We're taking the girls to Niagara Falls for a week for the first time. This is one thing that I've wanted to do for years, so we'll finally be able to scratch that one off of our list. I know I've talked about it before, but there are so many places that I want my girls to experience while they're kids.
One thing I've never shared on here are our vacation books. Every time we go on a family trip I make a hardcover Shutterfly photo book to record our memories and I try to write as much details of everything we did. I also take tons of pictures on our vacations and I try to take a special group picture specifically for the cover of our book. We started doing this when Boo was a baby. These books have ended up being one of my kids most favorite things. I keep them on a shelf in the dinning room where they have easy access. At least a couple times a month they pull them off the shelf and sit down together and read through them. Baby Bear even loves looking through the books of trips from before she was born and the things that Boo can't really remember she feels like she can because she's read it about it so many times. These memories are precious to me and I'm so glad I started this tradition. FYI: Shutterfly offers free photo books a couple times a year where you only pay shipping. We never pay full price for a book but wait for the free offers. They are so worth the time and money though. I've been thinking about blogging about our vacations on here too, maybe I will for our next one. We'll see...
Math& Language: We have spent a lot of our school days lately focused on math and language because we are still a bit behind schedule in those subjects and will probably have to do a little into the summer after we've finished all of our other curriculum.
Sis is trucking her way through MathUSee Epsilon/fractions. She is working on adding and subtracting mixed numbers right now. We've also been flying through her Rod and Staff English book. A lot of it is review for her so we've been moving pretty quickly. In addition to reviewing parts of speech and diagramming though she's been doing some writing. I like that this curriculum combines both. She's been studying how to take notes for a report, how to write a topic sentence, and form the body of a proper paragraph. We also studied how to write a book report. Sis' assignment was to read a book, write a report and present it to the family. Her book of choice was "Andrea Carter and the San Francisco Smugglers." These are Christian mystery books in a series called the Circle C Adventures. Sis loves mysteries and horses so she loves these stories. She presented her book report one night after dinner and did a great job.
Boo is finishing up MathUSee Alpha and is working on Language Lessons for Today. These past couple weeks she's worked on letter writing, addressing an envelope, picture narrations, and we're just now beginning verbs.
Bible: Boo only has a couple names left in her "names of Jesus," study for this year. We finished up learning about Jesus being the "Good Shepard," and we began a unit on "The Resurrection and the Life." This was time appropriate since Easter just passed! Our names of Jesus wall is getting pretty full now!Sis is studying the book of John right now in her Bible studies. Most of her lessons consist of reading on her own, copying verses into her notebook, and memorizing scriptures. Next year I am excited that we will be doing our school bible time together as a family again, since the girl's will finally be in the My Father's World Family Cycle.
Read-aloud: Our read aloud time has been our favorite time of the day the past few months. We have been slowly reading through "The Ark, The Reed, and The Fire Cloud," together as a family, even Baby bear sits and listens. This is a thick book, but we finally finished! I am so glad that I finally get to share these books with my girls and that we chose to read this one now. This first book is all about the animals journey to the ark and what it could have been like for them on board the ark. There's so many things you never though of before like "how did arctic animals live on the ark outside of their natural cold habitat? How did the animals know to go to the ark? What was their journey across the globe like?" This book forces you to use your imagination, yet keeps the biblical account accurate. Back to vacations...We are planning a trip to Ken Ham's Ark Encounter this fall, so this was perfect timing! Now more than ever my kids are interested in the real Noah's ark and what it was like. I know they will be thinking of this story as we walk though the replica and it will become all the more real for them. My kids were already begging to begin book two "The Dreamer, the Schemer, & the Robe." So we started it a couple days after finishing the first. In this second book our beloved animal friends journey to the days of Joseph and walk along side him as he is sold into slavery in Egypt. The book is packed full of Egyptian history and makes the story of Joseph come alive. I wish we were all studying Egypt right now, because this would be perfect. Sis did just finish Egypt earlier this year though, so it will still be good for her. It will be a long time before we cover it together in the Cycle, so we can't wait that long...
History: In addition to learning 5 new States Boo learned about the Transcontinental Railroad. We finished our last story in American Pioneers and Patriots which taught us how the railroad was built. Our timeline is growing and we will be taking it down and putting it into a book as we finish up the school year. We also learned about Mount Rushmore in week 31. It took 14 years to make using dynamite and chiseling by hand! It is unbelievable to me that people could actually create a monument that size on a mountain and it actually really looks like the presidents! That's some amazing talent. I imagine it is just unbelievable to see in person...This is something I've always wanted to do that is high on our "things to see" list.
Sis and I started reading a new book for for history called "The Accidental Voyage." This book is about an old man and two children who travel learning about old Christian Hymns. The old man tells the children stories of the lives of the Hymn writers. We're not too sure about this one yet. It's a pretty thick book with long chapters and not as exciting as some of the other books we've read. I have a feeling it's going to take us a long time to get through it.
Here are some of Sis's history journal pages from the past few weeks.
We also took a trip to the zoo for Sis birthday. We saw some neat animals, but we had one of the coolest experiences we've ever had at a zoo. A female lion came walking from a far off cliff and came right up to the glass where we were standing. We were the only people in the room at the time so we had her all to ourselves. This was the closest any of us have ever been to a real lion and she was looking us right in the eye! If the glass had not been separating us we could have easily reached out and touched her face. Then she stayed there with us for a long time before walking away. It was dark in the room and hard for me to get a good picture, but here is a picture (not zoomed at all, we were actually standing this close to her!) Below is a 2nd picture with the girls so that you can get a better idea of how close she was...a lot of the animals were really close actually.
Then something crazy happened, another lion came up to the window and started roaring at us! It was so loud they said it could be heard from much farther away. She was showing her teeth and roaring over and over! She was mad! I've never seen a lion roar like that (well unless the Lion King counts.) It was so cool! I wish I had gotten a video of it.
It was a little windy but we had a great day and by going while school is in we had a lot of the zoo to ourselves. Here are some more pics of our day...
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