Week 9:

This week everybody was back in good health, so we got to have the first full school week that we've had in a while. We finally got caught up on some things that we were behind on, so I'm feeling a bit better about where we're at this year. Week 9 by mid November doesn't sound very far considering there are 34 scheduled units this school year, but really we are about where I planned on being.

History: History was pretty fun this week. Boo learned about George Washington. I'm slowly learning how to teach Boo. This has been a challenge for me because she is a totally different type of learner than Sis. So, even though this is my second time through Adventures in US History it is totally different this time around. I've discovered that Boo is a visual learner. She can not retain information very well by just being told or read to, she HAS to see it. To the left is a sample of her history lesson this week which was 7 pages broken down into 4 days. Can you guess how that would have gone over?Exactly, after one page she was lost and couldn't remember anything the next day. So, I ditched the reading (after studying it myself of course) and just told it to her in my own words. We doodled a map and drew stick figures for Washington, Indians, French soldiers, and we drew out the story as we talked about it. She remembered it great. I don't want to get off track, but this is important. There are certainly pros and cons of both homeschooling and public schooling. One of things I really think is a huge benefit of homeschooling is being able to teach your child in the way they learn. It is so important that a child be taught according to their learning style in order to get the most out of the lessons and to do their best in school. Not all children's brains are wired the same. In a classroom it is impossible for a teacher to teach 30 children with different learning styles in the way that each of them learn best. So for example a visual learner or kinesthetic  learner is not going to do well in a classroom where the teacher only teaches in an auditory approach. Most public classrooms use this approach to teaching even if only 50% of their students are auditory learners. Therefore the kinesthetic learner gets bad grades, not because they're not capable of learning the material, but they are not being taught in the way that they learn. When you homeschool you can first figure out what type of learners your children are and then personalize their curriculum according to how they learn best giving them the best opportunity to succeed in school.

Ok back to Boo's history lesson. She made one of these cute Tricorn hats, like George Washington wore for a history project.

Sis is learning about the period of the Judges. She learned about Sampson this week and the Ark of the Covenant being captured by the Philistines. Here is a picture of her notebook.

It just so happened that Sis' history project was also to make a hat this week. She made a Philistine helmet out of construction paper. I let Baby Bear decide which kind of hat she wanted to make and she chose the helmet with Sis. They painted designs onto their helmets and then curled purple paper for the top. All the kids had fun wearing their hats and helmets while they did their school work the rest of the week.

Science:  We've been skipping science the last few weeks, so the girl's were excited to start back up since it's one of their favorite subjects. We are still learning all about light. This years science is divided up into large sections based on the 7 days of creation. Light is Day 1 and covers the first 15 lessons. This week we learned there there is actually light that the human eye can't see! One of those kinds of light is inferred light. We discovered that our TV remote uses this kind of light to turn on our tv. when the remote is facing the TV the invisible light hits it and turns it on, that's why the remote won't work when we aim it at the window. We did an experiment the girls loved. We tried to turn the TV on by facing the remote away from the TV, nothing happened. We then pointed our remote at a blank sheet of white paper and it magically turned on!! Actually no magic here, the inferred light bounced off the paper and hit the tv turning it on even though the remote was not pointed at the tv. Oh my goodness they thought this was so cool that they did it over and over again. Then we discovered that even tough inferred light isn't visible to the bare human eye, we are able to see it through a camera lenses. We went in a dim room and looked at the remote through the phone camera while we pressed buttons, sure enough when looking through the camera we could see the bulb light up! Proof it really is there! We also talked a little about ultraviolet lights (another invisible light) and sunburns.

 Language, Writing, Spelling: I'm proud to report that Boo got her first 100% on a spelling test! Sis is happy to finally be done with spelling tests and her Spelling Power curriculum is going pretty well. Sis is also reviewing sentence diagramming in her English book and doing writing assignments in her Writing Strands. Unfortunately Boo's handwriting didn't go too well this week because the dog ate it! One of the downsides to having a wild puppy.

Reading aloud: Both of the girls started new books for their read aloud time. Boo is reading "Sara Whitcher's Story". This is the story of a little girl who gets lost in the woods and is kept alive by a wild bear! We're just getting to the exciting part.
 

Sis and I started reading Jeshub's Journal. This is an interesting book. It's more like a spiral bound booklet, but it is also a Bible study with questions and areas to write in it.  This is a fictional story about a Hebrew man named Jeshub. It is written as his Journal and there is one journal entry per month of the Jewish calendar. Each month Jeshub faces some kind of problem and has to turn to the Mosaic laws to decide what God's law says he should do. Have you ever read all of those laws God gave Moses and the Israelites? Not just the 10 commandments, but for example what to do if a goat falls into an uncovered pit? or which lambs could be sacrificed? Well the story of Jeshub's Journal gives examples from the life of a Hebrew when he needed to turn to those laws for instruction. Not only are we learning about Old Testament laws but the Jewish calendar. After we read the daily story, Sis and I look up the Bible passage that contains the law being addressed and answer the questions to help decide what Jeshub should do.

At the end of the week we had a fun game day. I use to work at a public school before I had kids. Some of the classrooms I was in had shelves of board games and puzzles. The students spent a good part of the week playing them when they finished their work. So, it's ok to take a day and just play games every now and then! We chose to play The game of LIFE. This game is actually very educational. You have to make decisions like (whether to go to college, if you're going to buy a house, should you buy homeowners insurence, etc) and you have to add and keep track of money. This game is for ages 9 and up so it's a bit hard for Baby Bear and Boo, but they still wanted to play this. Baby Bear partnered up with me and she got to draw cards and spin the wheel, even though she didn't really understand then game. Sis and Boo were a team and Sis helped boo to count the money and read the cards so it worked out fine. Sis and Boo ended up being the champions, Baby Bear was not too happy (or the fact that our team never got to have any children.) I guess learning that we don't always win is all part of learning about life too, right?