Unit 12: Preparing

This week was turkey week! I hope you all had a HAPPY THANKSGIVING! We had a 3 day school week and even those days were much shorter than usual. Most of the week was spent relaxing, stuffing our faces and playing family board games. We skipped science and language this week, but we were able to fit in math, spelling and most of our other subjects.

History: In history we are still in 2 Kings. We studied a large chunk of history in just a few days. First we learned about the Assyrians. They were the greatest, most powerful army of that time. We learned about how wicked they were and how cruel they treated their enemies. We learned about all the counties they conquered including the Northern kingdom of Israel, and how they were feared by the world. We learned about Sennacherib King of Assyria. From our Bible we learned stories of Hezekiah, king of Judah, and how God protected them from the Assyrians. One of the interesting things we learned was that Nineveh was one of the most important cities in Assyria. Sis immediately recognized Nineveh as the city from the story of Jonah and the big fish. It's amazing that after seeing in this weeks stories how wicked Assyria was and how badly they treated God's people, knowing that years later God would send Jonah so he could have mercy on them.  Second started learning about Jeremiah and Babylon.

Even though we didn't actually learn the story of Jonah this week Sis learned to draw a whale in her "Draw and Write Through History" book, since Nineveh was part of our history lesson.

We also researched scrolls. In one of our stories the king of Assyria sent a message on a scroll to King Hezekiah. Sis' history project was to make a scroll and write the words of 2 Kings 19:32-34.  

 Reading: We're still reading "The Doll People," together for our mystery book. It's starting to get really suspenseful. I have to admit that we have not been doing our Drawn into the Heart of Reading workbook much though. It seems dry and mostly like busywork a lot of the time. I'm starting to think the workbook part is just not for us. I would have to say though that reading books together is one of my favorite things to do with Sis. I hope that she never outgrows her love for books (or wanting to read them with me!!) She's also been reading Trumpet of the Swan in her free time. I can never keep this girl supplied with enough books. I am thankful this thanksgiving for libraries!
 

Boo spent a few days this week reviewing again and practicing her reading. She started learning her addition by 2's in math. We all did a cute color by number turkey for thanksgiving. We also filled out a "Thankfulness A-Z worksheet." You can find a free printable  HERE.  Together we came up with something to be thankful for for each letter of the alphabet.   

A few of the things I'm most thankful for this holiday season. #1: That 19 years ago as undeserving as I am God chose me. That he decided to reach down from heaven and grab a hold of my rebellious heart and change my life. I shutter to think of what my life would look like today without Christ or what the future would hold for me. I am most thankful for my salvation. #2: I'm thankful for my husband and marriage. He is my best friend. I'm thankful to have someone who shares my heart, someone to talk to, laugh with, and grow old with.  #3: For the children God has given us to raise. #4: For the opportunity to home school. I know not everyone is in a place to be able to stay home with their kids. I'm truly grateful... and #5: I'm thankful for the hard times. Through every hardship and struggle God has always provided. My trials have made me who I am, and have taught me that God will never leave me and will always keep his word. 

Thanksgiving is suppose to be a time of the year to give thanks, but the Bible says we are to give thanks to the Lord always. No matter what you're going through, you still have so much to thank Him for. Thank God that you are breathing, that you have food to eat, and clean water to drink. You can always think of someone, somewhere who has it harder than you. And If you know the Lord than even when this life seems like it couldn't be worse, you can rejoice in knowing that this life is temporary and you have the promise of eternal life! There's nothing greater to be thankful for than that!

Unit 11: Preparing

History: This week we continued learning about the time period of the Kings. We learned about the nation of Israel dividing into the northern and southern kingdoms, each with their own king. We read our stories this week mostly from our "Grandpa's Box" book, and then we also read the real accounts from the Bible. Most of our stories focused on King Ahab and his wickedness in leading Israel to worship Baal. In addition to reading our history text sis did a research assignment on king Ahab and Jezebel using the internet. We also learned about Elijah and Elisha, and how even during a time of great rebellion and sinfulness, they were faithful to the one true God. 

Sis' history project was to make a flip-book of the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. The flip-book was 10 pages long. It showed the alter and sacrifice being drenched with water and then fire coming down and consuming it.

Our vocabulary words for this week were: obliged, archer, obsidian, summoned, and luxuries. Our weekly vocab words are taken from whatever history text we are using that week. Sis looks them up in her dictionary and adds the definition to her vocabulary journal w/ an illustration and example sentence.

In our Draw and Write Through History Sis drew a Phoenician ship. Last week we learned about the Phoenicians, ancient Greece, and all the Greek gods they worshiped. This week we learned that Jezebel the wicked wife of King Ahab came from that area, she brought to Israel with her the false gods.

Reading: This week we started our mystery book for our reading curriculum. For our "genre kickoff" we played a mystery guessing game. We took turn hiding an item in a shoe box with a lid, then giving clues about what was in the box. Then the other one had to try to guess. The book I chose was "The Doll People." This book is thicker than the others we've read so far this year, but I knew right away that Sis would like it. First, she loves mystery books. Second, it just sounded cute! It's about a family of miniature dolls who live in a doll house. Much like Toy Story the little girl who owns them is unaware that her dolls are alive and only move around when she is asleep or not home. It's also a mystery though, Aunt Sara Doll went missing many years ago. Annabell Doll finds clues to Aunt Sara's disappearance. So far we're enjoying reading this together ( Sis reads her reading books aloud to me and Boo.) I just discovered that there are more Doll People books. We might have to get those later to read just for fun.  
  
Language & Math: I don't blog much about LA, spelling, and math because there's never really anything too exciting about them. Still we do them every day. Sis has a 16 word list of spelling words that she learns each week and takes a spelling test every Friday. This year in math she is learning division using MathUsee Delta. This week we learned about figuring averages though. We also use First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind. Sis does 4 lessons a week from this book. This week we practiced diagramming subjects and verbs, direct and indirect objects and memorized the list of "subject pronouns" and "object pronouns."

Science: This week we started a unit on nutrition! It's very interesting, but also convicting! Ch 1. started out by saying it's important that we study nutrition and the human body, so that we know how to take care of the bodies God gave us and know how the food we eat effects us. We learned the main nutrients that our body needs to survive. We looked at the difference between eating an apple and a candy bar or food with little nutrients. I have to admit that we love our desserts and junk food. If nothing else, I think just learning the technicality of what happens to the foods we put in our bodies will motivate us to try to eat healthier!

I won't be posting a blog for first grade this week since Boo is taking some time for review. She has been working really hard on her reading  though.We've been using a lot of online phonics games and books like Starfall.com for extra practice.

I want to do some special Thanksgiving activities next week with Boo instead of our regular curriculum. Since it will be a short week anyway, and we're excited to be going out of town for the holiday, we'll probably wait until after Thanksgiving before we move forward with Boo's curriculum.   

Unit 10: Preparing

History: This week's history lessons focused on Ancient Greece and Rome. We started learning about the Greeks last week. We learned about the Phoenicians and where our alphabet came from. The one thing that I love most about our history curriculum is that they do such a great job tying together the world history with Bible history. Really you can't separate the two, but that's exactly what many public school text books try to do. It's really neat though to see how the events of the Bible fit in with the wars, events and different civilizations of those time periods. I'm really glad that my kids are able to learn history this way. We also learned about the harsh lifestyle of the Spartans, the Athenians, the first Olympics, and the founding of Rome. Sis did a written narration on the legend of the founding of Rome. We're really enjoying learning about all these different groups of people. This year we just have an introduction to each of them. Our year is suppose to be a brief overview of all of world history.Starting next year and for the 3 after that, we will  begin a 4 year chronological study of history, studying each time period in greater detail...I can't wait to go back to ancient Egypt and Greece and do some of the fun projects that are scheduled!

We learned that the Spartan army used the scytale method to send secret messages that the enemy couldn't read. Sis' history project was to make her own scytale cipher. This was a really fun project. Kids love secret codes and messages. The real scytale messages were written on long strips of leather and wrapped around a cylinder, and then unraveled. The receiver of the message would have to wrap the strip around their own cylinder to read what it said, only someone with the exact same size cylinder could read it! We used white paper, and a paper towel roll. Sis thought it was cool that she has discovered a new way to write secret messages to her friends. Here is a link to a website with instructions for making the project...make a greek scytale cipher   


In her Draw and Write Through History Sis only had copy work writing scheduled this week. Sis is an art nut and so she was really unhappy about not having a drawing assignment. So went online to try to find something Greece or Rome related that she could learn to draw. I finally found this awesome Youtube channel called  Art for Kids Hub  that gives steps for kids to learn to draw...Sis went nuts, she's drawn about 10 pictures watching those videos this week, but the assignment I gave her was to watch a video on how to draw a roman soldier...I was so impressed with the results!! I'm pretty sure this is my favorite drawing she's ever done!


Reading:  Sis read "My Father's Dragon" this week as a 2nd adventure book. However she finished it one day, so I gave up on looking for more Adventure books to fill the next 2 weeks and just decided to end our adventure unit early and move on. So, we did our book project for this genre. We used the book "Book projects to Send Home (Grade 4)" for our projects. This project was called "Made for the Movies."

Sis chose "Toliver's Secret" as her book for her project. She had to imagine that her book was being made into an adventure movie. Then design a movie theater poster with one of the most exciting scenes from the book as an illustration and add a catchy captions to make someone want to watch it. Lastly she had to rate the movie with 1-5 stars and write a movie review.Then she had to stand up and present her review and poster to us.

Science: In science we finished learning about the digestive and renal system in our Apologia Anatomy book. We learned about the liver, gall bladder, intestines, urine, and a lot of other yucky stuff I won't mention! We did an experiment with cooking oil, water, and dish soap. The oil represented fats in the chyme. The dish soap, which broke down the globs of oil into small globs, represented how bile breaks up the fats during digestion. Sis also made a comic strip about digestion, and we added digestive and renal system to our little personal person model.

mfw 1st grade: Week 9 (PART2)

Have you ever had one of THOSE day (or weeks)... the kind where you just want to flag down the nearest school bus, kick them all out in their pajamas, and say "see you in 8 hours?" The kind that make you question what in the world you were thinking when you chose to homeschool? The kind of week where nothing goes right and your child's brain has turned to mush? You wonder if they're even hearing a word you're trying desperately to teach them? A lesson that turns from struggle, to frustration, to fighting, to everyone in tears, and you wonder am I really cut out for this?  Well that was our week in 1st grade or a least most of it. The start of the week was the worst of it. Boo had to learn a new sound (the 2nd half of week 9) because I split week 9 into two trying to avoid too much info at once. Her sound was /er/ and we learned that "ir, ur, and er," all make this sound. I knew it was going to confuse her with so many new letters after just having learned /ar/ and /or/ last week. I didn't realize though that Boo couldn't physically make the /er/ sound. Boo still has a very (cute) but babyish speech and pronounces a lot of sounds wrong. One of those is the /er/ sound, which ends up with a "w' in there...like I "hoo-wut" (hurt) my knee...She tried so hard to make the sound and just couldn't..she cried, I cried..it was just not fun. After the first couple days it got a little better, and she was able to read her workbook page with a little help. I however have really been struggling with what to do. I don't want to move her forward until she's ready. Adding new stuff will only confuse her more. I've prayed about it and for now I think we will take a third week to just review and see where she's at. I'm going to take it one week at a time and not move forward again until she feels more confident.


We're still learning about anger for our Bible time. We read about angry rams who fight each other by ramming their heads together. We talked about fighting, hitting, etc. We learned that we should talk about our problems rather than physically showing our anger. Our Proverb is "A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control."

In math Boo is taking a break from addition and is practicing writing her numbers 0-100. She has been able to count to 100 for a long time, but she's never had to write them all. She still struggles with not making our 3's and 5's backwards, so this has been good practice.

Finally a break from all the frustration and hard work...art time! Boo loves to draw. This week we tried to draw a lizard. Boo drew her's on a plant. We also did story time each day. This week we read Berenstain Bear books.

After this hard week we've had I'm really looking forward to Christmas break, which will be here sooner than I can believe! I also can't believe it's almost time for us to order next years curriculum already bc we order ours every February! Time to start planning and looking at all the choices.

Unit 9 :Preparing

First of all let me say "What a beautiful week!" We had unusually warm weather for the part of the country we live in! We are usually in winter coats and sometimes snow by now, so for us to be in short sleeves in November is unheard of! We took one of the nicest days off to have a girls day out and to enjoy it.

History: Sis started learning about the time of King David and the Greeks this week. We learned that although David was a man after God's own heart he still fell into sin. God graciously forgave him and allowed Jesus to be born through David's line.
 
 Above is Sis working on her history timeline .We will study Ancient Greece in greater detail in a later year. This year is an introduction. We learned a little about Greek Mythology. We talked about the fact that the Greeks believed in many gods and that many fairy-tale type stories and poems were written about those gods. Many of the things in our world today, including the planets are still names after the Greek gods. We read the story of Paul and Barnabas in Acts, where the people of Lystra thought Paul and Barnabas were the Greek God's Zeus and Hermes, because they healed a lame man by the power of Jesus. many of the Greek god's were adopted by the Romans of that day. We know only the one true God has the power to heal and is worthy of worship.
Then of course what would a study of ancient Greek be without studying the Trojan war? The craziest thing is that a lot ofthe story of the Trojan war is a legend about the gods. How much of the war part is true we don't know. We read the book "The Trojan Horse."  

For Sis's Draw and Write Through History she drew a sheep like David took care of and a Trojan Horse.

For our art/history project we were suppose to make a poster with our name and it's meaning. We didn't like the idea of that project, it just sounded boring to us. So we had a 3D hand art project that we've been wanting to try for a while. We decided to do this for our weekly project instead. Sis loved it! We did however still put her name and it's meaning on our picture. We also still did all of the discussion questions and research in our curriculum that was related to the project. Sis researched why name meanings were important in Bible days. We looked up the meanings to the names Jacob, Moses, Joshua, and Ruth. We discussed how each of the names meanings were significant to the persons life.

Reading and Language: We did a huge review in language this week of everything we have learned and practiced this year up till now including, nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, proof reading and sentence diagramming. 

Sis finished reading Toliver's Secret in her Adventure genera for Drawn into The Heart of Reading. It was suppose to take another 2 weeks, but she begged to read ahead, so looks like she'll be starting a 2nd adventure book next week instead.  We also started learning about fables this week. We started reading Aesop's Fables and discussing them. I really like the hard cover copy that came with the curriculum it has beautiful illustrations and contains 20 classic fables. This week we read several of them Sis said her favorite was " The Country Mouse and the City Mouse."  

Science: In science we are still learning about the digestive system. We learned all about digestion, the stomach, esophagus, intestines, etc. We also have been learning about teeth because they play a very important roll in the digestion process. One experiment that we did was to see how acidic drinks affect the enamel of teeth. We used a large animal tooth and soaked it in Coke for the week. After only one day our tooth was very badly stained. After a week it was obvious that the Coke was eating away at the enamel of our tooth...gross! We also learned about what happens when we burp, vomit, and use the restroom (to say it politely) GROSS again, but oh so interesting to a 9 year old!
We also did an experiment to see what happens to food in our stomachs. Sis put a piece of bread and a little water in an airtight bag. She then squeezed and released the bag over and over like the muscles of our stomachs contract to break down the food. In a few seconds the bread was all torn apart and broken into smooshy pieces.

MFW 1st grade : Week 9 (PART 1)

I called this post week 9 (part 1.) because I decided to spread week 9 over 2 weeks, mostly because the phonics moves really fast this week. Boo was suppose to learn a new phonics sounds every day this week and that is just too much for her brain to handle right now. Plus we skipped quite a few suggested things last week that I would like to catch up on esp some of the fun projects.

For reading we focused on /ar/ as in "car" and also learned /or/ as in "corn." We will hold off on all the other new sounds we were suppose to learn until next week.

In our art book, Usborn's, "I Can Draw Animals," we learned how to draw a dolphin. Boo has been having so much fun doing her weekly drawing. I'm so glad that I added this to her week.

Our Proverb for this week was "A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control." In our 5 min devotion book. We read about "angry hippos." How they look innocent but are actually one of the most vicious animals in the African rivers. They lash out with their sharp teeth and over turn boats. Some people are like angry hippos and they use their words and actions to attack others when they are angry. God wants us to keep ourselves under control when we are angry and treat others the way he wants us to.

 


In science we learned about thunder and lightning, but we also went back to rain from last week. We talked more about the water cycle. We filled up a glass with water, marker the water level and placed it in a sunny window. We will measure how much has evaporated over the next week.






One of the fun math projects we skipped last week was to play "Sunshine Cafe." The instructions were to set up a play "cafe," for lunch time and have Boo serve lunch and figure everyone's bills.We decided to change it up a bit. We have a serious American Girl doll obsession over here, so I knew all the girls would want in on the fun if we used this assignment to play AG. I helped Boo make her menu and price her food items. The all the girls set up a table and decorated. Boo took all the orders, "cooked" the food, and served the customers. Then I helped her add up and pass out the cute little bills that our curriculum came with. This game was a huge hit. We all had so much fun and Boo got to practice her addition. I absolutely love having a house full of little girls and I love that even though they all have a 3 year gap in age they all 3 like to play together. Occasionally, Sis goes off to read on her own (bc she's a book worm,) but the majority of their time is spent doing things together. Sure let's be real they argue, tattle, and sometimes want to kill each other (all that stuff sisters do) but they really are best friends. It's a rare to find them each doing their own thing. If one gets out a coloring book, they all color. If one is doing a puzzle, they all go get puzzles! They watch tv together, play dolls, sleep together. Nothing makes my heart happier than to know that no matter where we are in life they will always have each other.
The funny thing is that growing up (and my family can testify to this) I ALWAYS said "when I grow up I'm gonna get married and have 3 girls!" (I'm intentionally leaving out the part about we will live in a mansion and have 2 standard poodles...that was before I was sanctified .lol) I would draw cartoons of my future husband and kids and write stories about them (I always wanted to be a writer..too) Maybe I just always knew what I was destined and created for..or maybe a good and gracious God just decided to grant a little girl the desires of her heart. I am truly grateful for these little ladies He has blessed me with.