witchcraft of Salem Village by Jackson, Johann Sebastian Bach and the Art of Baroque Music by Getzinger, George Handel by Venezia, and Antonio Vivaldi and the Baroque Tradition by Getzinger. She wrote summaries of all the material except Handel and did a brief outline for Queen Anne's War. Violet used the Guerber Thirteen Colonies book for the first two topics and read Johann Sebastian Bach by Venezia and Venezia's Handel book as well. She completed three very brief summaries and an outline. Benny and I read about the war in SOTW 3. Other books for the week included Sebastian: A Book About Bach by Winter, Bach by Rachlin, Handel Who Knew What He Liked by Anderson, and Handel by Rachlin. Rather than hands on, we watched two short films this week from the library: Bach's Fight for Freedom and Handel's Last Chance.

SCIENCE

Jessie worked on flowering plants this week in BJU.

Here she is started an experiment with 3 groups of bean seeds: one control, one set refrigerated for an hour, and one set frozen for an hour.

We also soaked some food coloring into celery.

Violet has been studying kinematics.

We calculated her running speed over three different distances.

and calculated the acceleration of a toy car down our improvised ramp.

Benny did science! YEAH!

We also marked out the size of a leatherback sea turtle on our living room floor. Benny thought it was neat that he couldn't even reach across the width of the turtle.

GEOGRAPHY / ART / MUSIC

We resumed our regular geography activities.

He gets Jessie to tell him stories about our lives.

He's also been building towers out of our tuna cans when bored.

WW: A Few Snowflakes

2012-01-04T16:31:00.000-08:00

The kids were thilled at the first sight of snow this week. It didn't stick anywhere but the porch and even there it didn't last for long, but it was lovely to watch come down.

Christmas Memories

2012-01-03T16:31:00.000-08:00

We enjoyed a nice quiet Christmas at home this year.

The best gifts for the girls cost me only a bit of time and some printer ink. Jessie's been after me for some time to suggest some new books for her to read, so I put together a list.

Violet's been begging to read the 4th Harry Potter book, so I finally gave her permission and had checked a copy out for her hidden in my room.

Benny loved his lego set of Hagrid's hut, and I had a great time helping him put it together.

Henry was thrilled to have some "new" playdough cutters that I scoured the basement to find and put together into a set for him.

Week 16: Finishing up before Christmas, a belated recap

2012-01-02T11:16:00.000-08:00

Despite my children's wishes to the contrary, we did actually do some work the week before Christmas. It wasn't a full week as each had a few subjects off here and there.

Jessie's 7th Grade

Jessie completed chapter 4 in Lials and began chapter 5 on decimals.
She finished chapter 5 on verbs in R&S and had a few days off from grammar. She was completely off from writing, vocabulary, and omnibus.
We skipped her Critical Thinking in US history, but took a couple of days to complete the unit in Art of Argument.
Latin and Greek consisted solely of a bit of vocabulary review.

Violet's 5th Grade

Violet completed a section of IP for math and her regular word problems, but got a break from math drill.
She also completed another grammar chapter on Thursday, passed a spelling test, and took a break from literature and writing.
Unlike Jessie, she did complete another lesson in Latin and worked on declining unus.
She did her regular logic of Building Thinking Skills, Mind Benders, and Think-a-Grams.

Benny's 2nd Grade

Benny completed the textbook and workbook section on multiplication and division with 2 and 3 as well as several Miquon pages.
He completed 2 spelling tests and his copywork and was off from grammar and some literature.
He also had a portion of the week off from critical thinking.

HISTORY

In history, we covered the Glorious Revolution in England, King William's War, and Peter the Great. The girls outlined a chapter on James II in The Story of the Thirteen Colonies by Guerber, summarized the Glorious Revolution chapters form Our Island Story by Marshall, and read about Peter the Great in SOTW 3 and Peter the Great by Stanley for their final summary. Benny had a short week with 2 SOTW sections on King William's War and Peter the Great.

SCIENCE

Jessie tested for chapter 13 and took the remainder of the week off.

Violet finished up the second unit on Simple Machines.

We calculated the mechanical advantage of Benny's bike,

compared the difference in friction when dragging tape on the floor versus on rolling pencils,

and made some carboard gears to illustrate the information in the text.

Henry's Corner

Henry shadowed DH as much as possible, made me read How the Grinch Stole Christmas more times than I can count, and kept trying to bump the advent calendars ahead to make Christmas come faster.

Cut Your Grocery Bills in Half - Book 1 of 52 in 52

2012-01-01T14:16:00.000-08:00

It's a new year and a new chance to make some changes. My first book for the year is Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half with America's Cheapest Family by Steve & Annette Economides. It's a good book with a lot of common sense ideas including making meal plans and shopping lists, using price books and buying products at their cheapest prices, couponing, cooking in bulk, storage, and even saving at restaurants. At the end of each section there are three levels of challenges for beginner to advanced levels. There are more than enough ideas to pick and choose for all levels and lots of encouragement to take the ideas and make them work for you.

I'm probably somewhere in the intermediate level, but I did manage to squeeze in a couple of challenges already. I did a complete inventory of our chest freezer last week before even reading the book (to rotate stock and put the newer meats on the bottom), so I patted myself on the back for getting a head start. I also made a menu for this week and set a weekly grocery budget (and stayed within budget for the week). Now I just have to follow through and do the cooking.

Week 15: Almost ready for a break

2011-12-16T16:47:00.000-08:00

Jessie's 7th Grade

Jessie worked on positive and negative fractions this week in Lial's.
In CW, she focused on working with adjective elements within a small bit of Shakespeare and did several sentence shuffles.
We did her regular vocabulary, but lightened up on her logic and only completed half what I had planned. In grammar, she learned the active and passive voices.
She completed all of her Omnibus reading, but we have some discussions to finish next week. I found it impossible to finish up the Christmas cards, ship the presents, and put up the remaining decorations while still finding time to read her Omnibus assignments myself.
In Latin Alive, she finished lesson 16 covering more third declension nouns, the imperative mood, and the vocative case and started 17 working with the dative case. She also completed another week of EG2 where she worked with first person pronouns.

Violet's 5th Grade

Violet doubled up math lessons this week while studying ratios and has been breezing through her lessons.
She continued reading Treasure Island by Stevenson and Susan Creek by Wilson for literature.

She scored a 95 on her spelling test and practiced diagramming predicate nominatives and predicate adjectives in grammar.
For CW, she rewrote the model "How the Came Got Its Hump" by Kipling. We finished up the poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas" for dictation.
In Latin, she learned the cardinal numbers to ten. On the left, she's working on one of her Mind Bender's puzzles for logic.

Benny's 2nd Grade

Benny continued multiplying and divided by 2 and 3 this week in Singapore math and worked on a mixture of topics in Miquon.
He finished reading aloud Misty of Chincoteague by Henry and began The Black Stallion by Farley. We continued to read The Story of the Amulet by Nesbit.
He's still using a portion of Luke 2 for his copywork and doing his regular spelling assignments as well.

HISTORY

In history this week, we covered Bacon's Rebellion, William Penn, and the Ottoman Empire and the siege on Vienna. The girls outlined from This Country of Ours. Jessie read William Penn: Quaker Hero by Dolson while Violet read from The Story of the Thirteen Colonies.

Everyone read from SOTW 3 for the Ottoman Empire. Benny and I also read about William Penn using SOTW 3 and The Story of William Penn by Aliki. The only hands on for history was our mapwork this week.

SCIENCE

Jessie's still learning about plants in Life Science. This week she learned about the different parts of a vascular plant and its leaves. The one lab that we fit in was to measure the change in weight in a plant due to the loss of water by transpiration.

Violet studied wedges and screws. We took paper ramps and rolled them around pencils to illustrate how they are related.

She also learned about different levers and tried lifting a tub of nails using a yardstick and fulcrum to compare the length of her level to the ease of raising her weight.

ART / MUSIC / GEOGRAPHY

Violet and Benny made nutcrackers this week.

No music. Lots of geography games.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry and I read lots of Christmas books this week. He spent a lot of time moving ornaments around on the Christmas tree, so I pulled out our small tree for him to play with instead.

The Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede - Book 27 of 52 in 52

2011-12-13T12:18:00.000-08:00

The Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede is the well known work concerning the expansion of the gospel among the English. While I confess that there were portions of the text that were a bit dry, overall I enjoyed this selection much more than I expected. It contains tales of brave Christian kings, faithful monks, and Christian martyrs. Despite the outward threats of barbarians and the inward threats of heresy, the gospel of Christ was proclaimed and advanced through the land. There are portions such as the tales of miracles relating to the bodies of saints or the constant arguments over how to properly calculate the date of Easter that seem odd to our own day. To Bede the miracles are grounded in his belief in the resurrection, a promise of a greater resurrection to come. His emphasis on church unity should give any modern day Christian pause in our time of fractured denominations and conflicting beliefs. It definitely deserves its place among the great books.

The Dragon and the Raven by Henty - Book 26 of 52 in 52

2011-12-13T11:55:00.000-08:00

The Dragon and the Raven by Henty is a delightful peace of historical fiction set in England during the reign of King Alfred the Great during the invasions of the Danes. Edmund and his father are driven out of their home in East Anglia by the invaders. After his father's death, Edmund travels to Wessex with his companion Egbert to join the West Saxons under Alfred in their attempts to repel the invasion. Edmund proves to be an exceptional leader himself as he trains his men to harry the Danes on land and then builds a ship to harry them on the sea as well. Along the way he mercifully spares the life of a Dane at the request of his daughter. That one act of kindness changes the course of several subsequent events in the story. As with all Henty stories, there is plenty of historical detail, plenty of action, and of course a bit of romance as well. Sure to be a hit with both boys and girls.

Misty of Chincoteague by Henry - Book 25 of 52 in 52

2011-12-13T11:39:00.000-08:00

Misty of Chincoteague by Henry has long been a favorite tale of children. It has been years since I read the book for myself, but I decided to pull it out again for my oldest son (and my most reluctant reader). Paul and Maureen Beebe have their hearts set on capturing and taming the legendary Phantom, who has twice eluded the pony roundup gang. On the big day, it is Paul who finds the Phantom encumbered by a tiny foal and brings them to the rest of the ponies. Can Paul and Maureen manage to buy both horses? Can the Phantom ever really be tamed? A thrilling tale for young children (and their parents) to enjoy again and again.

The Book of Dragons by Nesbit - Book 24 of 52 in 52

2011-12-11T11:01:00.000-08:00

A Book of Dragons by Nesbit is a delightful collection of short stories for all ages. These aren't just your normal fire breathing dragon tales either. There are dragons of all sizes, dragons of ice, dragons with lots of feet, and dragons that purr. Add to the dragon mix a wide assortment of heroes and heroines and a good dose of adventure, and this will be a hit for dragon lovers everywhere. (Can you tell I love dragon stories.) The only downside that I have for the book is that the author could, on occasion, be more concise in her storytelling and leave out a bit of her own rambling. Still it is an excellent book.

Week 14: A Little More Like Christmas

2011-12-09T12:42:00.000-08:00

YEAH Jessie!!!

Jessie's 7th Grade

This week Jessie

completed her 3rd chapter in Lial's Prealgebra and passed the test with a 95%
worked on common problem verbs in grammar
completed the regular lesson and a half of vocabulary
analyzed adjectives in a short excerpt from Shakespeare for CW
completed reading The Ecclesiastical History of the English Church by Bede and the book of John for Omnibus. (We are a bit behind in our discussions.)
finished one and a half chapters of Latin Alive and another chapter of EG1
did her regular logic work.

Violet's dictation
Note the big smile. I chose
"Twas the Night Before Christmas"
for our lessons this week. Sometimes the
theme makes all the difference.

Violet's 5th Grade

This week Violet

completed the textbook portion of Singapore covering the area of triangles and began the IP section
Rewrote "The Woodchuck Episode" by Burrough for CW.
Successfully passed another spelling test
worked on problem verb pairs such as raise and rise for grammar
continued to read Treasure Island by Stevenson and began reading Susan Creek by Wilson as well.
reviewed Latin prepositions for LFC B

Benny's Second Grade
Benny

worked on the 3s multiplication table
read more of Misty of Chincoteague by Henry to me and listed to The Story of the Amulet by Nesbit.
copied a portion of Luke 2
covered commands and questions for grammar
aced another spelling test
generally kept his Santa hat on for the whole week once I had mended it

HISTORY

We covered a range of small topics in history this week including pirates, the plague and fire in London under Charles II, Isaac Newton and John Locke, John Bunyan, and King Philip's War. The girls read relevant sections from Our Island Story by Marshall, Trial and Triumph by Hannula, Courage and Conviction by Withrow, and SOTW 3. They outlined from The Story of the Thirteen Colonies by Guerber. Jessie also read Isaac Newton and Gravity by Parker as well as When London Burned by Henty (just for fun).
Benny and I read Pirate Diary by Platt (which I highly recommend although depending on the child you may need to preview some of the pictures) and portions of SOTW this week.

He was very excited to make a pirate hat out of newspaper

and enjoyed burning our paper version of London.

SCIENCE

Jessie completed chapter 12 this week on plants. We collected spore prints from mushrooms

and examined a bit of moss under the microscope. We also observed a prepared slide of a mushroom.

Violet learned about friction, work, and power. Here she used a rubber band to pull the train on 3 different surfaces. She compared the stretch of the rubber band on each surface and also compared the initial stretch to the stretch once the train was moving.

No science for Benny.

GEOGRAPHY / ART / MUSIC

Jessie is working on landforms in North America. Violet is progressing nicely with the states and is ready to begin working on capitals. Benny is about halfway through his song and still working on the midwestern states.

Violet is the only one who did art this week and drew a gingerbread man.

Mo music this week.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry is thoroughly enjoying his morning reading time and seems to prefer choosing his own books. Here are a couple of his antics for the week.

He successfully snuck into the kitchen, retrieved two pot lids, and banged them together behind Violet causing her to jump several times which he found hilarious.

He also entertained himself one day by popping the packaging that came with his Christmas stocking.

Week 13: A Little More Progress

2011-12-02T13:09:00.000-08:00

I spent most of the weekend Christmas shopping and didn't prepare very well for this week. DH was also home, and I let the kids spend more time with him before he leaves to go fishing tomorrow morning.

Jessie's 7th Grade

Jessie worked her way through chapter 2 of Lial's covering variables, simplifying algebraic expressions, and solving simple expressions to find the value of the variable.
She finished the textbook portion of her R&S chapter on verbs and had the week off from vocabulary.
In CW, we finally finished revising her second writing assignment and began the third unit. (I'll post her final draft and some thoughts on Diogenes in the next few days.)
We played catchup in Omnibus by completing the entire section on Henty's The Dragon and the Raven and continued our progress through Bede's history.
Our Latin focus for the past two weeks has been vocabulary. Jessie has been playing the online FlashDash game daily. This week she also managed to complete chapter 14 and begin chapter 15. In Greek, we've done a lot of flashcard work and completed lesson 12 covering the Greek word for not.
Logic also got done for the week.

Violet's 5th Grade

Violet completed her fractions section of Singapore IP and started some review in her textbook this week.
She had the week off from SWO, but continued working on verbs in R&S.
In CW, I took a week off from the regular lesson plans and added a chapter from Colum's retelling of the Golden Fleece to get some additional practice on the 3rd level of sentence shuffles and paraphrasing before moving to the next level.
She finished Around the World in Eighty Days by Verne and began reading Treasure Island by Stevenson (which she is enjoying so far). We've also been using short sections for dictation this week.
In Latin, she worked on ablative pronouns. She completed her regular combination of BTS 2, Mind Benders B2 and Think-a-Grams A1 for logic.

Benny's 2nd Grade

Benny finished his IP section on multiplication and began a new section in the textbook on the multiplication tables for 2 and 3 on Friday. He also finished the fractions portion of Miquon Blue.
He's still thoroughly enjoying reading Misty of Chincoteague by Henry to me, and we've begun The Story of the Amulet by Nesbit together.
For the month of December, his copywork will have a Christmas theme. This week he copied the first verse of "Away in a Manger".
In grammar, we worked on statements and commands. He did complete a spelling lesson and start a second this week as well.
I gave him the week off from critical thinking.

HISTORY

This week in history, we covered Prussia and Peter Stuyvesant and New York as well as the beginnings of New Jersey, North Carolina, and South Carolina. All three read about Frederick of Prussia in SOTW3. Jessie read The Story of the Thirteen Colonies by Alderman for the remaining topics. Violet read the same book one day, but read Old Silver Leg Takes Over! by Quackenbush and a chapter of Guerber's The Story of the Thirteen Colonies for the other two days. Benny and I read SOTW, Spier's The Legend of New Amsterdam, and Lobel's On the Day Peter Stuyvesant Sailed Into Town on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday, we read portions from Whitehurst's The Colony of New Jersey, The Colony of North Carolina, and The Colony of South Carolina. There was no hands on this week other than the mapwork.

SCIENCE

Jessie is the only one who did science this week. She finished the reading portion of chapter 11, took the test, and began chapter 12. We have several labs to catch up on still.

ART, MUSIC, GEOGRAPHY

No art or music this week. Geography was the normal online games for the girls and state song and mapwork for Benny.

HENRY'S CORNER

Henry spent as much of the entire week following DH around as he possibly could. When this wasn't possible, he managed to successfully sneak up on Jessie under the table and tickle her feet once making for several minutes of laughter by everyone at her surprised reaction.

Week 12: A Little Crazy

2011-11-18T16:29:00.000-08:00

Jessie's 7th Grade:

Jessie finished the first chapter in Lial's on integers and began reworking the comparable lessons in NEM1.
In CW, she began her writing assignment for unit 2.
She continues to make steady progress in CE2 and studied transitive verbs in R&S 7.
In Omnibus 2, we began reading The Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede but are still waiting for our secondary book, The Dragon and the Raven by Henty to be returned to the library even though it was due on the 15th.
Jessie completed the Unit 2 reading in LA1. We played some Latin jeopardy on Thursday, and FlashDash online on Friday. EG2 covered the declension of the word the.
Logic was also completed.

Violet's 5th Grade:

Violet continues to make steady progress through fractions in Singapore 5A.
She rewrote "The Face That Launches a Thousand Ships" by Guerber for CW Homer.
She completed a review chapter in spelling, finished the unit on verbs in R&S 5, and continued to reading Around the World in Eighty Days by Verne.
In LfC B, we worked on the accusative case prepositions. I added Latin grammar cards to her regular memory verse to get more consistent review of the chants.
Logic was the regular combination of BTS 2, Mind Benders B2, and Think-a-Grams A1.

Benny's 2nd Grade

Benny is really enjoying reading Misty of Chincoteague by Henry and listening to The Book of Dragons by Nesbit for literature.
In math, we began working on multiplication and division in Singapore and on fractions in Miquon.
He successfully passed another spelling test, learned the definition of a sentence, and copied the definition for handwriting.

HISTORY

The girls read Johannes Vermeer by Venezia, Marquette and Joliet by Syme, and La Salle and the Exploration of the Mississippi by Harmon this week for summaries and completed an outline of the chapter on Louis XIV from SOTW 3. They mapped France and the routes of the explorers. Benny and I covered the SOTW chapter and its map work. We've also started reading the Syme book, but it has taken longer than expected so we'll be finishing it up next week.

SCIENCE

Jessie finished up chapter 10 on evolution this week and moved on to a new chapter on the kingdom Protista. We managed to squeeze in a lab which we had previously skipped as well. The bags behind Jessie each have 10 radish seeds that were subjected to 0-20 minutes of heat in the oven in 5 minute increments or 0-20 seconds of radiation in the microwave in 5 second intervals. Rather than buy irradiated seeds, we followed the basic directions found here. We haven't yet chosen an endpoint for out experiment. We can either stop and write the results based on just germination or plant the seeds and look for other qualitative effects as well.

Violet learned about kinetic versus potential energy, the conservation of energy, and force this week. In addition to rolling the golf ball at different speeds to knock over dominoes, she enjoyed shooting Benny's Nerf gun at a target and figuring out the energy conversion involved, investigating tensile strength by comparing thread to rope, and using our scale to measure the force of her weight versus her ability to push on the scale versus the weight of a book.

Benny got the week off from science.

OTHER

In geography, the girls played their games as usual. They also found some world maps from church that they had forgotten about and started coloring them in one evening. DH began quizzing them on countries. I was very glad to see how much they have learned despite our rather inconsistent efforts. Benny and I keep plugging away with his state song and the midwestern state locations.

No music this week. We'll spend some extra time on it next week instead.

In art, Violet drew a turkey this week.

Henry had a great time sitting with her and playing with the different marker colors

and even doing a little drawing of his own. (That's a jellyfish in the middle)

Henry and I read the dragon series from last week some more as well as Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss and Five Little Monkeys with Nothing to Do by Christelow.

Five Children and It by Nesbit, Book 23 of 52 in 52

2011-11-14T08:11:00.000-08:00

Have you ever pondered what you would wish for given the opportunity to wish for anything? What might happen if your wishes were granted for a day? This is opportunity that is given to Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane in E. Nesbit's Five Children and It when they discover a Psammead (or sand fairy) in the sand pit during their summer holiday. The rather grumpy fellow agrees to grant them one wish every day with the understanding that their wish only lasts until sunset. Each day brings a new wish and a new set of troubles for the children.

The story itself gets off to a slow start. The author from time to time unnecessarily adds too many of her own opinions into the story; however, the story itself with its delightful premise wins out and is an excellent read aloud for grades 2-3 or independent read for grades 4+ for both boys and girls.

The Nine Tailors by Sayers, Book 22 of 52 in 52

2011-11-13T13:01:00.000-08:00

Set in the quiet countyside of East Anglia, The Nine Tailors by Sayers follows the steps of the famous Lord Peter Wimsey as he seeks to uncover the truth about a recent murder. Who is the disfigured corpse? How did he come to be locked in the church's belfry? What exactly killed him? Is there any connection to an old theft of a valuable emerald necklace?

I actually found this to be a refreshing change from the typical mystery. Instead of the formulaic ending where the case is neatly solved in an instant at the end of the story, this case is slowly pieced together over the course of the book. Lord Peter, while an excellent detective, must adapt his theories to fit each new piece of evidence. I also learned far more about bell-ringing than I ever wanted to know, but it provided a unique background for the textand flowed well in the story. Jessie enjoyed it enough to immediately read all of the other Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries that our library had available. I just wish I had that much time to read.

On the Incarnation of Our Lord by Athanasius, Book 21 of 52 in 52

2011-11-13T12:13:00.000-08:00

Athanasius was the bishop of Alexandria in Egypt for 45 years in the 4th century AD. The church at that time came under attack from false teachers including Arius, who taught that Jesus was created by, but not equal to, God the Father. Although banished temporarily after the Nicene Council, the Arians gained influence in Constantine's court and were allowed back into the church despite the vigorous protests of Athanasius.

On the Incarnation of Our Lord lays out his understanding of how the Incarnation is central not only to Christian faith but also for the entire course of history to a fellow Christian named Marcarius. He discusses the Trinity, Creation, the fall of Man, the condition of man after the fall, the incarnation, and the redemptive work of Christ while refuting objections to each of these points that were raised during his time. He spends the last few chapters specifically refuting first the objections of the Jews, and then the Gentiles ending with an exhortation to Marcarius to copy of the lives of the saints in action and to study the Scriptures himself in order to have a right understanding of them.

While I found the text challenging, it was far more clear and concise than more modern commentaries I have read on the subject. It is an excellent glimpse at basic Christian theology from an excellent teacher that I would recommend for every Christian to read.

Week 11: Busy, busy

2011-11-11T13:59:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy week around here, but we got almost everything done.

Jessie's 7th grade

For math, I've temporarily switched Jessie over to Lial's pre-algebra to work through integers and real numbers until she's got a solid mastery of those topics. The difficulty isn't anywhere near that of NEM, but there's plenty of practice and the concepts are very clearly explained. She covered numbers to the hundred trillions, integers, adding integers, subtracting integers, and rounding integers.
She finished lesson 8 in CE 2, worked on verb tenses in R&S 7, and did more analysis of a Silence Dogood letter for CW.
In Omnibus, we spent the week studying creeds and took off from the Secondary lessons since we're still waiting to get the book from the library.
In Latin, she worked on conjugating 3rd conjugation verbs in the imperfect and future, while EG2 was a review week.
For logic, we looked at examples of mob appeal and discussion different generalizations made by various historians in the Critical Thinking text.

Violet's 5th grade

She did extremely well in math this week multiplying and dividing fractions by whole numbers and continues to improve with her math facts.
She continues to slog through Around the World in Eighty Days by Verne for literature.
R&S has been mostly the principal parts of verbs with a bit of outlining thrown in.
She rewrote "The Golden Apple" by Guerber for CW and did very well on her test for lesson 11 of SWO G.
Latin was a review week. Logic continues to progress very well.

Benny's 2nd grade

Benny finished both the textbook and IP sections on weights this week in Singapore, completed his first section in CWP 2, and worked through a variety of mixed operation problems in Miquon.
We started The Book of Dragons by Nesbit for literature and Misty of Chincoteague by Henry for reading to me.
He passed two more spelling tests in SWO B and is now on lesson 18.
We began introducing verbs in FLL while continuing to use "Amazing Grace" for copywork.

Geography

Jessie's working on the last levels for the states and is ready to move on to a new topic.
Violet has moved up to level 3 for the states where she drags the state to its correct location on the whole map (instead of just a region of it) and is ready to begin working on capitals next week.
Benny is still working on the Great Lakes region. I think I'm going to have him start working on the online game twice a week on the days we aren't doing geography together.

History

This week, we shifted our focus back to England covering the reign of Charles I and his death, the Puritan Revolution and the rule of Oliver Cromwell, and the restoration of Charles II and his persecution of Scottish covenanters.

Jessie and Violet both read primarily from The Story of the Renaissance and Reformation by Miller. They completed summaries of each king and outlined a section of a chapter on Cromwell's rule. Jessie read two chapters of Trial and Triumph covering the Scottish persecution, while Violet read Courage and Conviction about Samuel Rutherford. Jessie was thrilled when I handed her some additional historical fiction Duncan's War, King's Arrow, and Rebel's Keep by Bond. It must be good since she's on her second read through of the set after only two days.

Benny and I read the first two sections of SOTW 3 and the same chapter on Rutherford as Violet. He hasn't been interested in any hands on, so we just stuck with reading and mapwork for the week.

Science

Jessie is working on chapter 10 covering evolution. Her one activity for the week was designed to illustrate mutation. She started with a basic sentence. She spun a number to select which letter to change, drew a new letter for that space, and rewrote the sentence with the new change. After 8 times, the sentence was of course completely unreadable.

Violet finished her Heat and Energy book this week.

Benny and I read about walruses, dugongs, and manatees and completed the corresponding booklets. Then he made a seal and a pair of manatees for his ocean box.

Art / Music

Jessie drew a pumpkin this week, colored it with oil pastels, and attempted some shading.

Violet decided to draw a peacock, and I decided to let Benny's science double as art.

Music has not been done as yet.

Henry's Preschool

It was dragon week for Henry. In addition to our regular Bible stories, I read the same four books every day this week: The Egg, The Great Dragon Rescue, The Dragon Snatcher, and The Dragon and the Gruesome Twosome by M. P. Robertson. I reviewed the first three previously. The fourth one is an excellent follow up as George and his dragon match wits with a pair of troublesome trolls. Great books for boys (even Benny snuck in at least 3 days this week to listen as well).

He also snuck under the table to tickle his siblings feet

and mashed playdough to cut shapes from like his big brother was doing.

Week 10: Up and Downs and Indians

2011-11-04T14:12:00.000-07:00

Jessie's 7th Grade:

We worked on adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing integers this week. It did not go well at all. We'll start fresh next week with a combination of NEM and whatever addition supplements I can find.
In CW, she's been analyzing a piece praising Alexander the Great one paragraph at a time.
She finished unit 3 in R&S on nouns and began working with verbs. Although she did well on her test, she missed more than usual. Starting next week, I'll have her diagram a sentence or two each day with a noun phrase or clause for continued review and additional practice with the topic.
Vocabulary and logic both went well as usual.
In Omnibus, we finished with both On the Incarnation of Our Lord by Athanasius and The Nine Tailors by Sayers. Next up the creeds for primary and The Dragon and the Raven by Henty for secondary.
In Latin Alive, she completed chapter 11 and most of chapter 12 this week covering various uses of the ablative and genitive cases.

Violet's 5th grade

Math has gone very well for Violet this week. YEAH! She's done very well with adding and subtracting mixed numbers, multiplying fractions, and multiplying a fraction and a whole number.
She's zipped through her grammar lessons and verbs and done very well with her spelling this week of French based words.
Her literature continues to be Around the World in Eighty Days by Verne.
In CW, we worked on various ways to make grammar changes in sentences, and she rewrote "The Tale of Jemima Puddle-duck".
She completed two more Mind Benders puzzles in the B2 book and is halfway through Think-a-grams 1.
For Latin, she focused on the second person pronouns and the different uses of the genitive case.

Benny's 2nd Grade

Benny finished up the measurement section of his IP book and finished the multiplication charts in Miquon.
He also finished reading A Lion to Guard Us by Bulla and listening to Five Children and It by Nesbit.
Two more spelling tests were completed successfully.
He's been copying lines from "Amazing Grace" and working on identifying nouns and pronouns in sentences for grammar.

HISTORY

Everyone's history topic for the week was Indians, specifically those living in the eastern forests of the United States.

Jessie and Violet read Life of the Powhatan by Kalman and wrote about the different roles in their society. They also read a portion of The Iroquois Indians by Sherrow covering Hiawatha and wrote a brief summary of the events.

Benny and I spent three days reading from The Book of Indians by Holling. He narrated about how to make a wigwam, made a duck decoy from a paper bag using directions from More than Moccasins by Carls, and got some help from DH in making a fishing lure with goose feathers although it didn't help him catch any fish.

Together, we had an Indian inspired dinner of halibut, mashed acorn squash, and cornbread. The squash got mixed reviews.

SCIENCE

Jessie spent the week working on chapter 9 of BJU Life Science which discussion Creationism.

Violet continued learning about light and did some experiments looking a refraction.

Benny got another week off (although we did buy more clay for him to make a manatee).

GEOGRAPHY

Jessie tried the USA puzzle games on sheppardsoftware.com.
Violet moved up to the level 2 states game.
Benny continues to work on locating Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio on a map and is up to Montana in his state song.

ART

Everyone drew clown fish this week and painted them with watercolor. I challenged Jessie to add some depth to her drawing by having portions of the fish in front of some anemone and portions behind.

MUSIC

Jessie and Violet began learning about percussion instruments. Benny learned about the harp.

Henry's Preschool

This week was more Henry chosen selections. We did read The Three Billy Goats Gruff by Arnold almost every day.

WW: Henry's self-portraits

2011-11-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

Week 9: Fumbling Along

2011-10-28T14:32:00.000-07:00

After a full week of fishing and fun at the Outer Banks last week, it was a little hard to get going again this week. Everyone got the week off from history, and Benny got the week off from science. Hopefully, I'll be a little better prepared next week...

Jessie's 7th grade

wrapped up the chapter on word problems and began working on integers in NEM
worked with noun clauses and substantives in R&S
parsed nouns, did more work with noun clauses, and 4 six sentence shuffles in CW
completed lesson 5 in CE2 and began lesson 6
continued reading The Nine Tailors by Sayers and began On the Incarnation of Our Lord by Athanasius for Omnibus
covered 3rd declension nouns in LA1 and the genitive case in EG2
discussed the Salem witch trials and appeals to fear for logic

In science, she completed chapter 7 on genetics, had fun making her spudoodle and figuring out his genotype, struggle with the chapter test, and began learning about mutations in chapter 8.

She got the week off from art but did begin learning about percussion instruments for music.

Violet's 5th grade

finished the last of her IP work and began working on fractions in Singapore 5A
completed the unit on nouns and began reviewing verbs in R&S
received a 100% on her spelling test
did random dictation selections and rewrote "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" for CW
continued reading Around the World in 80 Days by Verne
learned first person pronouns in LfC B
finished MindBenders B1 and began B2

She completed the science unit on waves and sound with a lesson on musical instruments and enjoyed making music with some glass jars with different amounts of water.

She began the final unit on light and looked at the shadow of a book noticing the lighter and darker shadows. Our prism has gone missing, so for the lesson on color she made a color wheel for one of our spinning tops. When the top was spinning, it looked like there was a white line around the stem of the top.

For art, she drew some pumpkins, but hasn't quite finished coloring them in yet. She did complete the music lesson with Jessie.

Benny's 2nd grade

completed the unit on measurement in Singapore 2A and continued working on multiplication charts in Miquon
passed another spelling test with flying colors and did random copywork
continued listening Five Children and It by Nesbit and reading A Lion to Guard Us by Bulla aloud
began learning the location of the states of Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio
drew several ocean animals using our 1-2-3 Draw Ocean Animals by Levin

Henry's Preschool

Honestly, this week we just read whatever he wanted each morning and still had a great time.

Week 8: A brief look

2011-10-14T11:22:00.000-07:00

I've reached my storage limit in Picasa Web Albums and don't have time to rummage through it today to find pictures to delete, so this report will be very brief and sans pictures this week. Sorry.

Jessie - 7th

finished the text portion of the third chapter on a combination of measurements and word problems
learned about noun clauses in R&S and had it reinforced in CW Diogenes
began reading The Nine Tailors by Sayers for Omnibus secondary
completed her 4th CE lesson and regular logic exercises
knocked out the 9th Latin chapter and the unit 2 reading and test this week.
sailed through the accusative case in EG2 because of its similarities to Latin grammar
scraped through another Life Science test and began learning about genetics

Violet's 5th grade

spent the entire weekly working through the IP section on double digit multiplication and division with steady improvement in her computational accuracy.
continued reading Around the World in 80 Days by Verne
wrote paragraphs for R&S and passed another spelling test
rewrote "The Prodigal Son" for CW and began working on the six sentence shuffle technique
continued working on 3rd person Latin pronouns in LfC B
learned more about sound waves in God's Design science

Benny's 2nd grade

completed his IP section on addition and subtraction and began working on multiplication tables in Miquon
is still listening to / reading Egermeier's Bible Story Book, Five Children and It by Nesbit, and A Lion to Guard Us by Bulla.
learned plural pronouns in FLL and completed writing "The Shepherd" for copywork.
continued practicing his states.
got another week off on science.

History for all:

Everyone learned about the colonies of Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware.
Jessie and Violet read a combination of The Story of the Thirteen Colonies by Guerber and The Story of the Thirteen Colonies by Alderman and did a combination of outlining and summarizing.
Benny read portions of The Colony of Maryland by Coleman, The Colony of Connecticut by Whitehurst, The Colony of Rhode Island by Whitehurst, and The Colony of Delaware by Whitehurst.
We ran short of time Friday and will complete the maps and notebook pages next week.

Henry's Preschool

I didn't have a theme for this week planned so we just read books from our shelves.
He spent all of his free time shadowing DH, who was off for the week after working a ton of overtime the previous three weeks.

Confessions - Book 20, 52 in 52

2011-10-10T14:01:00.000-07:00

Confessions by Augustine has long been listed as one of the great books of civilization. It is the amazingly honest spiritual autobiography of Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo. It recounts the mistakes of his youth, his misplaced desires, and struggles of faith, while at the same time continually giving glory to God.

I have to say, I was quite surprised, but I truly did enjoy reading this book overall. Augustine can be a bit verbose and overly philosophical at time (IMHO), but his message is timeless and well worth the effort to read. Given that the term confession today generally means laying out all of the sordid details, I was completely surprised at the tone of the book and how uplifting it was. When Augustine confesses a sin, he explains what he desired, how he tried to find it, and where he should have turned (to God) instead to be truly satisfied. I wish I had read it at a younger age and learned from Augustine's mistakes instead of making a few of my own, but I was very glad I decided to go ahead and discuss it with my 12 year old.

The Wheel on the School - Book 19, 52 in 52

2011-10-10T13:03:00.000-07:00

The Wheel on the School by DeJong is a wonderful tale based on the dream of one young Dutch girl to have storks nest on the roofs of her town. Spurred on by their teacher, the whole school joins in on the project to find a wagon wheel for the school roof. Soon, the whole town pulls together and takes part of the project.

Both of my girls loved this book when they were younger, so I was curious to see how my 7 year old son would react. The book does get off to a slow start, but it has hilarious moments and some action packed scenes as well. By midway, he was excited enough to start asking for extra chapters (and the girls were listening in as well). I would certainly recommend this one as a great family read aloud.

Blackthorn Winter - Book 18, 52 in 52

2011-10-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

Blackthorn Winter by Douglas Wilson is a delightful piece of historical fiction for children set in the Chesapeake Bay area in the early 1700s. Fifteen-year-old Thomas Ingle has finally finished his lessons and is ready to begin working at sea. He sets out on his first sea voyage on the Prudence Hannah working under the honorable Captain Monroe only to be boarded by a band of pirates. There are buried maps and hidden treasure and a mix of foolish and honorable characters for the hard-working young Ingle to navigate and shape his character as he enters the world of men.

Overall, this is an excellent piece of well-written historical fiction for the boys and girls in the 8-12 year range (and adults who enjoy a good pirate tale). I thoroughly enjoyed the story (as did my 10yo daughter) and am planning to order the remaining books in the series soon.

Week 7, the girls: Colonies, replication, and electromagnetic waves

2011-10-08T04:51:00.000-07:00

MATH

Jessie finished her section chapter in NEM 1 this week and took her first test. She scored a very respectable B+ after a few minor computation errors.

Violet moved on to double digit multiplication this week in Singapore 5A in addition to continuing to make a daily multiplication chart. She did very well with her division and moved on to the corresponding IP section on Friday. It great to see her making some forward progress again in math.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie moved into her second unit of CW Diogenes Maxim this week. She focused on the encomium paragraph and also completed some grammar analysis lessons. She completed 4 lessons and 2 worksheets for R&S and two more lessons in Caesar's English 2 for vocabulary. For her Omnibus primary lessons, she finished reading Augustine's Confessions and just has a few discussion questions to finish up on Monday. In Omnibus secondary, she was supposed to start reading The Nine Tailors by Sayers, but we were unable to get it from the library on time. On the bright side, at least we helped the library figure out that 2 of their 4 copies are missing.

Violet began reading Around the World in Eighty Days by Verne this week for literature. She did very well on her spelling test, completed several grammar lessons on nouns, and finished the chapter in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban covering the final Quidditch match for dictation. (It had plenty of practice for that cursive capital Q. Now if I could just find something for Z...) She also rewrote "The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard" for CW Homer and began working on the first step of the six sentence shuffle.

LATIN / GREEK / LOGIC

Jessie finished lesson 8 in LA1 and 6 in EG2, while Violet began learning the third personal personal pronoun declension in LfC B. Logic was also completed by both girls. Violet had a very long Mind Benders puzzle, which she did an excellent job working.

HISTORY

The girls covered three TruthQuest topics this week. Both read and summarized a chapter from Guerber's The Story of the Thirteen Colonies covering New Hampshire and a portion of New Amsterdam by Emerson for the beginnings of New York.

They outlined a chapter from Miller's The Story of the Renaissance and Reformation covering King James' son, Charles becoming king.

They also summarized another Guerber chapter covering the Massachusetts Bay Colony and marked the colonies on a map color coding by nationality.

SCIENCE

Jessie finished the book section covering mitosis and meiosis. We still need to look at our mitosis slide in the microscope. (Henry did not nap much this week.)

Violet finished the chapter on magnets and began learning about electromagnetic waves. I know she modeled a wave using a jump rope and watched sound waves vibrate a piece of paper, but I missed getting pictures this week.

GEOGRAPHY / ART / MUSIC

Both girls continue to play online games covering US geography and are steadily improving.

For music, they learned about the trumpet and french horn and added to their orchestra folder.

Jessie chose to draw a picture of a sea turtle from one of Henry's touch and feel books this week. Next week we'll add some background details and hopefully some color as well.

Violet drew two lighthouses

Week 7, the boys: Colonies, seals, and fish

2011-10-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

MATH

Benny spent most of the week in his Singapore math program completing review pages in the textbook and workbook before moving on to the corresponding IP chapter on addition and subtraction on Friday. His Miquon work has been focused on multiplication which he has determinedly worked on without using the cuisenaire rods.

LANGUAGE ARTS

We continue to read aloud together from the New Testament portion of Egermeier's Bible Story Book, Five Children and It by Nesbit, and A Lion to Guard Us by Bulla, the latter being read aloud by Benny to me. He started learning a new poem this week called "The Shepherd" which he also used for part of his copywork. In grammar, we began writing and memorizing the personal pronouns and made it through the third person singular. He also completed two more spelling lessons in SWO B.

HISTORY

Benny learned about three new colonies this week in history. We read portions of The Colony of New Hampshire by Whitehurst, a portion of the SOTW 3 chapter on New Amsterdam, and a portion of a chapter from The Story of the Thirteen Colonies by Guerber to cover the Massachusetts Bay colony. He found it funny that the streets of Boston were originally built on cow paths. We didn't do any hands on this week other than the map work since Benny wanted to enjoy the nice temperatures outdoors.

SCIENCE

This week we covered some general information about pinnipeds and learned to identify true seals, sea lions, and fur seals.

Benny didn't want to make a clay seal, so I let him trace the outline of his seal booklet and just add in the lines for the flippers and facial features. He did a great job of identifying the types of seals pictures in the book.

GEOGRAPHY/ART/MUSIC

For art, he drew a lighthouse. We didn't get to music this week. In geography, he up to Michigan in his states song and is working on identifying Wisconsin and Illinois on the map.

HENRY'S PRESCHOOL

It was fish week for Henry. Of course, we read The Rainbow Fish by Pfeister and its sequels. The other hits for the week were Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark by Geist and A Fish Out of Water by Eastman.

Henry was his normal boisterous self all week.

He kept hiding every time I tried to take a picture,

but when I did manage to sneak one in he always came running over to see the picture.

WW: Boys After Cinderella

2011-10-05T14:59:00.000-07:00

When my girls were little, they would pretend to clean house or dress up for a ball after watching Cinderella.

Apparently in the boys' minds, the mice are the most interesting part of the movie. Here's Gus and

Jaq hiding from Lucifer (Jessie) in their mouse hole on Monday.

Week 6, part 2: Pilgrims, cells, and magnets for the girls

2011-09-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie finished up Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring and read five more chapters in Augustine's Confessions this week. She completed her second R&S unit and began unit 3 on nouns. She also finished her Caesar's English I book and moved on to Caesar's English II for vocabulary. She spent a full week working through the steps for her first writing assignment in CW Diogenes.

Violet finished reading Swiss Family Robinson by Wyss. She completed her first review chapter in SWO G and her second unit in R&S 5. She also began learning about nouns on Friday for unit 3. For CW Homer, she rewrote "The Good Samaritan" after analyzing the components of the scene. She also did some synonym work, a bit of diagramming, and a little paraphrasing by synonym substitution.

MATH
Jessie finally caught back up to where we had stopped NEM 1 to work on writing out steps in math. She did a bit of estimating as a means of checking her answers on Thursday and tried the second challenge section on Friday. We went over the ones which she had trouble with together.

Violet spent the entire week working on double digit multiplication and multiplication facts. I think we'll move on in the Singapore text next week but continue filling in daily multiplication charts and completing a few whiteboard problems for multiplication as well to encourage her to practice her facts and improve her accuracy.

LATIN/GREEK

Jessie completed chapter 7 in LA1 and chapter 5 in EG2. Violet completed her first review lesson in LfC B.

HISTORY

History this week was all about the Pilgrims of Plymouth.

On Monday, both girls read from the TruthQuest guide and a chapter from The Story of the Thirteen Colonies by Guerber. Jessie and Violet completed a two level outline and a one level outline respectively of a portion of the chapter. Jessie went on to read Miles Standish: Plymouth Colony Leader by Miller, William Bradford of Plymouth Colony by Bradford, and John Alden: Steadfast Pilgrim by Edwards. She wrote very brief summaries of the first two selections.

Violet spent three days reading one chapter at a time from the Guerber book, jotting down key events, and then writing a summary from them. I combined her three summaries into one longer summary on Friday, and we made a few editing changes to give it better flow in a few awkward places.

SCIENCE

Jessie continued learning about cells in BJU Life Science. She did complete one experiment this week on turgor pressure by placing one slice of potato in regular water and one in salt water. The other two experiments, we discussed but did not complete. Her test results were not stellar, so Friday I had her go back through the textbook and make vocabulary cards for all of the words in bold print. I'll quiz her on them over the weekend, and we'll start fresh money with an emphasis on study skills for science.

Violet spent the week learning about magnets with lots of hands on.

She strung together a series of magnets, a nail, and some paperclips; used one magnet to push the other around the table with touching them; and just spent some time playing and exploring as well. I think it may be the first time, she voluntary experimented on her own just for fun.

She also magnetized a needle to make a compass.

ART/MUSIC/GEOGRAPHY

Jessie chose to draw a page from one of our coloring books this week.

Violet drew a grizzly bear and tried adding different sizes of trees for dimension.

The girls learned about clarinets, saxophones, and bassoons for music adding more cards to their orchestra folders.

Both continue to progress through their logic programs.

Week 6: Pilgrims and Curious George for boys

2011-09-30T11:54:00.000-07:00

MATH

Benny spent the entire week in Singapore 2A learning how to borrow for subtraction. He did a great job! In Miquon, he had some fun doubling numbers.

LANGUAGE ARTS

We began reading aloud Five Children and It by Nesbit this week, while he continues to read A Lion to Guard Us by Bulla to me. He completed two more spelling lessons, learned how to write dates, and began learning about pronouns for FLL. His copywork was a little of this and that: the definition of a pronoun, Tuesday's date and his birthday, another four state names, and two history related sentences.

HISTORY

It was Pilgrim week. Benny and I read a l...o...t of chapters from Stories of the Pilgrims by Pumphrey. We took a break after every few pages for him to narrate a few sentences. He is very proud to have composed his longest narration ever. We also mapped their journey.

He and I made Indian cornbread (with modern ingredients) using the SOTW activity guide. By the end of the week, he wanted to spend time with DH rather than do activities.

No SCIENCE for Benny this week. I didn't have the booklets ready for the lapbook.

OTHER

For art, I couldn't interest Benny in drawing a bear, so I suggested some finger painting. I showed him these directions for finger painting caterpillars, butterflies, and flowers for ideas. He had a lot of fun. I'll put up a final picture another day once the paint is dry and he can draw in the legs, eyes, etc.

For music, we learned about the cello.

He learned the location of Wisconsin and Illinois and added four more states to his state song taking him up to Michigan in his list.

I finally got his memory box organized and placed in the verses and poems he knew as well as two new ones, Psalm 100 and "The Shepherd".

HENRY'S PRESCHOOL

It was Curious George week for Henry. It was fun to read the books and say "...a good little monkey but always very..." and let him supply curious or "man with the..." with him finishing "yellow hat". He had a blast reading the stories with me.

We also reviewed the Noah's ark story, named the colors of the rainbow (and reviewed other colors as well). Somehow I missed getting any pictures, so I'll have to try a little harder next week.

Week 5: King Gustavus, cells, and electricity

2011-09-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

MATH

We made zero forward progress in math this week with the girls. Jessie made so many mistakes with math on Monday because she refused to show her work that I decided it was useless to continue forward. I couldn't tell if she was making errors in computation, in order of operations, in conversion of fractions or decimals, or what. So we discussed attitudes, lack of listening to directions, and the resulting consequences using examples from school and from life in general. Then we started back at the beginning of NEM1 with the primary purpose of learning to write out the steps to show her work in math. I picked and chose problems for her to write out with the understanding that a few errors in copying or computation were acceptable, but not writing out the steps or conceptual errors would result in additional problems for practice. Tuesday was much better than Monday, and it is now much easier to correct her math.

Violet also had problems in math Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday, we backed up and reviewed order of operation again. Thursday and Friday we started working on double digit multiplication. I've been having her fill out a daily multiplication chart before starting her assignments. The number of errors is decreasing, but I think we're going to have to stay on multiplication at least part of next week until I see an improvement in consistency.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie began Confessions by Augustine for Omnibus Primary while continuing Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring for Omnibus secondary. She worked on the final vocabulary lesson in CE1 and covered 3 lessons and 2 worksheets in R&S 7. We spent the week in Diogenes analyzing a Silence Dogood letter from Benjamin Franklin on the vice of pride of apparel.

Violet completed reading Blackthorn Winter by Wilson and is near the end of Swiss Family Robinson by Wyss. She continues to progress well in SWO B. In Homer, she dug deeper into Theon's components and rewrote "To the Sea". R&S was combining sentences or parts of sentences and more paragraph writing.

LATIN / GREEK

Jessie finished her first Latin Alive unit and completed another lesson in EG2. Violet reviewed the verb sum, esse as part of her completed LfC B lesson this week.

HISTORY

The girls finished learning about the Thirty Years War this week. Both read three chapters from The Story of the Renaissance and Reformation by Miller covering King Christian of Denmark, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, and the entry of France in the war. They also read about the Swedish king in Trial and Triumph. I had Jessie condense each Miller chapter into a one paragraph summary. While Violet wrote a narration on Gustavus Adolphus from the second resource.

Wednesday, they read 2 more chapters from Miller and outlined a section covering the end of the war, the peace treaty, and the fallout for Germany.

Thursday, they took a breather to read Rembrandt by Venezia and Diego Velazquez by Venezia.

SCIENCE

Jessie completed chapter 4 on cell membranes and other structures this week.

She got her first chance to try out our microscope looking at a letter e from the newspaper as well as several prepared slides that came with the microscope.

We demonstrated osmosis through a semi-permeable membrane by filling tubing with water or corn syrup, submerging them in water, and then noting the changes. We also had a long discussion about taking tests, the necessity of learning good study techniques (by following directions), and the consequences of poor study skills. I found an extra test for chapters 3 and 4 in the test booklet that I hadn't scheduled, so she got another chance at studying and testing. It went much better.

Violet continued learning about electricity.

She learned about circuits and tried placing tape, cardboard, and aluminum foil between the batteries in a flashlight to see which allowed for the conduction of electricity.

She also made a few circuits using Benny's snap circuits kit.

ART/MUSIC/OTHER

For music this week, we covered flutes, piccolos, and oboes.

They continued their online computer activities for geography and completed their logic assignments.

Art fell by the wayside because I ran out of steam. We'll pick back up next week.

Week 5: Artists, whales, and bears oh my!

2011-09-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

MATH

Benny spent the entire week learning and practicing addition with renaming. I explained the concept twice on Monday using cuisenaire rods. At that point, he was ready for me to leave him alone to complete his assignment.

LANGUAGE ARTS

For reading, Benny has started reading A Lion to Guard Us by Bulla. Together we finished The Wheel on the School by DeJong. He successfully passed two more spelling tests and continued working on months and seasons for grammar. Part of his copywork this week included verses from Psalm 100.

HISTORY

Benny finished the Thirty Years' War last week. We read Rembrandt by Venezia and Diego Velazquez by Venezia and marked the countries where they lived on one of the SOTW maps. We also read Hana in the Time of the Tulips by Noyes covering the tulip craze that engulfed the Netherlands for several years. For fun, we read The Three Musketeers by Felder, which Benny loved.

SCIENCE

This week in science, we finished up with toothed whales and learned about baleen whales.

After talking about beluga whales, we placed a cup of plain water and a cup of salt water in the freezer to see which one melted first as a demonstration of how the ocean water stays liquid in the arctic regions even when the temperatures are below freezing.

Benny was also very excited to finally get start on clay animals for his ocean box. This week he made a dolphin, an orca, and a blue whale.

OTHER

This week's instrument was the cello. He did enough sculpting that we skipped art. In geography we learned the location of the states Nebraska and Kansas and are up to Louisiana in our state song.

HENRY'S PRESCHOOL

This week for preschool we learned about Noah's ark and bears. Henry was thrilled to have a stack of his favorite books by Karma Wilson including: Bear Snores On, Bear Wants More, Bear Stays Up for Christmas, Bear's New Friend, Bear's Loose Tooth, Bear Feels Scared, and Bear Feels Sick.

He ran around the house to find out what his magnet would stick to,

practiced his casting and fishing,

and made a mess with my Post It bookmarks.

WW: It's School Time! Where are you?

2011-09-21T11:34:00.000-07:00

Violet and Benny decided to make school more interesting Tuesday by having their own school room.

Week 4, part 2: 30 Years War, electricity, and cell membranes

2011-09-16T17:31:00.000-07:00

MATH

Jessie reviewed fractions, decimals, the operations involving them, and rounding this week in NEM 1. She also learned about significant numbers in rounding.

Violet completed her first IP unit in Singapore 5A. She's still making a lot of initial mistakes. I've stopped showing her where her mistake is and am letting her check through her own work. She's getting better at correcting her own mistakes and showing her work.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie completed her first primary book in Omnibus 2 this week. Next week, we'll move on to Augustine's Confessions. We're currently about halfway through Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring for Omnibus secondary. In CE1, she finished chapter 19 this week and has only one chapter to go. For CW Diogenes, we completed the first theory section and have begun working on the first analysis section.
In grammar, she worked on independent and dependent clauses, simple and compound sentences, and diagramming compound sentences.

Violet continues Swiss Family Robinson by Wyss and Blackthorn Winter by Wilson for literature. She worked on combining sentences and writing paragraphs in R&S 5, passed another test in SWO G, and rewrote "The Frogs Desiring a King" for CW Homer.

LATIN / GREEK / LOGIC

Jessie finished chapter 4 in Latin Alive this week and began working on the accusative and dative cases of nouns in chapter 5. She's still breezing through the review of EG2. Violet is also breezing through LfC B which is currently reviewing grammar from last year. Both completed their regular logic assignments as well.

HISTORY

I wasn't able to get the girls the book on the pilgrims that I wanted this week, so they focused on the 30 Years War.

They each outlined a portion of The Story of the Renaissance and Reformation by Miller covering the start of the war.

They summarized the revolt in Bohemia and the persecution of the Huguenots in France under Richelieu.

I let them use Benny's map as a guide to complete their map work of the two sides of the war. For the girls this topic will continue over into next week as well.

I invited the girls to join Benny and I in making origami storks on Monday. We used this video for the directions. All the kids needed help at some point along the way, but they had fun.

SCIENCE

Jessie finished up chapter 3 in BJU life on cells and moved on to chapter 4 to learn above cell membranes and cell parts.

This experiment had her compare the results of a milk mixture with rennet tablets to one without tablets. I thought it was also an excellent opportunity to practice writing a lab report.

She compared the amount of time it took food coloring to spread in a glass with moving water versus still water after learning about diffusion across cell membranes.

We caught up on last week's lab testing for proteins in various substances. Since we had six test tubes, we just picked six substances from the list: egg yolk, whole wheat flour, lemon juice, vinegar, sugar, and contact lens cleaner. We still had two labs that we didn't get to that I'll have to push into next week (partially because I didn't have any corn syrup and partially because I was just too tired Friday to worry about it).

Violet spent the first two days of the week doing a vocabulary review and quiz for unit 2 of God's Design Heat & Energy. Her new unit is on electricity.

We tried demonstrating static electricity with a balloon. She learned different types of circuits and completed a worksheet on that information. She also learned about lightning.

GEOGRAPHY / ART / MUSIC

The girls continue to play online games for geography. Jessie is almost ready to switch to the capitals games, while Violet continues to identify the states regionally.

For music this week, we finished learning the string instruments including the double bass and the harp and added the instrument cards to our orchestra folder.

In art, Jessie and I talked about light versus shadow. Then she went back and colored in her duck picture from two weeks ago paying attention to the coloring and shadowing of the original illustration.

Violet drew a floppy eared bunny using these directions and asked to color it in with our soft pastels.

Week 4: Storks, whales, and more colors

2011-09-16T17:15:00.000-07:00

MATH

Benny had another great week! In Singapore he had a few days of reviewing addition and subtraction from the previous book. Then on Thursday, he started learning how to add with regrouping. In Miquon, he been working on a mixture of adding and subtracting as well.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Benny finished reading Dark Day in the Deep Sea by Osborne to me this week. We're still working on The Wheel on the School by DeJong as a read aloud. In grammar, we discussed the seasons of winter and spring and the abbreviations for those months. Copywork also included a few more state names and the beginning of Psalm 100. He finished his first review lesson in SWO B and started lesson 7 on Friday.
HISTORY

Benny spent the beginning of the week learning about the Pilgrims in Holland and their move to Leiden using Stories of the Pilgrims by Pumphrey.

He also learned about the 30 Years War using SOTW 3. That particular chapter of SOTW was extremely long. I think it would have been better to split the reading over 2 days instead. We did complete the corresponding mapwork for the war. Our only other hands on for the week was making an origami stork, which is pictured up in the girls' post.

SCIENCE
We had a lot of fun in science this week, although I didn't get pictures of most of it. We're still learning about whales. On Monday, we covered whale moves like breaching and lobtailing. Then for fun we acted out the different moves using my bed. There was a lot of laughter as we jumped up on the bed (breaching), went off head first and whacked the bed with our feet (lobtailing), and peeked over the bed at Henry (spyhopping) who also thought we were very funny.

We started discussing toothed whales and learned about echolocation. We made two paper megaphones and tried bouncing sounds of the wall to see if we could hear a difference with and without the megaphones. Lastly, we learned about dolphins and porpoises. I haven't had a chance to buy clay yet, so we'll have to wait until next week to start adding to his ocean box.

OTHER

For geography, Benny is up to Louisiana in his state song and added North and South Dakota to his list of states that he can locate.

For art, we drew a very simple snake using these directions, which he then held against the wall to color so that is had some texture as well.

For music, we learned about and listened to a brief song featuring the viola.

HENRY

I was not very organized for Henry this week. We reviewed his colors and read lots of books this week, mostly of his own choosing.

He's actually started spending part of his mornings looking through books on his own. Sometimes he just looks at pictures, and other times he tells his own version of the story using the pictures.

I couldn't interest him in any crafts this week, but he did have a great time playing with Jessie on Friday when she brought out Benny's marble run.

Girls Week 3: Jamestown, cells & energy

2011-09-09T16:39:00.000-07:00

MATH

Jessie did an excellent job with her first challenge and problem solving set in NEM 1. On Thursday, she began unit 2 on fractions. Much of the basic information was review except for using cross multiplication to compare fractions.

Violet finished up her first unit in Singapore 5A textbook and began working on the corresponding section in the Intensive Practice this week. She continues to do an excellent job solving her word problems in her review section of CWP 4 using bar diagrams.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie continues to work through The Church History by Eusebius for Omnibus primary. This week, we took a couple of days to try one of the progymnasmata exercises, and she wrote an encomium on Origen. For Omnibus Secondary, we've started The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien. In CW Diogenes, she learned what the paradigm and summary paragraphs of the maxim outline are and practiced writing a few of each. In grammar, she did very well on her unit 1 test and began working on sentence types and word order in unit 2.

Violet continues to progress through The Swiss Family Robinson by Wyss for literature and began reading Blackthorn Winter by Wilson this week as well. In addition to her dictation, she analyzed the fable "The Wind and the Sun" using Theon's six components of a scene and rewrote the story for CW Homer. She also did very well on her first grammar test and has started learning about sentence types in unit 2. She aced her spelling test for the second week in a row.

LATIN / GREEK / LOGIC

Jessie completed lesson 4 and began lesson 5 of Latin Alive this week. She also completed the second lesson of Elementary Greek 2 and did her logic work in the first Critical Thinking in US History book and The Art of Argument.

Violet completed lesson 2 of LfC B and did her regular lessons in Building Thinking Skills 2, Mind Benders B1, and Think-a-Grams A1.

HISTORY
This week in history was all about Jamestown.

Both of the girls read several chapters from Guerber's The Story of the Thirteen Colonies and outlined selected chapters from the text on the colony.

Jessie read John Smith:English Explorer and Colonist by Mello, and Violet read John Smith Escapes Again by Schanzer. They each wrote a chronological narrative account of Smith's life of 5 and 3 paragraphs respectively.

Violet mapped Smith's explorations (yes the bottom map is upside down) from 1606 on. Jessie mapped those as well as his earlier travels. Both also wrote a brief summary of Pocahontas as well.

Since Violet had been grumbling about missing out on all of Benny's fun activities,

I let each of the girls spend one day building paper models of Jamestown, which I had downloaded for free several years ago.

SCIENCE

Jessie studied cells this week in BJU Life Science learning the basics of cell theory, how they were discovered, and the characteristics of living organisms.

She had two labs scheduled for the week. On her own, she investigated the pH of various substances. The second lab, I had to postpone until Saturday. We'll be using Biuret solution to test for the presence of proteins. Because the solution is a strong acid, I didn't want to do the lab with a non-napping toddler running underfoot. By waiting until Saturday, DH can keep him occupied while we work.
Violet studied conduction, convection, radiation, and geothermal energy this week with several activities.

She mixed cold and hot water to study convection.

She measured the difference in temperature of water in a black versus white cup from solar radiation.

She raised the temperature of water by 4 degrees by pouring is over some oven heated rocks.

ART

Everyone had the same art lesson this week. The idea was to introduce the kids to oil pastels and their ability to blend and layer. We used this online lesson plan.

Each of the hands is uniquely layered with two colors and then the remaining negative space was filled in with a single layer of color.

For music we covered violins, violas, and cellos this week and added the cards to our orchestra folders.

Week 3: Jamestown, whales, and caterpillars

2011-09-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

MATH

Benny finished his first unit in his 2A Intensive Practice book this week. We started unit 2 in the textbook and workbook covering addition and subtraction. He's worked on adding without regrouping and subtracting without borrowing with bigger numbers and learned how to set the problems up in a vertical manner to add or subtract the individual places. In Miquon he spent the week focused on subtraction.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Benny has continued to read aloud to me from Osborne's Dark Day in the Deep Sea. We continue to progress through The Wheel on the School by DeJong for literature. He aced two more spelling tests this week and has now completed 5 lessons in SWO B. For copywork this week, he wrote some more state names, the days of the week, and the months of the year. The latter two being the topics that he covered for his grammar lessons as well.

HISTORY

This week was all about Jamestown. We read the section covering Jamestown from SOTW 3 and completed the corresponding map. We spent two days reading John Smith Escapes Again by Schanzer, which I highly recommend. There is a lot of detail, but the style of writing and the abundance of pictures and maps are amazing. Benny even picked it back up to look at when it wasn't history time (which has never happened before with a history book). We also read a very brief biography of Pocahontas. (It wasn't my first choice, but the other books were checked out.)

I hid small containers of peanut butter chips around the living room for Benny to hunt for gold.

SCIENCE

For science this week, we studied abyssal animals and submersibles then began learning about whales.

Her we squeezed a 2 liter bottle and watched the balloon inside to illustrate the effects of water pressure at greater depths.

Here we made our own submersible, lowered it by taking on water, and raised it by blowing in air. Both of these activities came from Oceans for Every Kid by Van Cleave.

We started chapter 2 on whales and learned the two different types of whales, what a fluke is, and how whales swim differently from fish. For fun we laid belly down on the bed with our feet hanging off the edge. Then I called out either whale or fish, and we had to move our feet either vertical or horizontal. Judging by the amount of laughter, I'd say Benny had fun.

We also learned about whales hearing and breathing and completed the activity from the Apologia text of demonstrating how sound waves can travel over a long piece of string.

GEOGRAPHY, ART, & MUSIC

Benny is up to Indiana in his fifty state song and learned the location of North and South Dakota using The Little Man in the Map. We read about the violin, and he practiced using oil pastels to complete a hand drawing similar to the girls.

HENRY'S PRESCHOOL

Henry's preschool was a little more laid back this week because I had a lot of other projects going on. We read several books on caterpillar's including The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Carle, The Caterpillar and the Polliwog by Kent, and Gotta Go! Gotta Go! by Swope. We added the color red, orange, and purple to our colorful caterpillar,

worked on fine motor skills by building peg puzzles,

and made it more challenging by using tweezers on the pegs.

He had so much fun puzzle building that he and Jessie built our 4 piece floor puzzle together one afternoon.

WW: A Great Imagination

2011-09-07T11:52:00.000-07:00

Since Benny couldn't go out fishing in the rain, he decided to make the best of it inside the house.

The soft makes a great boat...

just have to haul in the lobster pot...

looks like he caught something...

too bad we can't fix it for dinner.

Making adjustments, part 2

2011-09-02T14:47:00.000-07:00

We moved up to a full schedule this week adding in music, Violet's new Latin curriculum, and Jessie's vocab and Greek. We're still adjusting to the new schedule and relearning to stay focused amidst the noise around us.

MATH

Jessie finished up the regular lessons in chapter 1 of NEM this week and completed the corresponding workbook page. She covered least common multiple, number patterns, variables, and basic number laws. Completing one workbook page proved to be a bit too much and has made Friday very long. She did finally finish her work. We'll see how her workbook pages go next week. The topics are zipping by, and I may need to find a way to add in additional practice.

Violet continues to progress in Singapore 5A. I'm seriously considering moving her math lesson to a slightly later time in the morning. She's been making a ton of mistakes, but then can easily correct them an hour or so later when I ask her to fix them. Anyway, her main topic for the week was order of operation.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie finished up The Hobbit by Tolkien this week as part of her Omnibus Secondary assignments. We still need to have our literary analysis discussion, but I've pushed that back to Saturday. We're continuing through The Church History by Eusebius for Omnibus primary. Some of the testimonies of the courage of the martyrs was amazing. I can't say our discussions are deep or profound, but we're starting to get the hang of it. In CW, we learned the headings for the classical style of developing a maxim and practiced paraphrasing maxims. Grammar included lots of diagramming with direct and indirect objects as well as nouns of address and appositives.

Violet finished reading The Sign of the Beaver by Speare and continues to work her way through The Swiss Family Robinson by Wyss. She completed her daily dictation and rewrote the fable, "Belling the Cat", for CW Homer. Her grammar included types of sentences, subjects, predicates, and beginner diagramming review. She only missed one of her spelling words from lesson 2 of SWO G!

GEOGRAPHY

This week, I had the girls review the states using the level 1 game from Sheppard's software. Violet identified the states by region while Jessie did the whole country at once. Both enjoyed themselves and played multiple times.

HISTORY

This week in history, we briefly covered Don Quixote using the Truthquest guide. Then we started topic 4 with the Spanish friars in Central and southwest America, the missions they founded, and their love for the Indians and the land where they served. Each of the girls outlined a short section from The Light and the Glory by Marshall. We did have a brief discussion of bias since the book has a view of providential history, but it was the only resource that I felt really addressed the topic. Then we moved on to Canada where Jessie read and wrote a one paragraph summary from Champlain: A Life of Courage by Jacobs and Violet summarized a short section from The Story of the Thirteen Colonies by Guerber covering his basic information.

Both girls read Beyond the Sea of Ice by Goodman covering the voyages of Henry Hudson. In addition to studying the routes he took, we discussed the differences between the attitudes of the French and English concerning the Indians they encountered and the corresponding responses of the Indians. We also discussed the qualities of a good leader and discussed what Hudson did well and not so well. Then each wrote a basic chronological narration of his travels. We mapped the Spanish settlements mentioned in the reading on the Spanish, the settlements and routes of Champlain, and the four routes of Hudson.

SCIENCE

Jessie spent the week in BJU Life Science studying chapter 2 on classification.

For lab work, she compared the similarities and differences between our two types of apple trees and used the guide in the textbook to classify insects, a few practice ones from pictures and then a few live specimen the kids captured the night before.

Violet finished up unit 1 in God's Design for the Physical World: Heat and Energy by completing a review crossword and the unit quiz. Then she began studying heat.

We practiced measuring different air and liquid temperatures and then compared the heat capacity of water and oil by measuring the temperature change in a half a cup over two minutes at the same heat level. (Note to self, use the low setting next time, so the oil doesn't pop and surpass the temperature capacity of the thermometer.)

LATIN & GREEK

Jessie completed chapter 2 in Latin Alive 1 and scored very well on the oral quiz I gave her. She also completed most of chapter 3 this week. In Greek, she learned the uncial (uppercase) Greek letters. Violet completed lesson 1 of LfC B, did an excellent job with the translating in her History Reader, and aced her chapter test on Friday.

ART & MUSIC

Both girls set up their orchestra folders this week for music after we read the introductory information from The Story of the Orchestra by Levine.
Violet had a fall themed activity focused on using the line elements using these online directions.
Jessie is still working on sketching the outlines from pictures. This week she sketched the ducks on the cover page from the Usbourne book we used last week. Next week, we'll switch gears and have our first go at shading using oil pastels.

Week 2: Making adjustments, part 1

2011-09-02T12:24:00.000-07:00

MATH

Benny had another great week in math. He finished up his first unit in his Singapore textbook and workbook and began working on the corresponding section in his IP book. In Miquon we compared sides of an equation to figure out what was missing. For example, if the page had 4+3+5=4+____, then he would figure out that 3+5 was missing and write 8 in the blank.

LANGUAGE ARTS

We decided to mix up his copywork a little this week for some more variety. He copied the first four states from our fifty state geography song, his full address from his grammar work, and John 3:16 from his memory work. He finished reading Days With Frog and Toad by Lobel to me and started on Dark Day in the Deep Sea by Osbourne. Together we're still reading aloud The Wheel on the School by DeJong. For grammar this week, we continued discussing nouns including proper nouns for places and common nouns for things. In spelling he aced his second chapter test in SWO B and began working on lesson 3.
HISTORY

We read The Discovery of the Americas by Maestro as a quick review of explorers from last year. Then we focused on Canada, reading Story of the World 3 by Bauer to learn about Champlain and Henry Hudson by Carmer. Benny really enjoyed the latter book, which is written from the perspective on Hudson's son John. We also mapped the routes of the two explorers.

We practiced our map making skills by completing a map of his bedroom.

Every good sailor needs to master some basic knots, so I taught him four knots using Colonial Kids by Carlson to refresh my memory.

SCIENCE

This week in science, we learned about deep ocean currents, tides, why the ocean is salty, and the different ocean zones.

Here we used food coloring in hot and cold water to show that cold water is more dense and will sink below warmer water.

We mixed up our own salty water and then evaporated the water off outside to recover the salt using directions from Oceans for Every Kid by Van Cleave. We also tried shining a flashlight through tissue paper, standard paper, construction paper, and card stock to compare the amount of light that each allowed through. Naturally, the thicker the paper the less light was seen, which we then compared back to the different ocean zones to show why the ocean is darker as the depth increases.

GEOGRAPHY

Benny continues to work on his US geography. We've gotten through Hawaii in our fifty states song. He's memorized the located of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana so far using The Little Man in the Map by Martonyi. Friday, we built our US puzzle for fun.

ART & MUSIC

This week's art lesson was inspired by these directions. I thought it was a fun way to review line elements and introduce some color basics. I gave Benny yellow, light blue, medium blue, and white washable paint (instead of watercolor) to start and we practiced paint mixing to get four different shades of green for his triangular trees. Then I pulled out the remaining paint colors and gave him free reign to finish his picture as he pleased. He continued mixing colors for the sky, ground, and tree trunks.

For music, we read a few pages from The Story of the Orchestra by Levine introducing the orchestra and the string section.

HENRY'S PRESCHOOL

For Bible, we learned about God creating Adam and Eve, continued working on Genesis 1:1, and singing "This is the Day" and "Do You Know Who Made the World" using the online plans I linked to last week.

Our theme for the week was frogs. We read Froggy Gets Dressed by London and several other books in the Froggy series. Henry loves them, and there's just enough repetition that he'll try "reading" them to himself. We also read An Extraordinary Egg by Lionni, Too Many Frogs by Asher, and A Frog in the Bog by Wilson; and put together a paper bag frog puppet using these directions.

We added yellow, brown, and green circles to our color caterpillar and practiced our new colors with M&Ms. I also laid out different colors of construction paper and allowed Henry to direct me to the different colors.

Our gross motor skill was kicking balls which naturally led to hitting the ball with a stick (apparently that is more fun).

For fine motor skills, I let him eat some cheerios for snack one day using a pair of plastic tweezers. He also did a few cutting, coloring, and sticker pages from his Kumon books.

There was also lots of bubble play (with protests any time I tried to take pictures).

Week 1: Getting started, part 2

2011-08-26T12:08:00.000-07:00

The girls had several long days this week as they tried to adjust to school and an increase in expectations this week. This is the first time in several years that we've jumped in nearly full steam. Overall, they have worked very hard this week, and I'm proud of both of their efforts.

MATH

Jessie start NEM 1 this week. It has been a large jump in difficulty from the Primary series. We covered order of operation, prime numbers, prime factorization, and highest common multiple. After the normal start of the year, you have to read the directions carefully reminders and a few discussions about the importance of showing your work. She seems to have adjusted to the new level expected (although I keep hearing sporadic comments about having to think too hard.)

Violet began her Singapore Primary 5A series with an easy topic of numbers to a million. We reviewed place value up to ten thousands, learned the hundred thousands and millions places, practiced some rounding, and worked on estimating. After the same discussions about reading directions carefully, she did very well overall. Estimating with division was the only tricky part for her since the number is rounded based on the nearest multiple and not the normal rounding rules. She also picked back up with her CWP 4 book and began working through the final two review sections.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie has moved into R&S 7 for grammar this year. This week was mostly review of sentence parts (subject, predicate, direct object, and indirect object) with a little bit of diagramming and a character sketch thrown in to the mix. Jessie chose to write about how friendly Henry is. It was a sweet paragraph to read. For Classical Writing Diogenes Maxim, we set up her commonplace book, discussed the definition of a maxim, the types of maxims, and worked with each type. We didn't purchase the student book for this level, so I just have her completing the exercises on notebook paper and keeping them in the back of her commonplace book for now. For vocabulary, we spent the week reviewing the stems and words from last year before continuing through the last few lessons of Caesar's English I next week. We also started our first week of Omnibus II. We managed to stay on schedule with 5 sessions of The Church History by Eusebius and three sessions of The Hobbit by Tolkien. I had her write up the answers to two of the Summa questions (Who is Christ? and What is the Canon?) in paragraph form. We didn't have the most profound discussions in the world, but I felt like we got off to a good start.

Violet began R&S 5 with a review of sentence parts similar to Jessie, although at a slower pace. We focused on subjects and predicates (complete and simple). For CW Homer, we did analysis and rewriting of the fable "Hercules and the Waggoner". She successfully completed her first lesson in SWO G and began reading Swiss Family Robinson by Wyss and The Sign of the Beaver by
Speare. Right now, she is narrating both stories to me, but I plan to switch over to just having her narrate the literature selection and to complete book reports on the historical fiction in the next few weeks. We still need to add in dictation next week to round out her language arts.

LATIN / GREEK

Jessie completed lesson 1 of Latin Alive and began lesson 2. She reviewed her Greek vocabulary and grammar from last year. Violet spent the week reviewing her Latin voacabulary and grammar from last year and will begin Latin for Chidren B next week.

HISTORY

This week in history we covered two topics in TruthQuest Age of Revolution 1 with the girls: King James I of England and the Separatists in England. Both girls started out Monday with a list of questions to accompany the commentary in sections 1 and 2 of the guide. We focused on the two big belief of the Renaissance and Reformation, the difference of the basis of human worth between the two, and the considered King James claim of the "Biblical" right of succession to see if it was actually based on scripture.

Each had a section of the reading relating to the King James Bible to outline after a brief review of how to outline. Jessie's outline being two levels, and Violet's one. The each read the first 15 pages of The Landing of the Pilgrims by Daugherty and wrote 1 paragraph summaries of the Pilgrims in England and their move to Holland.

After reading several chapters from The Story of the Renaissance and Reformation, I discussed King James separately with each of them. (Violet had been given some questions to get started.) I gave Jessie a set of parameters for what to write and talked through the writing process with Violet creating a brief outline to get her started. They also did some corresponding mapwork and added King James and Guy Fawkes to their timeline notebooks.

SCIENCE

Jessie is studying Life Science this year using BJU's 7th grade program. This week we covered and tested chapter one which was a very basic introduction to science, worldview, and the scientific method. I had her complete a portion of the lab on measuring and gave her some class data so she could work through the questions. Then for lab 1D I introduced the basics of writing a lab report.

The lab itself was designed to practice using the scientific method. We sorted some multicolored popcorn, and Jessie wrote a hypothesis about what color she believed the popcorn would be once it was popped.

Afterwards, we popped enough additional popcorn for the afternoon snack.

Violet is using God's Design for the Physical World this year and completed the first 5 lessons in the Heat and Energy text. She learned about the different forms of energy, mechanical energy, chemical energy, nuclear energy, and nuclear weapons. Most of the labs were worksheets except for Tuesday.

She rolled a marble down the ramp at several different heights and compared the distances that it traveled from the ramp.

ART & MUSIC

For art this week, I gave Jessie an illustration from one of Henry's Usborne books and asked her to drawing just the edges of the picture.

Violet learned about the five elements of shape and filled in each section of the maple leaf with different elements. I gave her a lot of leeway in the project. She chose to use colored pencils and make her leaf symmetrical instead of making each individual section unique.

We'll start up music next week.

Week 1: Getting started, part 1

2011-08-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

Benny has done a phenomenal job this week. Last year we did all of his subjects together. This year I switched to having him complete his math, spelling, and critical thinking independently because I needed to free up time to spend with Henry as well. He's taken the changes in stride and really done an excellent job this week.

MATH

In math, he's been working with numbers to 1000 for the start of Singapore 2A. We reviewed place value, did a small amount of addition and subtraction, and compared numbers using the appropriate symbols. I did skip the portion asking him to right the numbers out as words because I really didn't think it was necessary at this point. In Miquon blue, he's been working with odd and even numbers and patterns like odd plus odd equals even.

LANGUAGE ARTS

In place of phonics, Benny has been reading aloud to me for a few minutes each day. This week he read from Days with Frog and Toad by Lobel. He's had a tremendous increase in fluency over the summer, so we're going to try increasing the difficulty level slightly next week. Together we're reading aloud The Wheel on the School by DeJong, which loosely connects to our history since it is set in Holland. For copywork, we reviewed the alphabet, so I could note any letters that were not being formed correctly. He also copied the definition of a noun and his name and initials for his grammar lessons. Using FLL, we talked about what a noun is and the different between common and proper nouns for grammar. He also completed lesson 1 of SWO B and began lesson 2 this week.

HISTORY

Benny learned about James I using Story of the World 3 on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday, we read about the Separatists in England and their escape to Holland using Stories of the Pilgrims by Pumphrey (available free online). Rather than use the corresponding SOTW map, I selected a different map from the activity guide to mark the countries under James I and the route of the Pilgrims. Thursday we read Don Quixote and the Windmills by Kimmel to get a taste of the classic.

We used the recipe from the activity guide to make parkin on Tuesday. Benny requested we add icing, so I made up some chocolate icing to go with it. It was a little on the chewy side, but the kids liked it. (DH, however, had enough after just one bite. I don't think he liked the molasses.)

SCIENCE

Benny requested to study ocean animals this year for science, so we're using Exploring Creation with Zoology 2: The Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day by Fulbright since I already had it on hand.

We discussed aquatic animals and lined Benny's ocean box with leftover bulletin board paper that I saved from VBS decorations early in the summer.

We learned about different types of mobility and sorted a few animal pictures into the different categories of mobility. He also drew a quick sketch of a plankton after reading that section for the final page of the booklet using 1-2-3 Draw Ocean Life by Levin.

Finally, we learned about surface ocean currents and tried to create a model gyre with some floating cheerios to see the circular motion.

ART & MUSIC

We discussed the 5 elements of shape using Drawing With Children by Brookes and practiced using the different shapes in a maple leaf outline based on these directions although I let him use whatever colors of markers he desired.

We'll add in music, picture study, and begin piano next week.

HENRY'S PRESCHOOL

Yes, it's official. This year Henry gets his own block of Mommy time, which he is very excited about. He's been pulling books out of the library crate every morning this week after Curious George ends, asking "Mommy, are you going to come read to me now?" , and waiting very patiently for me to finish Violet and Benny's math lessons before it's his time. I'm basing part of our lessons on this online curriculum, but changing book of the week to theme of the week.

Our Bible lesson for the week was the first 5 days of creation. We read the first 2 pages of A Child's First Bible by Taylor. We also did the creation fingerplay, learned Genesis 1:1, and sang "This is the Day" and "Do You Know Who Made the World?" from the curriculum page. I added two books What God Made by Zobel-Nolan which has puzzle pieces to move during the story and a small flap book called All Things Bright and Beautiful with the lyrics of the first verse. Henry had fun adding stars stickers for his craft on Thursday.

Our theme for the week was ducks. We read Five Little Ducks by Raffi, Angus and the Ducks by Flack, I am a Little Duck by Crozat, Have You Seen My Duckling by Tafuri, Do Like a Duck Does by Hindley, and Little Quack by Thompson. We also made the cute paper plate duck with the handprint tale feathers.

Our colors for the week were white, black, and blue. We started our colorful catepillar, ate Oreos for black and white colors, and ran around the house with a flashlight looking for blue items to shine the light on.

Then for a special treat on Friday, we mixed up some colorful (non-dairy) ice cream

with mini chocolate chips and a topping of blue M&Ms. Henry named all three colors with ease!

Our number for the week was 0. We wrote some zeros on the dry erase board one day. We also starting learning a little song for the days of the week.

Henry's favorite activity for the week was playing put the fire out. We drew a chalk ladder and fire on the sidewalk.

He soaked his sponge in water, ran done to the fire, and squeezed the water out. This game was repeated multiple times with various siblings at Henry's request. By the end, I had a very clean sidewalk.

WW: Crazy Boys

2011-08-24T04:45:00.000-07:00

"Look, I'm a dog." (I'm just glad he didn't use the actual dog's water bowl.)

Henry's version of a headstand with no hands

Benny's creative party hat with built in balloon

And we're off...

2011-08-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

The summer has flown by with the help of a bumper crop from the garden. (I've lost count of how many jars of spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, tomato soup, and diced tomatoes I've canned now in addition to the crop of green beans.) I had originally hoped to start last week but bumped the date back since my Mom came for a visit. I still had lots of planning to complete anyway. It's still not all complete (actually I think my project for tomorrow will be to make a list of what still needs to be done for which subject) but I decided to begin today anyway.

We started today with a FULL schedule, and I actually survived with my sanity still intact. We're not completely done as of this post. Jessie is finishing up Latin and science. I have a science project to complete with Benny and a painting project for Henry. Overall though, it's been a great start.

WW: A Whole Lot of Fishing Going On...

2011-07-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

I think Benny's main reason to help DH in the garden is to have more time for fishing.

Henry rarely gets to go out in the boat, so he was thrilled with a short 5 minute ride and a few casts.

Art of Argument assignments

2011-07-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

One of our logic selections for the year is Art of Argument by Classical Academic Press. Since we're going to alternate it with Critical Thinking in US History, I decided to just put together an assignment list rather than a schedule, so we would have more flexibility on the number of lessons each week.

More Harry Potter for Books 16 and 17 of 52 in 52

2011-07-24T11:07:00.000-07:00

Still rereading Harry Potter for the 52 in 52 reading challenge this year. I completed Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban during the past two weeks. I've also made some progress in Confessions by Augustine and The Fellowship of the Ring but haven't completed these selections yet. Here are the links to my previous reviews of the Harry Potter selections:

Book 2 - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Book 3 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Schedule for 2011-2012

2011-07-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

I think I have struggled more with creating a schedule this year than any other for a variety of reasons.

1. When I wrote my initial lists of what I wanted each of my kids to accomplish, the corresponding list of how much time that required of me, and added off the numbers I knew we were in for a rough start. After a great deal of prayer, prioritizing, and regrouping I finally got every one's workload down to what I believe is a manageable level without packing the schedule so tightly that it is stressful.
2. One of the biggest changes I made was to set up Jessie's work in larger blocks of time. This gave us a good compromise between her wanting more input on when she did her work and my need for set times to check her work and work with one on one. Within each block, she is free to work on her assignments in any order that she chooses.
3. I also tried to give Jessie more input on her schedule this year. It was her decision to keep her morning playtime with Henry and to start 10 minutes later than last year.
4. Scheduling resources was also more difficult this year. The girls needed separate times for Latin due to the DVD instruction, for history since they will both be reading some of the same resources, and for writing and history so the computer is available for assignments (although I probably will start Violet off writing by hand and transition her to the computer over the course of the year.)

Here's the result:

Now, I just need to finish up the lesson plans.

Final Plans for 2011-2012

2011-07-12T17:27:00.000-07:00

Jessie's 7th Grade

Bible: Beautiful Girlhood, Heroes of the Faith, Jesus Our Savior and Friend
Math: NEM 1 (the non-geometry chapters) then start Foerster's Algebra 1
Literature: Omnibus 2 Primary and Secondary
Vocabulary: finish Caesar's English 1 and Caesar's English 2
Grammar: Rod & Staff 7: Building Securely
Writing: Classical Writing Diogenes Maxim and Intermediate Poetry
History: Truthquest AOR 1 and part of 2
Science: BJU Life Science
Latin: Latin Alive 1
Greek: Elementary Greek 2
Logic: Art of Argument, Critical Thinking in US History, and Building Thinking Skills 3 Figural
Geography: focus on North and South America
Music: The Story of Classical Music with a Composers lapbook
Art: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Violet's 5th Grade

Bible: The Hidden Treasures of Philippians
Math: Singapore Primary US 5A &5B
Literature: various library resources
Spelling: Spelling Workout G
Grammar: Rod & Staff 5
Writing: Classical Writing Homer and Poetry for Beginners
History: Truthquest AOR 1 and part of 2
Science: God's Design for the Physical World
Latin: Latin for Children B
Logic: Building Thinking Skills 2 and Mind Benders B series
Geography: focus on North and South America
Music: The Story of Classical Music with a Composers lapbook
Art: Drawing with Children style lessons

Benny's 2nd Grade

Bible: Egermeier's Bible Story Book
Math: Singapore Primary US 2A & 2B
Reading/Literature: various library resources
Spelling: Spelling Workout B and part of C
Grammar: a modified form of FLL
Writing: copywork
History: TruthQuest AOR 1 and 2 with more emphasis on America history
Science: Apologia's Exploring Creation with Zoology 2
Critical Thinking: Building Thinking Skills 1, Mind Benders beginning books
Geography: US geography
Music: Classical kids series
Art: Drawing with Children style lessons

The past few weeks....

2011-07-08T10:53:00.000-07:00

Man time flies by in the summer. I have spent a lot of time on the computer and Internet but next to none on this poor neglected blog. We all had a blast at our church's VBS and have been hitting the lake as often as the weather permits. What else have we been doing?

School:
Summer school has been a little erratic depending on what else needs done on a given day. Jessie's nearly finished her Singapore CWP 6 book. She has one section of review left. She has completed all of the remaining lessons in her Properties of Matter book and just needs to take the final unit test and the final exam. We've been using Headventureland to keep up with her Latin vocab and some cut out conjugation charts I found on the CAP website for grammar. Violet has been doing the same Latin review and working with the Flashmaster each day to work on her math facts. We've also been practicing some more cursive writing to make it more automatic. Benny has been reading to me off and on. He finished reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone which required a great deal of perseverance on his part, and I've let him start reading the second book as well. (He has already seen both movies with his older sister). I also have plenty of Frog and Toad, Magic Tree House, and other easier readers for him to use to work on fluency. He finished his Miquon book, but has a few pages left in his 1B IP text (which is my fault for not being consistent).

Housework:
Around the house we're slowing deep cleaning and getting everything back into shape. I've washed all the bedding except the girl's comforters, shampooed the carpets (including under the furniture) for half of the house, cleaned out both pantries and 80% of my kitchen cabinets and drawers, and helped Benny get his room back in order after Henry dumped out all of his Lego sets all mixed together in his room.

Garden:
Our garden is coming along very nicely. We've picked and canned beans twice and have eaten lots of fresh yellow squash, zucchini, and cucumber. We've also pulled a few onions for dinner as well. The tomatoes are coming on strong and should be ready to start picking soon. So far the sweet potatoes and potatoes are doing well although I'm tiring of battling potato beetles. I know I've pulled more than 200 off the plants and killed them. The battle is still ongoing, but we seem to fairing much better than last year.

Planning:
I have the majority of our subjects planned out for the year. I'm still working on reading and scheduling for history and Omnibus. I also can't for the life of me figure out any way to plan Latin Alive 1 without watching the DVDs because I really need Jessie to do this independently in the fall. I've made an initial attempt at a schedule only to realize that there are not enough hours in the day for me to teach the kids. Now it's a matter of prayer and priorities (and making the school day reasonable for each kid while still challenging them and spending time with the 3yo).

WW: Benny Lost His First Tooth!!

2011-07-06T11:47:00.000-07:00

The Hobbit by Tolkein and Harry Potter, Books 14 and 15 of 52 in 52

2011-07-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

Books 14 and 15 are both rereads for me this year. I read The Hobbit as part of the Omnibus 2 secondary book selections, and I'm in the process of rereading the Harry Potter series before the release of the final movie on the 15th which I'm planning to go see in the theatres with DH. (It will be our first movie date in years.) Rather than writing new reviews, I'll just link back to my reviews from last year since I'd write pretty much the same comments again.
A review of The Hobbit by Tolkien

A review of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by Rowling

Eusebius: The Church History, Book 13 of 52 in 52

2011-07-03T12:39:00.000-07:00

I know I'm way behind in my book challenge, but I'm finally getting back to having some reading time. For book 13 I've been working on The Church History by Eusebius with Paul Maier as translator and commentator as part of preparing for Omnibus 2 with my 7th grader this fall.

The Church History was written by Eusebius who lived in the late 3rd and early 4th century and served as a bishop in Caesarea. This text summarizes the history of the Christian church from the time of Christ to the reign of Constantine included the succession of bishops in important churches, the succession of Roman emperors, as well as stories, writing, controversies, and historical events of the time period. He does an excellent job of weaving into the story numerous excerpts from a variety of sources including the works of Josephus, various letters written by different bishops, translations of edicts from Roman emperors, and other first hand accounts of the events.

I have to say that I'm usually not a big fan of non-fiction nor am I a major history lover; however, I truly did enjoy this book. There are moments like some of the lists of bishop successon that can be a bit dry and tedious, but there are also an amazing number of first-hand accounts that I found both an engrossing and enlightening means of glimpsing the reality of the time. While there are necessarily a large number of stories of various martyrs, I only found one paragraph at the end of part 6 of book 3 quoting a description of Josephus concerning the conditions inside Jerusalem during the siege of Trajan that I felt compelled to mark for by daughter to skip this fall.

WW: VBS pictures

2011-06-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

We spent all last week at our church for vacation Bible school.

The girls helped me put up some decorations to get ready

and it turned out very well.

Jessie spent a lot of time playing with and reading to Henry while I was doing lessons with the 1st grade class.

They had a great time on the church playground,

and Jessie got some really great pictures of their time together.

Summer Session: Week 1 Report

2011-06-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

It's officially summer here, so we're down to just a few subjects. In the language arts area, I'm working with the girls this summer on their cursive. Although they have both been taught cursive previously, neither have been using it consistently so they both have to stop and think about how to form certain letters. I want it to become automatic. Benny continues to read a book to me each day. For math, Jessie is finishing up some CWP problems. Benny still has a little bit of 1B left, and all three are doing some math drill.

Jessie did several lessons in food related chemistry this week.

For the lesson on flavor, she cooked up some chocolate pudding.

We also made chocolate chip cookies with and without baking soda to compare. Henry thought both were delicious.

In weather and water, we learned about tornados and had a great time forming funnels of water

even well beyond the normal science time.

Even Henry had a try. We also learned about hurricanes. The girls completed the review crosswords and quizzes for unit 4, and we began discussing weather instruments on Friday.

Since Jessie hated the assignment from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain last week, I decided to take a different approach this week. I gave her a picture of a butterfly from a book and asked her to focus on drawing one line at a time just like last week's upside down drawing. She worked really hard and even decided to go back and shade everything in as well. The best part is that she was proud of her results.

Violet and Benny did the lion drawing from Drawing with Children. We also worked a little on geography, but didn't add any new states this week.

Henry seems to be in another growth spurt because every time I turned around he was raiding the kitchen for snacks.

Omnibus: Week 1 of Eusebius and The Hobbit

2011-06-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

Eusebius: Book 1

First let me say, I love this book. I have always accepted the premise that Jesus was with God in the beginning, but to watch Eusebius lay out scripture after scripture in the Old Testament linking them to Jesus and using scripture to trace Christianity back to the beginning was very eye-opening. He works meticulously through historical evidence to create a timeline for Jesus life and explains the differences in the genealogies of Jesus between the gospels of Matthew and Luke. (Obviously, I should pay more attention to genealogies since I hadn't even noticed the difference.) My favorite portion of the chapter were his definition of a Christian and the story of King Abgar. To Eusebius a Christian is someone who through the knowledge and teaching of Christ excels in self-control and righteousness, in discipline and virtue, and in confession of the one and only God. That is a much higher bar than the one set by our current generation.

Eusebius: Book 2

Book 2 traces the historical events from after the resurrection through the reign of Nero. Portions of the material were already familiar to me from the Acts of the Apostles and our studies of ancient history. For me the highlight of the chapter is the story of the martyrdom of James the Just, the brother of Jesus.

Eusebius: Book 3

Book 3 details the events during the reign from Galba to Trajan. The early portion of the book deals with the siege of Jerusalem by Titus and the conditions in the city at the time with extensive quoting from Josephus. The conditions were atrocious and difficult to read through, but for the most part not so detailed as to be inappropriate for Jessie I though with one exception. Near the end of 1.6 there is a story of a woman named Mary that I found to be over the top and completely disgusting so I have put a post it over and marked for Jessie to skip. I think the conditions are covered sufficiently without this last portion. Thankfully the second half of the chapter is much more uplifting with stories of the grandsons of Jude testifying before Domitian and being released as well as a story about the apostle John going to great lengths to bring a young man back to faith after he turns away. This is the longest book so far with plenty of details of who became "bishop" of which church, a few more persecutions, and a discussion of the Biblical canon listing accepted, disputed, rejected ,and heretical books.

Summary for the week:

I managed to complete 6 sessions of primary literature and 3 sessions of secondary literature for The Hobbit by Tolkein this week. I've been taking notes and writing answers to the discussion sections and just answering the recitation questions mentally before comparing my answer with the teacher's CD. I feel like I'm off to a good start, and I'm actually enjoying myself.

Week 40: Transitioning to Summer (last 2 weeks)

2011-06-10T14:52:00.000-07:00

MATH

Jessie has finished her textbook, workbook, and IP review and will continue to work on her CWP review sections over the summer.
Violet has finished her textbook, workbook, and IP books. She has 2 pages left in her CWP for the year
Benny has finished his textbook and workbook. We're continuing to work on his IP, CWP, and Miquon hoping to have some more books finished next week.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie and Violet were off for the week.
Benny continues to read to me daily and complete a line of copywork and a couple of ETC pages.

SCIENCE

Jessie has had a busy week of yummy science labs.

Here she was comparing the solubility of sugar, salt, and baking soda in water.

Gotta love kitchen chemistry.

She compared the rate at which life savers dissolved in cold, warm, and hot water as well as the difference between crushed and whole life savers. The leftovers were yummy.

We compared the density of regular versus diet soda by seeing which can would float in water.

Then she used the recipe in the book to create her own soda.

Henry's favorite part was the recipe for making ice cream. (We used almond milk, and it turned out very well.)

We also did a few lessons in Our Weather & Water this week covering air masses & weather fronts, wind, and thunderstorms. Here's Benny reducing the air pressure inside an empty two liter to watch it get crushed. We also tried to generate some static electricity but were unsuccessful.
ART

We started up art this week.

Jessie is using Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Edwards. She did some symmetrical drawing one day and attempted to copy an upside down drawing the second day. (I though it turned out very well, but she wouldn't let me take a picture because she didn't like it. Benny and Violet did some watercolor one day and completed the test for Drawing With Children by Brookes to determine their level on another day.

GEOGRAPHY

Violet and Benny started learning some US geography this week. (Jessie successfully labeled all 50 states and named almost all of the capitals so I'm just going to let her play online geography games once a week.) To learn all of the names of the states, I'm teaching them a song that I remember from elementary school called "Fifty Nifty United States". So far we've covered the first 7 in the alphabetical list. To place the states correctly on the map, we're using The Little Man in the Map by Martonyi. This week we cover the man and the states of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana. We outlined Mim on a large laminated blank map and each of them got to draw in part of his features. My hope is to have covered all 50 states by the end of the summer, so we can shift to learning capitals and other information about the states this fall.

WW: Benny's quirk

2011-06-08T14:07:00.000-07:00

Over the course of the years I have woken up to find Benny in many different places in the house from the recliner to the couch to the floor (sometimes his own, sometimes the hallway, and even under the dining room table a time or two).

Since the escapades are getting more rare as he gets older, I thought I'd better capture his most recent one in pictures to serve as a reminder.

Omnibus 2: Background of Eusebius

2011-06-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

Eusebius was born around 265 in the eastern Roman Empire. He was appointed bishop of Caesarea in 313, became an advisor to Constantine, and was one of the leading bishops at the Council of Nicea in 325. His history, written at the request of Paulinus the bishop of Tyre, is the first history of the early church designed to record the history of God's people from the life of Jesus through his present day. His stated intention is to cover the names and deeds of apostles and bishops, major historical events, writings that teach and defend the Christian doctrine, names of heretics, the fate of the Jews who rejected Jesus, and the achievements of confessors and martyrs.

To Eusebius history is more than the story of man. It is rather the story of God working out his purposes in this world. He believes that God is sovereign and that nothing can happen apart from His determination. He clearly states that Jesus is the Son of the Living God, Creator of heaven and earth, and is both fully God and fully man. Christ came into the world in part to create a new people called Christians, so that now the world is no longer divided into Jews and Gentiles but rather into believers and non-believers. Because of this division, he recognizes that the church is at war and believes that it will triumph in the end because Jesus has triumphed over Satan. He also recognizes that within the church the truth of God is working to transform people making them strong and courageous, inspiring them to fight for the purity and unity of the church, and infusing them with compassion.

Omnibus 2: Preparing for fall

2011-06-06T10:56:00.000-07:00

Personally I find the idea of Omnibus and teaching the great books both exciting and a little intimidating. This is going to be new ground for me. I've read excerpts from a few of the books, but there are several that I haven't read and a few I've never even heard of. Given my lack of knowledge and experience (and the demanding requirements of the course itself), I've decided I'd better get a head start on Jessie over the summer. My plan is to post a summary of each author as I read the background material from the text as well as weekly updates on my reading and what I'm learning. So... ready or not here I go...

WW: Sunday's Happenings

2011-06-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

Here's Jessie after being baptized, becoming a member of church, and receiving her first communion this past Sunday. (Henry just wanted to be in the picture.)