HOD: Preparing Week 1

It's that time of year again! Time to get back on schedule and dive into all of our new materials. We just finished up our first week back to school. We decided to embark on a new adventure with Sis and chose "Heart Of Dakota: Preparing Hearts For His Glory" for her core curriculum this year. So far I am very happy with our choice. Boo began "My Father's World 1st grade: Learning God's Story." (I will be blogging about her first week in a separate post. I decided it will be easier for those following only one grade level curriculum if I post each separate.
 Today I wanted to write about Sis's first week of 4th grade and I will write about Boo's 1st week in a separate post under the MFW 1st grade"tab.

Our first week started out kind of slow. I am still recovering from a surgery. I like to start out slowly anyway to get us back in the swing of things. Our first day was really light. I introduced the girls to their new books and workboxes. We also had our annual school supply hunt again. I decided to change that up this year though. I know they like picking out their own folders and pencils so instead of hiding our usual school supplies. I hid 10 $1 bills in the back yard. Each girl got $5. I made a list of things we needed yet and after our lessons we headed to the Dollar tree for each girl to pick out her own new supplies. We did a little bit of reviewing, had a short lesson, and spent the rest of the day at the County Fair.

HISTORY:  This year's history is an overview of all of history, beginning at creation and moving chronologically focusing on key events till present time. Most of our books are real "living books" and we will be learning about history through stories that bring it to life rather than traditional text books.

The first of those books is called Grandpa's Box.We read the first chapter
together on day 1. This is part of Sis's history curriculum. I have to say I LOVE this book so far. We will be reading through it over the next month or so. It's basically a story about a grandpa who has a yellow box full of little wooden figures that he's carved. He uses each wooden figure illustrate part of a story that he's telling to his grandchildren about a great war we are all part of. It's the great spiritual battle all Christians are fighting that began long ago in the garden of Eden. We made our own "Grandpa's Box" and as we read each chapter we draw grandpa's little figures. We're going to laminate them and store them in our box. This has been one of our favorite parts of week one.



Sis is also using Draw and Write Through History this year. She is a natural artist and drawing is sort of her thing, so she's liking this part of the curriculum. On certain days she has to write a paragraph on a history subject and then follow step by step instructions on how to draw the pictures. This week she learned to draw a plant, a tree, and a dinosaur and wrote about the very beginning of world history.

Another thing I like so far is the weekly history project. Each week Sis is assigned a special project that relates to her history lesson. She will work on it a little (about 10-15 mins) each day. This weeks project was to research a "coat of arms" and design your own coat of arms and shield.


MATH: For math this year we are continuing with MathUsee. Sis does really well with this curriculum so I see no need to try other things. She began Delta which focuses mainly on division this year.

BIBLE:  

I am so excited about the Bible curriculum we choose this year. We are using Apologia's Worldview :What We Believe Curriculum. This year we will be going through book 1of 3 which is "Who is God?". Sis is at a place in life where she has a lot of questions and a lot of "how can I know for sures?" She was needing something deeper than just bible stories.We have been trying our best to help her and answer all of those questions. Then I came across this! The first words out of Sis mouth after our first lesson "Wow mom this book is gonna be perfect for me! It's about a lot of the stuff I've been asking about!" Some topics dealt with are : Where am I building my life? How can I know what is true? What is God like? Why isn't the world perfect? Why did God create me? Already one week into this curriculum she and I have had so many great and important discussions. The text also comes with a journal of activities, worksheets, and pages for recording prayers and praise reports.

LANGUAGE: 
We decided to stick with the same materials that we used last year for English. We will be using First Language Lessons For the Well Trained Mind Level 4. After I bought the books and realized the whole year is diagramming sentences I was sorry I chose to stick with it. However, Sis's response was "YES! I love diagramming sentences!"..hmmm I will never understand that one but I guess if she's happy, I'm happy. For spelling Sis is using 5th grade Rod and Staff. There is also a lot of LA in the HOD manual including a weekly poetry study, vocabulary words, and handwriting. 
This is Sis's Vocabulary Journal she has to choose 3 out of 5 words from our history text to look up in her dictionary. Then write definition, a sample sentence, and a picture for each word. I let her pick out a new sparkly blue notebook for her journal so that was exciting to her. However, our first vocabulary assignment took her 1 hour! I'm praying it's just because it's new. 



READING:

I decided to use HOD's reading/literature program this year "Drawn Into The Heart of Reading" (DITHOR). Sis LOVES to read and even in the summer she spends most of her day reading books. I send her outside to play, look out and shes reading a book on the trampoline or swing. This is the first year though that we are trying an actual literature program. Sis will study one specific genera of  literature at a time. Reading 1-2 books in that category. I let her pick the order that we will do them. She chose Historical Fiction first. I knew she would because our book choice for that is "Little Women," which is set during the civil war. This might be odd for a 9 year old but mine has been obsessively in love with Little Women for about a year. It is her most favorite cartoon. She knows all the names and about each of the March sisters. She will sit for hours watching episodes over and over again (she had 80 episodes DVRed!!!)  and tell me all about it! I'm not complaining though I would rather that be her favorite show than most of the options available these days! However, she has never read the classic book! So she was jumping up and down excited when I told her I bought her Little Women as one of her literature choices this year. She will either read aloud to me or read silently on her own. Then she has a workbook with daily assignments where she will answer questions about her book and learn about the genera. Before each new genera there is a "kickoff day." For our historical fiction kickoff Sis chose a character and time period in history, made up a story and acted out a little historical fiction play for me. She chose to be a pilgrim heading to America for the first time. Boo wanted to join in and so she pretended to be on the boat too with a suitcase full of cheese and a toothbrush! Weird kids. 

Our first week was very tiring! We're all still trying to get out of summer mode. I think it was a successful week overall. Next week we will be adding science to our list and I can't wait to write about that one. It looks like it's going to be a lot of fun this year!