Tag: Heart of Dakota

A Peek at our Week: December 5-9

Grace-Filled Writer
This was our last week of “full school” before our Christmas break. We will have some fun learning next week, but not the full structure we normally have. 
Rose: Resurrection to Reformation Unit 18
Confession: This is not a picture from this week! Because Rose is more and more independent (which I LOVE!) and her sisters are not she often wanders to different rooms or outside when the weather is nice to get her work done. She likes to study in quiet which is hard to do with two younger sisters in need of their mommy’s help with school! Anyway, this is from a couple of weeks ago but I’m going to make a better effort after the New Year to make sure I get more pictures of her. 
She still loves this guide so much and I’m excited to be half-way through now! We were always “ahead” with her in the guides until I started having some health issues in 2012. Then we slowed down for both our sakes and now she’s tracking to finish the last high school guide in 12th grade. I’d actually like to keep moving through the summer and see if we can get a little ahead. I’m not trying to rush her, but she can handle it and I would like for the girls to finish the HOD guides by 11th grade. We’ll see how it goes. 
Grace: Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory Unit 26

This week we talked about the Star Spangled Banner and the Pledge of Allegiance which she practiced saying to our American flag we have in the room. We never do this so she thought it was quite funny! She does know the pledge because of AWANA so she just thought it was silly to recite in our classroom. She enjoyed learning about the national anthem and we listened to an Adventures in Odyssey through the Odyssey Adventure club about the story behind the writing of that poem. 
She was sad we will be taking a break from her guide for a little bit, but she understands we need a break. As we edge closer to Bigger Hearts for His Glory I’m praying she still enjoys school as much. That is a wonderful, wonderful guide, but it is a big jump in work-load and my older two struggled a bit to adjust. I’m hoping she dives right in with gusto as her sisters did. The easiest part will be her sisters will be in the older guides and not need me as much so I can focus in on Grace more. 
Beth: Preparing Hearts for His Glory Unit 35

Just one more unit and we will be done with my favorite guide so far in the series! Although I  know Bethe loves this guide, especially Grandpa’s Box, she is incredibly excited to move up into the next guide! She is tracking way ahead and will be starting Creation to Christ as a 4th grader. I would be happy to let her slow down, but she does everything well and loves it so much. This does give us wiggle room as we think ahead to junior high and high school. This also puts her on the track I want her older sister to get to. All three of my girls are studious and eager. I’m so grateful we homeschool because I think they may be bored in a traditional classroom at times. 
In this picture Beth is working on her writing with Writing Strands. This is absolutely the best writing program I have found and I am recommending it to everyone I know! I’ve reviewed many writing programs and while all have their good points, this one is simple and solid without taking extensive amounts of time. I’m so excited as we continue through this curriculum! 
Over the weekend…

Over the weekend we went to a drive-through nativity at a friend’s church. It was a lot of fun and we were especially excited to see our friends in the performance! I have researched more this year to find fun things to experience with the girls this season. This was definitely a highlight. 
I hope you are all enjoying the season as we prepare to celebrate our Savior’s birth!

Peek at our Week: November 28- December 2

Grace-Filled Writer
 Back to “full school” as the girls call our regular studies! We will have one more week and then a break from the regular for about a month. Between our Christmas celebrations, recital, vacations, and general busyness of the season I love that we can take a break this way! 
The girls were working really hard Wednesday morning to get their work done before their science class at our local homeschool learning center. On Wednesdays and Fridays we only do basics: Math, English, and Bible. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday are reserved for our Heart of Dakota curriculum. 
 Grace: Bigger Hearts for His Glory Unit 25
Grace is enjoying learning cursive! She has been wanting to do so for a while. We are using Handwriting Without Tears mostly because it was given to us by someone who decided not to use it. I’ve used various handwriting curriculum. We loved Fundanoodle for print and this was a good transition for cursive for us. 
She is happy we are moving into more about colonial America with our history studies. She loves learning about kids from that time period. She’s also excited about our history and science activities. She also loves reading and spelling. Not to mention grammar…Okay, so you can see this little girl just loves to learn no matter what it is about! 
Grace begin cheer leading with Upwards Sports this week. It is exactly her niche and we feel comfortable with the program as opposed to some of the other cheer programs we have seen.
Beth: Preparing Hearts for His Glory Unit 33
 Beth has become so very independent! This is great as we will be very soon moving into the Creation to Christ which is very independent. We will do some work together, but most of this history will be independent with just check-ins with me. I’m so happy to see her growing this way. 
She told me today how much she loves spelling, especially All About Spelling. I’m glad to hear it, but I’m trying to rework how and when we do those lessons. It is getting harder to fit it in as they have more and more work to do. I’ll be trying to figure this out over the next weeks.
Rose: Resurrection to Reformation Unit 17
 
Half-way through!!!! We are using this guide for 6th grade and she is flourishing! We will probably end this before the year is over and start the next guide. Rose is getting much better about completing her work more diligently and with greater effort. I’m sure this will ebb and flow, but for now we are in a “flowing” season. Yay! 
She’s continuing to read Anne of Green Gables and seems to enjoy it. I’m in the process of creating a list of classics for her to read. Math is stable too which is a nice reprieve! She’s growing up so very much, but still very much a kid at times and that is exciting. She will begin basketball with Upwards this coming week and she cannot wait for that!
Happy December!

Peek at our Week: November 14-18

Grace-Filled Writer

One more week until we get a break for Thanksgiving! I have mentioned before we follow a 6-week schooling schedule, but we do take special breaks for holidays! Thanksgiving is coming and I have some fun stuff planned for the week!

The girls are at their grandparent’s house for the weekend. They get to visit with them about every 4-6 weeks. It’s wonderful for them to spend that time with them and nice for us since we are around one another 24-7 it does us all some good to have a little break. My mom is an amazing cook and has been teaching the girls about baking and cooking. Dad plays a lot of games with them and Rose especially enjoys playing basketball against him. I am spending the weekend decorating for Christmas! We will save the tree for the girls to get home though.

Here are a few highlights from the week!

Beth: Preparing Hearts for His Glory Unit 32

I’ve just realized almost all of my pictures of Beth are of her working on math! She really does other work, but this is one of her favorite subjects because it come easily. She does frustrate us sometimes because she hates to do extra steps which she feels are unnecessary, like writing out the operations she used for word problems. Since she rarely ever makes a mistake it is very difficult to explain the reason why she needs to do this!
We are edging nearer and nearer to the end of the guide. I asked her what her favorite part was and she responds, “All of it!” That is honestly how we feel about this particular guide and really all of the Heart of Dakota guides. I do know that one of her favorite portions is poetry. She really enjoys the writing and practicing rhyme scheme (which I assign every week). Interestingly enough, as much as she enjoys and genuinely understands the poetry, she much prefers to create prose for the writing assignments. Even so, it is quite creative and full of beautiful imagery. 
Grace: Bigger Hearts for His Glory Unit 24

 I’ve been working really hard recently to make sure I get the extra activities in for Grace. Because she is the youngest and my older girls have more in depth studies sometimes I would forget to do these with her. It wasn’t intentional, but I realized I just wasn’t giving her all that she really needed and I’ve been striving to do this better. I reworked the days we do some of the activities and that has helped tremendously. We are all over the place with completing the guide in that we do not follow the strict day-by-day scheduling anyway. So all history activities occur on Tuesdays (usually) and all science activities on Thursdays (usually). 
She read about King David hiding in the caves this week to correlate with some of her history readings about the early years of our country. Here she is using oatmeal to create some of the different rock formations mentioned in Scripture. There is something so very meaningful and creative about learning through touch this way.
Rose: Resurrection to Reformation Unit 16
Rose has very much enjoyed the maps she works on every week. I love that Heart of Dakota utilizes the Map Trek maps from Knowledge Quest. They are assigned in the older guides, but I purchased all of their sets one year when the were on sale one year and we use them with all of the guides when I can. I also love their biographies and often supplement with those as well. 
We are very close to the half-way mark in the guide which is very exciting! Math continues to be her least favorite subject, but taking time away from our main curriculum to solidify the concept of fractions and how factors/multiples relate to them has been incredibly beneficial. I truly believe that second to the discipleship training I am able to give my girls this is the best part of homeschooling. I can make sure the girls can master the concepts they struggle with in any subject and help them to grow at a pace which is most beneficial to them!
We are beginning to focus more on reading classics with Rose. This week she began Anne of Green Gables and I am on the lookout for classic stories she can read. She devours the written word so other “fun” books are easy for her to get into. This will help stretch her vocabulary and prepare for harder works of literature in the coming years.

Here are our sweet pets! Lucy and Penny love laying in the sunshine when I open the front door on these cold days. We live in the south, so I know cold is very much relative!
I’d love to hear how your week has gone!

Peek at our Week: November 7-11

Grace-Filled Writer
 Our routine is pretty much down and the girls are doing well with that. Our six weeks schedule (6 weeks of school and one week off) has done so much to settle our year and the girls’ attitudes in general. If you are struggling in your year to make things really mesh I’d suggest you give this a try. 
And onto our week!
Grace: Unit 22 Little Hearts for His Glory
 

 As always little miss Grace eagerly dives into everything we do no matter what it is. All of my girls loved this guide and I’m sort of sad to see it come to an end this third time! She absolutely loves poetry and though sometimes she doesn’t understand it, she is excited to learn! 
We used the tile number board for math this week to practice odd and even numbers. A dear, dear friend n our church is a retired 2nd grade teacher. She has blessed us with a wonderful assortment of manipulatives, curriculum, folder games, books, and more. Such a blessing!
Beth: Unit 32 Preparing Hearts for His Glory
 

As we continue to creep to the end of the guide, it just keeps getting better! It has been a little harder to get through since we finished up Grandpa’s Box. I’ve never been very happy with A Child’s History of the World, but haven’t found an age-appropriate replacement that we aren’t using in a different guide. I’m currently searching out options as I think ahead for when Grace gets to this guide in another year-and-a-half or so. 
Beth is much more patient these days with herself and understanding that as she gets older she will have more work. That was incredibly frustrating for her at the  beginning of this guide. It has taken nearly the entire thing, but she has resigned herself and even jumped on board with the idea of maturing in her education. 

Rose: Unit15 Resurrection to Reformation

Rose is growing up so quickly. Those around us notice it and I hear about it all the time. I have moments where my heart squeezes so tightly as I realize my oldest baby is growing up. Even though I’ve seen this many times over as a teacher of middle schoolers, it’s a strange feeling to watch it unfolding in my own house. She’s becoming more independent and I’m giving her a few more freedoms. It’s beautiful to see her growing into the young lady she is becoming, but also difficult. I know other mamas reading this can relate! 
She has absolutely loved studying the medieval period. She made a coat of arms online with the recommended website in the guide. This was great except for the fact that our printer decided to start acting up and we couldn’t get it to actually print. I’m hoping my husband can help out with this and we can get it printed soon.
We’ve hit a little hiccup in math in studying common denominators. So we’re taking a little break and working through the process through Math Mammoth. Hopefully this will help cement the concept for Rose. We’ll be right back into Principals for Mathematics when we finish this side unit. We own the entire Math Mammoth program and I love that I can use it as grade-level or as units. 
As the week ended we spied the super moon!

 
I hope you all had a great week! 

Peek at Our Week: October 31-November 4

Grace-Filled Writer

I had two very exciting opportunities open up this week! I was invited to be on the 2017 Old Schoolhouse Review Crew and to be on the Creative Team for the digital scrapbook designer Libby Pritchett Designs! I was on the Review Crew in 2013, but had to step away from that for a season. I was also on a digital scrapbooking creative team several years ago, but when the designer’s stores closed I never really actively sought out another team. Both of these opportunities were a great encouragement for me this week! I was feeling inspired and finished quite a few pages in the evenings after the girls went to bed.

For the most part school went well.We completed my list so that means it was a good week!

Rose: Resurrection to Reformation Unit 14
We finished up the Middle Ages and are anticipating moving into the Renaissance period. This is really such a rich program for history and it only gets better as the kids grow. Rose is learning independence also means accountability in a different way and she’s growing in this area as well.

Applying her love of art to creating a replica flag from the Middle Ages

 Math is still our most difficult subject to wade through together. We love Principles of Mathematics, but when we get to something that is a more challenging subject we review through the topic again with Math Mammoth. I like having this freedom. I wish I could find a magic solution, but I’m finding that since this is not a subject she enjoys we just have to keep moving and have patience. My husband helps out in this a lot as I don’t always know how to explain a mathematical concept in a way she will fully understand, especially if the way the book presents it doesn’t quite take. 

Beth: Preparing Hearts for His Glory Unit 31
Beth is becoming more focused in her studies and wanting to dive more deeply into what she is learning. Up until recently she completed her work without much complaint (usually!) but just did the minimum I asked and never offered to ask any further questions or see out anymore information. Now, it’s very different. We have a shelf of history books that are arranged by order or historical period. I’m finding her more and more asking more questions and seeking out information on her own. She’s also picking up more books on her own beyond the reading I require. 

Creating a Medieval Pendant out of clay. She then colored her design with Sharpie Markers
Beth continues to enjoy the projects and is really progressing with her narration both oral and written. It’s been so fun to see her growth from when we paused at the beginning of the summer to now. Math comes very easily to her and for a kid like that Math Mammoth is wonderful. She usually understands the teaching without much input from me. I have her explain the concepts and she always seems to know what she is doing. My theory is the reason for this is Beth has been homeschooled from the beginning, so her math had a more natural flow upwards rather than the every-kid-in-the-same-box traditional schools tend to follow. I can’t prove it, but it seems to be the reality for our kids. 
Grace: Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory Unit 22
Grace is excited every week: The end. What else can a parent want besides a child who jumps at the chance to learn, no matter what the subject. This girl loves rabbit trails! 

Daddy helps out with school on Mondays and in the afternoons if we don’t finish everything.
She is very patient and understanding that I can’t always give her my undivided attention. I do make sure I give her enough time, but since her guide doesn’t take as long it isn’t difficult. I am excited that we are moving on into the Revolutionary War period of history. She’s learning about Boston and many of the historical places connected to the birth of our nation. I hope to take the girls on a trip in the next couple of years northward so we can see some of these places in person. 
Some other things we did this week: 
1. Voted Early 
2. Watched Annie (The original)
3. Dressed up and played pretend

What fun things did you do this week?

Week in Review: Week of April 25-29

Grace-Filled Writer
We had fun this week with my husband’s parents from Florida here visiting with us for a couple of days. They and my parents, who live about an hour away, got to see the girls’ art work displayed in the art show at our Homeschool Learning Center. They were very excited to have both sets of grandparents be able to see it! 
Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory
Unit 11
 Even though it is not scheduled in the guide we have continued on with the ABC series from Rod and Staff. It is such a sweet set of workbooks and all three of my girls loved them! Grace will be starting the last one in the series next week. I love to see how she is growing and learning!
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 Grace illustrated a beautiful picture to go along with her poem for the week. She is really beginning to enjoy the poetry. She missed the straight forward nature of the poems in Little Hearts for His Glory at first, but she’s now really enjoying listening to the new poem each week and trying to come up with a title for it!
 Preparing Hearts for His Glory
Unit 19
 
 During the typical week my husband teaches the girls on Monday while I teach my English class and the girls have a science class on Wednesday mornings. We also really like to only have an hour or so of work on Fridays so we work very, very hard during the first four days of the week, fitting all the days of the unit into Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Beth has started reading some of Grandpa’s Box on her own. We still discuss the chapter, but this helps us stay on target. She really enjoys it and as we are drawing near the end I know she will hate to say goodbye to this book!
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Beth is becoming quite a little artist! When we first started the timeline activity last year she just wanted to rush through, but now I’m seeing a greater effort and love for what she is creating. 
Resurrection to Reformation
Unit 3 
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 Every year when I keep thinking homeschooling can’t get any better, we enter into a new adventure with Rose in a new Heart of Dakota guide. Seriously, I can’t believe how rich my kids’ learning experience is! It is way more in depth (And fun!) than I could ever plan on my own. Rose has kept her same Common Place Book since we started it in Preparing. I don’t have her do every single one of the copywork activities, but she does enjoy looking back on it every now and then. She is now beginning to copy her new chapter she is memorizing this year from Scripture.
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Who knew the Byzantine Empire could be so fascinating? One of the fun thinks about homeschooling is enlarging my own understanding of history. I’m as engaged and interested in what they are learning as they are, maybe more sometimes! The writing assignments are a lot of fun for Rose. She looks forward to them every week. I’m continually impressed with her beautifully constructed sentences and look forward to seeing how she progresses in writing this year. 
How was your week? Post a link from your blog if you have one in the comments or just share a little below!

An Update

Grace-Filled Writer

I’ve been a bit quiet here lately. To be honest I just haven’t felt like writing about much of anything. And so instead of giving into the blogging pressure of the need to post, I took an unannounced break. If you follow me on facebook you have seen sporadic peeks into our days, but even that has been pretty random.

The quiet started back in January when we said goodbye to my husband’s grandmother who is finally home with her Savior after a long battle with cancer. Her legacy of faith extends far beyond our family. She welcomed me as a granddaughter the first time we met even before I was engaged to my husband. She loved my girls well and they always looked forward to the cards she sent.

This was the first close family member my girls have said goodbye to. It was difficult in some ways and beautiful in others. My girls all have accepted Jesus as their Savior so they had a very good perspective filled with hope. As family gathered to celebrate her life my girls met some they never knew and heard over and over how their great-grandmother led many to know Christ. It was really a good experience overall.

Still…grief is hard.

I had many praying for us just before the funeral because I was concerned about how my girls would react to an open casket and just the funeral in general as they had never attended one before. I remember telling someone that part of my concern was that I didn’t feel like I handled my own pain very well in front of them. I don’t grieve well.

My friend’s response was, “Does anyone?”
Thinking on this and reflecting on our life as a family, I decided if I was going to grieve well I needed to take away any unnecessary pressures. So I took a break from publicly sharing our life. I’ve kept on reviewing for the many wonderful companies with whom I partner, but that has been about all you’ve seen for several weeks around here!
I’m ready to jump back in however! Here are some tidbits and highlights from the last 3 1/2 months…
The Girls 
Narnia Room Transformation
Click the arrow on the right to see more of the room!

  As a Christmas surprise the girls got a room redo! Their once purple/pink room with a few princess stickers on the wall has turned into a Narnia wonderland! The room is split between winter and spring. We used color pictures from the actual novels to decorate the walls and have various items around which are themed to the various stories. My favorite part is the tree which has a page from each book hanging from it. We spent 2 years gathering what we needed. Yeah, that is a long time! We just kept having trouble finding a time to work on it and get it done as a surprise. Our patience paid off and we were able to create the entire room decor for under $150. The quilts were a Christmas gift from my parents which completed the look. 

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School has been wonderful since the Christmas break. We are still following a 6-week school model although as you can expect sometimes we get our break earlier than 6 weeks depending on our needs as a family. 

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Rose has just finished up her first unit in Heart of Dakota’s Resurrection to Reformation and she loves loves loves it! When she started looking at all the books she would be using in this guide she said, “Mommy! I’ve hit the jackpot!” Such a sweet girl and so eager to learn. 
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Beth has just past the half-way mark in Preparing Hearts for His Glory. This is sooner than I expected, but I’m finding in general each guide flows more smoothly for her. I have suspicion this is because she has heard most of it once before. Her favorite school-book is Grandpa’s Box and I don’t blame her! It is a favorite for all of us and one of those books that all three girls eagerly listen to during school time. 
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Grace is motoring right along. While everything comes incredibly easy for her, she’d rather be playing than doing school so sometimes we do have a bit more complaining. I also know this can be an age factor because I remember the second half of 6 being a bit rougher for my other two than many other seasons. Still, she bounces everywhere and life is always full of new and exciting things to explore! 
Me
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I celebrated my 9th birthday! Crazy right? Well that’s what happens when you are born on Leap Year! This birthday was really fun because all of the girls understood what it meant to me. 
 
I’ve been trying to get life in order. I have done some major, major purging around the house. It was one of those jobs I’ve been putting off due to the overwhelming enormity of it all. Between clothing, kitchen stuff, and household decorations I have gotten rid of hoards of stuff. I should have taken pictures to remind myself of how good it felt! Getting rid of all the “stuff” we don’t need has been so freeing. I paid for very little of it as we are blessed to have a lot of generous people in our lives, but as Cary Farrel, a good friend and professional organizer, says “When a blessing becomes a burden, it is time to get rid of it.” So I waved goodbye to things that were at one time a blessing and have felt so good in the process! 
I’ve begun taking a nap every afternoon. About 3 years ago I discovered my iron levels had dropped to dangerously low levels. I could barely function. While I’ve been working hard to get them where they need to be, and they are improving, I still found myself completely exhausted by early afternoon. I work from home teaching piano every afternoon for about 3 hours so I needed to find a way to fix this. My afternoon nap is only 30-45 minutes long, but it has been life-changing! 
I’m exercising more regularly. I actually started this back last year, but I’ve been walking about 2 miles through our neighborhood with my dear friend and neighbor. If you want to start being more active grab a friend! It’s great motivation, support, and accountability! This has been difficult previously because of the low iron issue.
 
Our Family
P1060184Our family has had some great opportunities to just spend time together having fun. We have just enjoyed playing games together, listening to Adventure in Odyssey, reading aloud more, playing the Wii, watching movies, and visiting fun places. My husband and I have always been intentional about our parenting, but we have been focusing on intentionally having fun.

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We have added two new family members! Penny, our puppy, joined us the day after Christmas on our way to FL to visit my husband’s parents. We stopped at the Humane Society and fell in love! She’s such a sweet little thing, a Rat Terrier/Chihuahua mix, which is funny because I thought she was a Jack Russel Terrier which I had my heart set on. In honesty if I’d know there was any Chihuahua in her she probably wouldn’t have come with us, but I’m so glad she is part of our family now. (This coming from a non-dog person too!)

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 Lucy joined us in February. Again I had my heart set on a Balinese kitten because they are supposed to be better for allergies and have a sweet temperament. We came across her at our local shelter and she is just a wonderful part of our family!

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Lucy and Penny get along really well. They spend half their time wrestling and half their time cuddling! 

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We recently took a really awesome trip over spring break with a high school friend of mine and her family. It was one of the most relaxing and restful vacations we’ve ever had! 

And now as life is setting into routine once again I’m ready to start sharing our sometimes hectic, often imperfect, wouldn’t-change-it-for-anything life again.

Week in Review: November 30-December 4

Grace-Filled Writer
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It’s been a few weeks since I have written about what’s been happening in our homeschool! We’ve been around, but we were off our typical schedule for a little bit. During that time we had the chance to visit Washington DC as well as some of our families! Visiting Mt. Vernon was a HUGE highlight, especially for Grace. She was so excited to see both where George Washing slept and where he ate his breakfast! 
When we got home from this trip we were all a little ragged. A week of field trips will do that to you! So we took the week off from Heart of Dakota and just worked on some follow up activities from our DC trip as well as some math and language arts. The following week was Thanksgiving so we had school the first three days of the week, but kept it simple again and didn’t delve into our normal workload. 
Finally we are back to normal! And believe it or not, this week was what I consider normal. We didn’t have any out of the ordinary circumstances (doctor visits, field trips, illness, etc.) and it flowed so very smoothly. No doubt three weeks away from our routine had something to do with that! 
Grace: Little Hearts for His Glory Unit 33

One more unit! Only one more unit and Grace will be graduating on from Little Hearts. This guide has been so precious this third time around. I can appreciate it with her more for so many reasons. I know what to expect and having done the activities and projects twice already I’m very confident in knowing what to do (usually!). Her older sisters are able to work independently and I do not have any younger littles who need Mommy’s attention while I’m teaching her. Most of all, she has devoured the history. I have a feeling growing up hearing her sisters learn history has given her an edge in this regard even though both of my other girls also really love the subject. 

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Handwriting is going beautifully and Grace is finally at the point where she is making her letters neater and can work on regular lined paper. We’re continuing on with Handwriting Without Tears (which was so generously given to us by a friend!) at the pace of 2 pages a day. 
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Over the Moon! This is the best way to describe how Grace felt this week about learning to tell time on a “real clock” as she calls it! Just last week she told me she thought she would just stick to digital clocks. She said, “I don’t think I’ll learn about circle clocks, Mommy. Number clocks are easier!” She did enjoy our first few lessons about time though.
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If you are looking for a good way to review math facts, I highly recommend Math Rider. I reviewed this with the Old Schoolhouse Review Crew three years ago and our family purchased the game once the review period was over. It has been worth every penny as all three of my girls are solidly able to recall their math facts. They enjoy the story scenarios and I love how I can track their progress and see which specific facts are still an issue. All three use this several times a week and sometimes even play during their free screen time! 
Beth: Preparing Hearts for His Glory Unit 7

FULL SPEED AHEAD! This was the week! I moved Beth into unit 7 at full pace and she did a fabulous job! I didn’t tell her I was doing so because I didn’t want her to worry about whether she could handle it or not. My husband teaches the older two girls while Grace and I attend/teach classes on Mondays. When I came home at lunch she said, “Mommy, it seemed like more work today, but I didn’t mind and I still finished early! And this was true for the rest of the week. I’m glad we were able to go ahead and begin full speed before Christmas because while we are all ready for routine after the break, getting back to steady work isn’t always the easiest. 
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Math is very easy for Beth. In all honesty, everything is easy for Beth. I rarely see her struggle except in areas of neatness or following directions because she is in a hurry. So even though she doesn’t necessarily struggle with her math facts, I have her complete Math Rider exercises and it has only benefited her. I caught her working on division the other day even though we haven’t covered this concept even a little bit yet. She has a mind which grasps mathematical concepts quickly and just from hearing me teach Rose about division she has caught on and quickly moves on. 
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One of the things I had held back on was the copywork in Preparing. This week I gave Beth her very own Common Place Book where she will write quotations, Scripture, and meaningful facts from what we are learning. Her’s is covered in panda’s on the cover because they are her favorite animal. 
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We are continuing on with All About Spelling and Beth actually really loves this program. Again, spelling is very easy for her, but she loves using the tiles and enjoys learning all the rules. 
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We also still work through the dictation as written in the Heart of Dakota guides and I’m very pleased with her progress. You can see her adorable panda journal in the bottom left corner!
Rose: Creation to Christ Unit 27

Rose continues to excel in this guide. She loves learning as much as her younger sisters and sets an excellent example of diligence. Because I create at weekly grid for them to check off their work for each day there are often times she gets up and begins schoolwork on her own without my prompting. She knows what she can manage independently and likes having this freedom. In fact this week she helped her younger sisters get started on work while I was still getting dressed for the day. They were so proud to be able to tell me the 2 or 3 things they had accomplished before our official start time of the day and I know Rose had a lot to do with prompting this. 
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Until Math Mammoth came into our home I struggled to find a fit for my oldest. I have a feeling part of her struggle with math is due to my own inadequate feelings about teaching it. However, she now smoothly flows through the lessons each day and when we hit bumps there are fewer tears, more patience, and lots of smiles once it is conquered! 

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My girls can be found reading in any number of rooms around the house or even outside when the weather is nice! One of Rose’s favorite places for reading history and literature now is on the couch snuggled up near the Christmas tree. Can you blame her? 

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We do not us the recommended Bible along with Creation to Christ because we own so many Bibles already! Instead we use Illustrated Bible Stories from Masterbooks. While it doesn’t match up absolutely perfectly we use it when it does and just read the passage directly from Scripture when it doesn’t. This is the main reason I love Heart of Dakota. My girls are learning to study God’s Word on their own, consistently, faithfully, and deeply all the while on their level.  
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Just this morning as we were working on finishing up the work for the week we had something new occur. I was listening to Grace read her literature for the day and Beth asked if Rose could teach her grammar lesson instead of waiting for me. I knew the topic was something Rose had already mastered and was also actually review for Beth so I thought it was worth a shot. Wow! It was so beautiful to hear the girls interact in this way. I’m not planning on giving over teaching responsibilities to them or anything, but I think it was a very neat thing for Rose to take on the role as teacher. She corrected gently and Beth patiently listened. It made my heart smile to see them working together and I know it benefited them both. 

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We had a fabulous week. Not all of our weeks are this lovely, but this one was. I’ll need to tuck it away in my mind to pull out and remember on those days when my plans fall apart!

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