RTR Week 4

This week in history we learned more about life in Ancient Rome such as family life, entertainment, games, and bathhouses. We're reading about Herod in our Augustus Caesar's World book. One project we did was make a "Knucklebones" game. This game was played around the public baths. The game is played by tossing the knuckle bones in the air and trying to catch as many as you can on the back side of your hand.  We made our knucklebones out of clay and then played the game for a while.

Another game that we played is a Roman board game that we made called "Rota" or "Three Man's Morris" (basically Roman Tic-Tac-Toe.) In this one each player has 3 dots which they place on the board where ever they want (just like tic tac toe.) After all pieces are places players take turn moving pieces (you can only move one space or you can jump one space if you opponent is blocking the way.) play until someone gets 3 in a row. The girl's liked this game better and we spent a while playing it.

For Bible we finished memorizing the books of the New Testament. Boo still need a little practice on a few of them, but she has them down pretty good. We'll continue to practice saying them and finding verses for the next couple weeks.

Every Friday Sis does writing for English instead of her English composition book. She's been using Writing Strands so far this year. Last week she had to list characteristics of someone she knows (details of what they look like, personality traits, facial expressions, things they like, etc.) then she wrote the rough draft of a two paragraph paper about that person. This week she wrote her final draft. The purpose of the assignment was to learn to use detailed descriptions in writing. She loves to wirte so these are her favorite kind of assignments.

6th grade math continues to get harder with each chapter, mom's about to throw in the towel! Not really, but I'm trying my best to explain this stuff and act like I know what I'm talking about. Boo is still doing great with her new math book. I like that every now and then they have her do a random fun thing. It makes math time more enjoyable to her, because each day she doesn't know what to expect. Whereas Sis knows exactly what she's going to be doing (watching her DVD and doing a worksheet.) This week Boo is working on subtraction. She made her own flashcards and did her workbook pages, but in this weeks math story the twins notice that trees subtract leaves in the fall. So, there was a leaf rubbing project at the end of the week.



Right now we're doing science once a week. I plan on increasing to two days a week soon. This week we did an experiment with crayon shavings that demonstrated the rock cycle. We learned that just like the water on earth recycles it's self with the water cycle, so does the soil and rocks. Last week we learned that rocks break up and the tiny bits form soil. This week we saw that soil and small bits of rock actually join back together to become more rocks! In our two part experiment we first put our crayon shavings in foil and smashed them together with a hammer. We ended up with a crumbly thin sheet of crayon representing a sedimentary rock.

In the second part we heated the sedimentary "crayon rock" in the foil with a candle. Our rock melted and then cooled and formed a new rock representing an igneous rock.

Baby Bear learned all about the sun and the letter S this week. She made a picture box with pictures of "S' words, used a salt tray to practice writing her letter, learned about shadows and raisins, and painted a sun badge.

This was our last week with Daddy home on sick leave after having him here for 6 weeks. So next week we will have to adjust to things getting back to normal. We've gotten use to having him here for school time though, so we're all a little sad.

RTR Week 3

This week started out a difficult one. For whatever reason we fell behind on our lessons and just couldn't seem to complete everything scheduled each day. I was feeling very discouraged on Tue when it was 4:00 p.m. and we still hadn't gotten to history and a couple other things that I had planned. It just seemed like one distraction after another. Boo had a meltdown over spelling, Sis had a stomachache, and everyone was whining. I felt like crying. Then I remembered one of the reasons we were running behind was because our 15 min Bible time took over an hour that morning. It wasn't because we were slow, but because the kids had a lot of good questions and they had a blast racing to find bible verses. Boo did have that meltdown over spelling words wrong. That took way longer than it should have, but after a time-out we had a good talk about it being ok to not have all the answers right as long as we try our best. I think she went away feeling a little more confident and after that for the first time in a long time seemed to really grasp the concept I was trying to teach her. She even remembered it the next day, which was a huge breakthrough in spelling for her! I'm trying to learn that it's alright to not check every box and when things don't go as planned just go with the flow. Our day first seemed to be a complete fail, because I was only focused on what didn't get done rather than seeing all the good things that did.

For Bible this week we set aside our book we've been using for now and started learning about the books of the New Testament. Sis and Boo are learning all the books in the NT. Sis has memorized them before but is a bit rusty and this is the first time for Boo. We're going through each book, discussing the main topic and author and then having Bible drills looking up verses. Boo has only had a children's story book bible up till now, so finding verses on her own in a big bible is new to her. She's doing great with it though.

In history we learned about Pompeii, the Roman city that was buried under ash from a volcano and discovered in tact hundreds of years later. The kids loved this story. It would be pretty amazing to discover a whole ancient city! We read that the dishes of the people were found still on the tables from their meal that day. For a project we made pop up Pompeii villas that I found on Pinterest. The volcano is in the background and on the inside of the houses glued pictures of actual artwork that was found in Pompeii. Baby Bear wanted to make one too so we all had fun together on this project.One of our art projects this week was to make a mosaic picture, but since the floors of houses in Pompeii were mosaics we decided to design our own for the inside of our little houses and combine the two projects into one. To the right is Boo working on her mosaic floor of a heart. Unfortunately our printer ran out of colored ink so the girls had to color the frescoes and wall art with markers. Then we glued everything together. These have now become homes for our littlest Pet shops. Even Baby Bear calls it their "Pompeii house." I think it accomplished the goal, they will all remember the name Pompeii and what happened there because of this craft.

We're also still reading about Augustus Caesar. In our story he is still a young man named Octavian and has not yet become the Emperor. We made a map of the lands that Octavian ruled and Antony ruled.

We played a game that originated in Ancient Rome called "Odd or Even." The first child places a number of stones in his right hand. The second child must guess if there is an odd or even number. If he's correct he gets to take a stone, if incorrect he must give a stone. Play until one child has all the stones. Sounds simple and you would think this would be boring for a kid in this century, but actually the kids had a fun with this game.


Baby Bear worked on her creation book each day. On day 5 she made thumbprint fish for her picture with orange, red and green ink. She thought that was fun.

We have had some really unusually hot days again this week. With it nice out none of us have wanted to sit inside for school lately. So Friday we packed up and took school to our favorite park! We had a whole pavilion to ourselves so we did our school work there and took play breaks between lessons. It was a nice change of scenery.

We did our science lesson at the park. We have been learning about the 3rd day of creation: soil and dirt. Last lesson we learned that soil is a mixture of different things. This weeks lesson required us to find several diff types of rocks. So first we went on a rock hunt.

After we found our rocks we had to try to break them by banging them together. We noticed that some of the rocks were softer than others. Then we smashed them apart with a hammer! We observed the insides of the rocks and we discovered that the crumbly pieces that fell off looked a lot like dirt.

 In our lesson we learned that most of the soil on earth is made up of tiny rock pieces that have broken down. We learned how rocks absorb water, which expands in winter causing the rocks to crack and over time break up becoming part of the soil.


 We did bible time and a little history before we left home that morning, but all of the girls did their math and English at the park after our science lesson. Boo made a clock for math. Baby Bear  finished her Creation book that she's been adding to for the past 7 school days.

Here's a few more pictures of our day and our play breaks

This week we also started reading book 3 of The Epic Order of the Seven books "The Prophet, the Shepherd, & the Star." We started book 1 last year and we finished book 2 over summer. These are by far my kids favorite books (mine too!) We've been reading them at bedtime lately since we have so much other stuff to read and do during the day. The main characters of theses books are 7 animal friends who travel through time on missions from the Maker. The characters are so funny, Al the big orange cat is afraid of everything and only thinks about food ( the kids crack up at everything he says) There's always something exciting happening. Our last chapter ended with Max the dog being chased by a couple of fierce lions who were trying to steal his scroll. They bring the stories of the Bible to life and the girls always beg for another chapter. (Just a little side note right here) Of all the things I do with my girls, all of their schooling, all the places we go, etc. I truly believe that when they are grown our reading time will be my kid's favorite childhood memories. I have read aloud to them as a family since each of them were born. Reading to them is not something I do because we homeschool either. A lot of days I read to them while they eat their lunch. Other days we read at bedtime, but I always read to them. It's something we all look forward to. I believe it is why all of my kids love books and Sis wants to be a writer. No joke, at this moment as I'm typing this, they are in the other room it's almost bedtime and one of them just called "Mom can we read more of our book tonight?" It makes me sad when I hear other parents say they rarely read to their kids, because they are missing out on so much. If you don't read to your kids regularly I encourage you to start. Find some exciting books that hold your kids attention and read together daily. Baby Bear is only four, but since we have been reading chapter books as a family since she's been born she will sit and listen too (sometimes as she plays with her toys.) A lot of it is over her head, but she usually knows all the characters, can usually tell back a lot of what's happening in the stories and gets just as excited for story time as the older girls.  Anyway speech over.This third book started out with a Roman soldier in Bethlehem and the time of the birth of Christ! Then it went back 700 years where they discover a scroll and meet the prophets who foretold of Messiah. "Roman soldiers, ancient scrolls, scribes, prophets" all things we have talked about in school already this year, so this seems to be a good fit!

RTR: Week 2

This week focused on Julius Caesar and Roman Cities and homes.

We read about the life of Caesar and the Ides of March (the day he was killed.) I tried to make it interesting by drawing pictures of Pompey, Julius, and Brutus on the chalk board as I told the story. Boo had fun drawing and erasing expressions on the characters according to what was happening in the story. The girls made drawings of Julius Caesar and wrote about him for their notebooks.

For Bible we learned about how writing began. It was interesting! We saw how our letter "A" began as the drawing of an ox head and changed over many years. We learned about the Rosetta stone and a little about translating writings. We learned about the languages of the bible and the different materials ancient books were made with. The girls made their own little mini scrolls with messages in them.

I wanted to share a little bit about Boo's new math curriculum. To say that we have had a hard time finding something that is right for her is an understatement. I don't know if this is going to be the perfect fit either, but so far we are liking it. We started using Masterbooks Lessons for a living education this week. Boo seems to do better with hands on lessons and colorful workbooks than Sis who is fine with the black and white worksheets of MathUsee. I found this curriculum last year and have been dying to try it. Each lesson starts with a story that teaches math concepts! The Christian based stories revolve around two twin children and their family. The stories keep Boo's attention much better than a dry math lesson. Then the rest of the chapter has colorful worksheets that reinforce the topics discussed in the story. There is no teachers manual. The stories instructions and worksheets are all together in one big book. The first lesson was on place value. Boo used cut out manipulatives that are in the back of the book to build a "Place Value Village." She has a container of dry beans that are used for counting and sorting into the village cups. For the first time ever she told me she likes math. We'll see if it lasts and if we've finally found the right curriculum for her.

Another thing we're doing new for math this year is "math drill." In addition to our regular lessons Sis and Boo have a daily math drill. I time them and they practice simple math facts. Boo practices her addition and subtraction facts. Sis practices everything from addition to division facts. This is  just to practice and reinforce fact they have memorized.

 This year Sis is using MathUsee Zeta which focuses on decimals, percentages, and some early geometry. This is the last level before she enters the higher level math books like pre-algebra. I might need to hire a tutor after this year! haha!

We began Science this week. Last year we used "Science in the Beginning," which covers one day of creation each unit. Last year we spent the entire year covering the first 2 days of Creation learning about light, water and air. This year we will continue to use this book for the first half of the year. This week we started out on unit 3 (the 3rd day of creation) learning about Land and plants. Our first lesson was "What is dirt?" We did an experiment where we had to collect samples of two different types of dirt, mix with water and observe what happens over time. We discovered that the dirt broke up into different layers. Some things floated others sank. We learned that dirt is actually a mixture of many different materials. We learned about items such as leaves and dead bugs decomposing and becoming part of the dirt.We learned what makes soil "rich," and that the materials dirt is made of are necessary to growing plants and for all of life that depend on those plants. God knew what he was doing creating the dry ground and dirt before creating living things. Who knew that even the dirt points to existence of our awesome creator!

Baby Bear has been having fun with her Kindergarten work. I decided that I'm not going to write about everything that she is doing. I just wrote about MFW K a couple years ago with Boo and those posts are still on this blog. This week she started her 2 week unit on Creation. She's been learning letters, numbers, and making her own creation book.

With Daddy home for a few weeks it's been much easier for us to fit in field trips. Normally we do field trips and extra things on Mons since that's his day off. Now we're free to take a field trip any day. One thing I love about MFW is that it is a 4 day a week program. That leaves the weekends off plus one extra day in the week for extracurricular activities, catching up on missed work, fun projects, nature walks, and field trips. Later in the year we're gonna start some special things on our day 5 like a cooking class. This week though we took Fri off for another field trip and took the girls to a giant pumpkin farm (this pic cracks me up because it says 'giant pumpkins' on the sign and then the girls got the tiniest pumpkins ever.) They really did have some enormous pumpkins. The weather has been so beautiful here lately though, so we're trying to enjoy it as much as we can.

RTR: Week 1

We made it through the first week of school! So far we're liking My Father's World Rome to Reformation. The girl's are excited to be doing most of their school work together again. In the morning we do Bible first. Right now we are using a book called "How the Bible came to us." We're learning about the writers of the books of the Bible and how the books are divided up into different categories. One project we did this week from our book was to make this cute mini Bible library that shows those different categories. When we finished we were so excited to discover that it fit perfectly on our chalk board shelf!


Spelling, Math, and Science will start next week. I'm so excited about the new math curriculum that Boo is going to try out this year. I'll show it to you next week after we've given it a try.

For English Sis is using Rod and Staff again, book 5 called "Following the Plan" of the Building Christian English Series. Boo is using First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind. We split up for English everyday which is working out great, because it gives whichever girl I'm not working with, some quiet time for "Book Basket."

Book Basket time is a My Father's World idea. This is a basket of books (related to things we're learning or other education material) that I have chosen for the girls to look through and explore on their own during quiet time. Each child spends 15 mins a day on Book Basket. Right now we have some picture books on Rome and also our "World Kids" magazines, which we get a free subscription to with our curriculum. The kids are loving these magazines so far.
This is what our version of Book Basket looks like, just a big white basket full of reading material. At book basket time they take the basket with them to a quiet place and read whatever they want.


The first week of school usually starts off with a review of neat handwriting, so right now we are quickly going through the alphabet practicing our writing. Boo is doing manuscript, Sis is practicing neat cursive (she does have a tenancy to get sloppy with it esp as the school year goes on.) After this first couple weeks we will have more exciting writing assignments.

After our first day intro to Ancient Rome, we actually covered quite a bit of history this week. We learned about the Roman Republic, the Punic war, and Hannibal with his famous elephants that crossed the Alps.The girls made several maps and I think they're starting to get a good understanding of the areas around the Mediterranean that we are learning about. The first map we made was labeling all the seas and countries we will be learning. The second map showed the places involved int he Punic war and Hannibal's route. One of the books we are reading this year is "Augustus Caesars World." It is written in story form to make it interesting and covers the events of the life of Augustus Caesar beginning when he was a boy. He was the first Roman Emperor and was in power when Jesus walked the earth.

 Our History project at the end of this week was to make a Roman clay writing tablet like the children of Ancient Rome used for their studies. Baby Bear wanted in on the fun of this project too.

Baby Bear will be starting My Father's World K next week. This week we practiced her alphabet letters and sounds and each day read a story book together. We learned the "a-a-apple" song, practiced counting and did her number board each morning. This is a project Boo did in K too. It's place value cups. Each morning she placed a toothpick in the ones cup, we count all the sticks in the cup and hang up the number card above the cup. When we get 10 in our cup we bundle it and move it to the tens cup and place a "1" in the 10's place. we'll keep bundling all year until we get 10 bundles making 100, then we'll celebrate the 100th day of school!
She has also enjoyed playing "Teach Your Monster to Read" on the computer while her sisters do school work. This is a really fun free website with games that teach phonics. Kids get to design their own monster and then teach their monster how to read by learning letters and sounds. So cute and she's loving it!

Finally, We went on our first field trip this week. We went to see a Laura Ingalls Wilder exhibit at a local museum. We got in on the last day of the exhibit!We love Little House on the Prairie, it's kind of a dream of mine to visit Laura's real home in Desmet, SD and I'm hoping to be able to do that some time soon, for now this was a really neat alternative. We got to see a lot of the things that are talked about in the books, such as a lot of the farming equipment, a corn husk doll, actual knitting done by Ma, Pa's fiddle, Laura's rag doll and Nellie's china doll. There were real pictures of Laura, Almonzo and many other famous family members. It was a really fun experience.

First Day of School Sept 2017

Today was our first day back to school after an extra long summer. We started a bit later this year, because Daddy had surgery. I actually liked having a few extra weeks of summer and starting school with the public schools. I might make this our new normal. I really think this was the best first day of school that we've had.

Our morning started out with breakfast and then we dressed and headed out for our annual 1st day of school pictures. The night before I got the idea of making props for our photo shoot, (because I'm crazy like that) so I got out a cardboard box and some paints and made them a frame. The kids thought it was cute and fun.

After out little photo shoot we came back inside for Bible time. I'm glad that we have Dad home for the first couple months of school. I asked him the night before to prepare something for our first day since our Bible curriculum wasn't scheduled to start until day 2. He read to us about Paul's perseverance and how although he faced many trials he ran his race till the end. Then he encouraged the girls that when school work gets frustrating to remember what's more important, to always remember to keep their eyes on Jesus and stay focused on eternity rather than the frustrations and trials of this life. Then We had a time of prayer laying hands on each child and praying a blessing over them for the new school year. As we headed to the table for our lessons I felt a real sense of peace knowing we are following God's will for our family.

This year we began What My Father's World calls the "Family Cycle." The main concept is for children of different grade levels to learn as much together as a family as they can without having to be separated for school time and it helps Mom by not having to be teaching multiple grade level curriculum at once. So Sis and Boo will be doing Bible, Vocabulary, History, Science, and Art together this year. These are all subjects that are not necessarily grade leveled but can be taught at any age. The girls will separate everyday for Math, English and Reading working on their own levels. Baby Bear will sit in and tag along with anything she wants. She will also be doing her own Kindergarten curriculum. She so excited to finally have her own "big girl" school work.

We've  decided to start off each morning after bible time with a calendar time. This is for Boo and Baby Bear since Sis already knows all about calendars, but she is a great helper to her younger sisters. We use our big wall calendar to put up today's date and then each girl has her own personal calendar inside her binder to fill in the date.Sis is glad to have hers to record special dates coming up each month. We are also all helping Baby Bear to learn our months of the year song.

Sis and Boo will be using MFW: Rome to The Reformation this year. These are their "History Notebooks," where they will keep all of their work. Sis finished up last school year learning a little about Ancient Rome and this year begins with Rome, so some of it will be review for her but a lot of it new.
Today was pretty much an intro to the first 13 weeks of learning about Rome. We learned about Roman school and how it differed from school today. The girls had a picture of a Roman classroom to file in their notebook. We read the Legend of Romulus and Remus, a story of how Rome began that all young kids in Ancient Rome were taught.. Then the girls drew pictures and wrote about the legend in their notebooks. We also read a little about the founding of Rome in a couple of our new history books.



 Sis (left) wrote her narration on the back of her picture.

 

One new thing that we are doing this year is learning Latin roots. At first I was hesitant and asking "why?"Now I'm so glad we are doing this. I've never studied Latin myself and I didn't realize so many of the words in the English language derive from Greek and Latin. Today we learned the Latin word "UNUS" meaning "one." We had to think of English words that come from this Latin root. UNICORN! Boo shouted! I thought this was going to be hard for her, but she loved it. Uni-corn = one horn. Uni-cycle = one wheel.

After Roman School Baby Bear did her first day of K. Mostly practicing her ABC's and learning numbers (wish I had remembered to take a picture.) Then we went for a special lunch. Since we learned that much of Roman culture was influenced by the Greeks our curriculum suggested we try Greek Gyros for lunch. The girls had never tried one (even though it was a childhood fav of mine.) So we went and got gyros for lunch. I was afraid Boo wouldn't eat it when Dad told her the meat was lamb, but they both loved it. Baby Bear was not so brave, she ordered a cheeseburger and then insisted I take her picture with it.

 Also, before we came back home we took a trip to a new library that we've never been to. Each of the girls checked out a few books for their quiet reading time.

Our first day we didn't do any of our regular subjects like Spelling, Reading, Math or Science. It was mostly a fun introduction to our History theme and new books. We would look at our new English books on day 2 and I decided to hold off on math for a week. I like to start the school year out gently adding a few new subjects at a time until we're eventually back to a full schedule. I did sneak in a little math though, by teaching the kids Roman numerals when we got back from lunch. We made a poster with construction paper and craft sticks to display on the wall for the next few months while we're  learning about Rome.

Overall it was a perfect start to our school year. All the girls were good and excited about starting. There were no tears and they finished the day saying they loved it. Sis and Boo both told me they think this year is going to be "much more fun than last year" and they're so happy to finally be doing school together again.