Tag: Heart of Dakota

Wouldn’t you know it? One fabulously healthy week and then we’re back with colds again! My little Grace came down sick first, mid-week it was Beth’s turn, and last night Rose started coughing and sniffling. It’s just part of life I suppose. I honestly thought homeschooling would keep at least some of the germs at bay. Then again it would mean we were isolating ourselves and that’s not going to happen!

I’ve had the chance to review Apologia’s Zoology 2 over the last few weeks and it has been great. Take some time to check out my review, then click on the link at the bottom to read some other reviews by my fellow TOS Crew Review bloggers! This is my first official review for the Crew and it has been so much fun! Look forward to some great reviews in the coming weeks for everything from a full pre-K (birth and up) curriculum to math to music!

I also have a giveaway for a fabulous manipulative for pre-K, Kindergarten, and 1st grade! Click on the picture to see my review. Even if you don’t win the price for this manipulative packet is very reasonable and well worth it since it can be used over and over again! 

Poor baby felt really crummy…

By the end of the week she was feeling better enough for some fun! “Hey Mommy…I need a football. I’m a footballer!” Yes, that is the Armor of God…and a Redskins football!

Beth didn’t start feeling badly until the end of the week so we completed most of her work without too much trouble. She’s working on her Rod and Staff books here. I really love the newest books, G, H, and I. Beth also works in Thinking Skills 1 as recommended by Heart of Dakota, but I honestly haven’t liked it as much as these Rod and Staff books. She completed G and F in preschool and I plan on Grace doing the same, but not using Thinking Skills 1 with her.

I started using a new journal book I purchased during the last dollar sale at Scholastic. I love their dollar sales. The only area I wish HOD focused on more earlier is creative writing…probably because I am an English teacher! My girls love to write stories and be creative anyway so adding this in is not a chore for them. Beth drew a Penguin from directions and then finished a few sentences I love how she is learning to write in such an interesting way. Do you see the stick-figure girl? She felt the penguin needed an owner to take care of it, so she drew herself. Beth is our storyteller! 

Since I teach my girls all at the same time there are frequently times when it can be extremely distracting for Rose to focus on independent work, like math. When this is happening she will often ask if she can move to the kitchen table so she can focus. She doesn’t seem to mind if I suggest it either and she typically finished very quickly. We still are loving the simple style of Rod and Staff and Rose is genuinely mastering her addition facts this year. She is gaining confidence in math and it is wonderful to see!

I loved the poem we studied this week along with our unit about Lewis and Clark. Rose did too. She said it was her favorite so far this year. As an English teacher I love seeing her learn how to interpret and understand poetry and poetic language. She highlights the end of the stanzas in order to visually see the rhyming patterns. Rose has started writing her own poetry and was even accepted to be published in a poetry contest! I’m so proud of her!

We have also been studying Greek and Latin roots! You’ll hear more about these fabulous flash cards in a few weeks. Rose loves learning Greek. Her grandpa teaches Greek at a seminary and has taught her how to write her name in Greek. She can’t wait to show off her new knowledge to him!

So this was our week! While Heart of Dakota curriculum is incredibly easy to use because it is already laid out and planned with cohesive units for an entire year, I make a weekly checklist. I do include a few extras in our day, but not very many. This is mostly to make sure I don’t miss anything! I’m using a different guide for each of my girls and I feel that is the best for our family, but without my weekly checklist there is no way I’d remember every subject every day! So on Thursday or Friday (and sometimes Sunday night!) I sit down and fill out our grid. It only takes about 30 minutes…if I’m uninterrupted…and it is well worth the time I spend. The best part is my Hershey Kiss pencil…I love chocolate…sigh…

We are finally…FINALLY…back to regular school around here! Christmas break lasted longer than expected. While we’ve done some basics and had a lot of fun with some unique field trips, I am incredibly grateful to be back to our Heart of Dakota curriculum. Now, without any more waiting, here is our week!

(I got a little picture happy. I’m just so excited to be back on routine!)

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 12

This week we studied about Samuel. Grace enjoyed our finger play this week for the letter J which retold the story of Hannah and Samuel. This also taught her the days of the week in order which she learned very quickly!

Grace constantly asks how to spell words because she hears her sisters do this. She just writes some lines and has been happy with that. Until this week! She started copying letters when I wrote them down for her with good precision for her age. (Don’t you love Beth’s quirky face in the background?)

We did several Do-A-Dot pages for J as well. If you are unfamiliar with Do-A-Dot markers you should try them out! I bought mine with a coupon from a craft store to make them pretty inexpensive and all three of my girls love them! There are some really neat art projects you can do with these as well.

I also finished up making a few manipulatives. I found this idea on pinterest and it has been in the back of my mind for several months now. I pulled out some Easter eggs and my sweet Grace started working on matching lower case and upper case letters!

I started a new activity this week called word ladders. Beth started with a three letter word and changed the word, one letter at a time based on the clues given. It was a great way to practice critical thinking and spelling. 

Yes, this is a Bomb Bird and a Bad Piggie…don’t judge!

We had quite an eventful week. We managed to finish up our last week of homeschool well in between family pictures, lots of meetings at church,getting my piano students ready for their recital next week, and still battling this horrible cold! Whatever is going around is finally leaving our house, thank goodness! If you want to take a peak at our family’s photo shoot click the picture to the right. We had such a great time and my favorite part was my girls wearing old fashioned dresses that use to be mine.

Grace was very happy with me this week. I’d taken a couple of weeks off from her regular curriculum in order to focus more on a couple of areas with my older girls and she made it very clear that she was displeased. This week we studied Gideon, Samson, and Ruth. As usual, the Bible story was her favorite part each day! She also really liked the finger-play letter poem this week for the letter I. She learned that, “Nothings is i-i-i-impossible for God to do!” I’ve been pleasantly surprised how much she remembers from week-to-week. She can consistently tell you the sounds each letter makes. Every once in a while she forgets, but when I remind her of the finger-play motion she immediately remembers! 

She also enjoyed reading her Poingo books with her reading pen. Grace’s favorite discovery was the classical music she could hear on one page that matched a pre-recorded piece on our Clavinova piano. She was so excited and told us all multiple times that it was just like the piano. Grace plays with her Poingo books very sweetly while I teach the other girls…some of the time. Other times she has been intentionally trying to distract all of us and pay attention to her! The trouble is she is so cute and my girls are easily entertained by one another. She wants more and more lessons and still gets very frustrated with me when I am trying to train her to patiently wait. It is a process and hopefully it will get easier in the next few months!

Something Grace loves to do is cut. Her grandparents bought her a cutting book by Kumon that she can’t get enough of! We’re bought her another one for Christmas and I know she’s going to be over the moon about it! By the way, what is it about this age and rubbing her head on everything? My funny little Grace rubs her head on me, the furniture, her animals, whatever. She’s not itching, she just likes rubbing her hair. Her pictures are usually with tousled hair which I find adorable, but I’m just wondering where she picked this habit up from. She’ll even tousle it herself as soon as I’m done brushing it! 

She will soon complete her cursive handwriting book. She is not yet able to comfortable in cursive for all of her assignments so I’m going to have her work in the next book when she finished after the Christmas break. She is doing well with letter formation and I want her to feel confident as she transitions into entirely writing in cursive. I really like A Reason for Handwriting because the lessons are so short, yet have taught her cursive so well!

I can’t believe November is gone! Now that Christmas is here don’t miss out on the chance to win the Birth of Jesus Grapevine Bible Study!!! You can check out my review of this Bible study here. I think you’ll really like what you see.

Our week was…completed. There is something about this time of year that makes it hard to get through school. I remember this same feeling of a slump when I was teaching full-time just after we got married. I don’t think it helped to have all of the previous week off from everything. There is nothing like a week without routine to make getting back into routine feel rather blah. Yet, we made it through, the girls learned, and they completed their work well.

Little Hands to Heaven: Week Off

 I decided to give Grace another week off since it was clear that this wouldn’t be the easiest to get through. She spent her time practicing (or rather pretending to practice) piano…

…and helping her sisters complete their lessons.

She didn’t seem to mind the week off until Saturday when she begged for lesson time. We opted for a trip to visit Santa Cow instead!

Little Hands for His Glory: Unit 15

Beth almost always wants to do her math first. She jumps right in and doesn’t like to wait for directions. For now it’s not a problem because it is very self-explanatory and she isn’t learning new concepts, but I’m trying to train her to wait so that she doesn’t get frustrated as her work gets harder.

She really likes spelling and especially writing down the words. She continues to amaze herself at being able to spell as well as she does. It’s a lot of fun to see the wonderment when she realizes she gets it right!

Do you notice her choice of colors for clothing this week? My Beth is all about dressing for the holiday! Her Santa skirt is her favorite thing right now!

Bigger Hearts for His Glory; Unit 16
I decided not to go back and do the units I accidentally skipped. There were some fun activities I may want to revisit, but for now we’re just going to forge ahead.

We began a unit on The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe for literature. Rose is extremely excited to study this book. We’re taking it slowly, although she’s begging to read ahead. We’re exploring the elements of literature including character, setting, plot, and conflict. It is pure joy for me to see her devour books like she does!

This week she also learned which states made up the 13 colonies, where they are located, and their abbreviations. She’ll eventually learn this information for all the states, but this was a fun geography lesson. She liked being quizzed on them after we learned them.

Overall we had a good week even if it wasn’t as exciting as most. I have a new camera now after finding out that it would cost as much to fix the old one as it did to buy a new one. I wasn’t excited about that, but I do like the compact nature of the new camera.

We have one more week of school before taking a break for the winter. I’m hoping to make next week exciting for the girls. We decorated for Christmas this year late, but it finally got done! We are typically decorating the first week of November, a tradition we started when we were living in Florida. We’re not complete done, but there is a fairly heavy dose of Christmas in our house now!

Have you seen the newest giveaway? Don’t forget to check it out!

We had a lot of fun this week and continued listening to Narnia! The girls have enjoyed Prince Caspian and Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I’m working on a special Christmas gift for them to fuel their Narnia craze. If all goes well I’ll post pictures of that soon!

She also really, really, enjoyed learning about Joshua. After reading the story in her Bible we watched Josh and the Big Wall. 

Josh and the Big Wall (reissue) DVD

She also really enjoyed reading in her science text book this week. She liked finding out about snowflakes. I never knew that every snowflake had six sides. I love how I am learning alongside my girls! Beth insisted on counting the snowflake in the book just to make sure they got it right! 

I will admit that I have been pleasantly surprised at how much Rose enjoys working on her grammar. She sees it sort of like a puzzle she has to figure out. We do the majority of the lesson orally and then she has a little written work. I’ve also added in the Grammar Jingles from Shurley English. I did not care for the majority of the grammar program, but I did like the jingles! There is a song for the various parts of speech, how to build a sentence, and much more. This week we’ve been working on pronouns.

We began studying George Washington this week. One day we studied rules for dealing with others in public which he complied at age 14. She was pleased to find out that she already does 5 of the 8 and chose to work on this rule for the week: 

“Be not curious to know the affairs of others; neither approach those that speak in private.”

Rose did quite well working on this throughout the week!

We’ve also been studying vocabulary using Wordly Wise. I like the systematical approach. We typically take 2 weeks to cover a unit and there is a short quiz at the end. This week she had a review test over four units… and she got them all right! Way to go Rose!

Don’t forget to enter my giveaway for Family Time Fitness. My girls have been having SO much fun with this program!

The girls and their daddy enjoyed a visit to a local farm this week! This is our MOPs and MOMSnext group. We have so much fun when we get the kids together!

I’m so grateful my husband was willing to go along with the girls and a bunch of other mom’s and their kids. I have true hay fever in that I can’t even be around hay without having a reaction! He knows how much I love pictures and I have certainly trained him well. He came back with a camera full!

She counted to 10 using stickers and surprised me with how straight her lines were on her matching worksheets. I continue to love Rod and Staff’s About 3 series for her! When we started these books back in August she didn’t quite grasp the concept of matching and I had to hold her hand to help her draw straight lines. In only three months, completing about four pages a week, she is now able to match and draw the lines all on her own. Watching her learn has been so much fun! 

Her favorite activity by far during the week was when her sisters helped her build a tabernacle. I love that after they were done they wanted to play with the tabernacle. After all, Little People need a place to worship God too, right? I have no idea what Grace is doing in this picture. She’s quite a ham! 

She really enjoyed learning the three main climate zones: Polar, Temperate, and Tropical. She took her small toy and hopped her around the globe. The activity first asked for me to point to a zone and she would act comfortable, warm, or cold…however she seemed a little self-conscious about this so we chose a different approach. I loved the voice she gave her little character when she said, “Oh my! It’s so cold here!”

She continues to enjoy poetry to the point that she has already written more than 10 poems of her own this year! She has mastered the concept of rhyme scheme using highlighters. She looks forward to doing this every week!

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – Focus on the Family Radio Theatre audiodrama on CD

Before I get to the review I have some exciting news! I have another great giveaway! Do you find your children miss the fun and games found in a traditional physical education program? On Monday I will be posting a review and giveaway of the curriculum Family Time Fitness. My girls have been having a BLAST with this program. I have to be honest and tell you I didn’t really see the need or realize how much my girls would enjoy having a more formal fitness education. Click here to find out more!

She will soon finish up the second grade Abeka readers we have. I am pleased with the progress in reading comprehension. My plans are to move her to more formal literature studies after this. I also have a variety of second grade literature books given to me by a retired teacher. She is really looking forward to this change!

Rose is definitely spoiling me with her independence. I will have to remember that my daughters coming up may not be quite so ready to do as much work on their own at this age! She is thoroughly enjoying looking words up in her dictionary, writing the sentences, and drawing pictures. It took some time for her to learn how to look up words in the dictionary, but this week she didn’t need to ask for help at all.