Tag: Little Hearts for His Glory

Since the adults in the house started off with the week with a horrible cold, we didn’t start off with our usual gusto. Thankfully none of the girls caught it, although we can’t figure out how! I did score some more bargains on books to go with next year’s curriculum. Click here or on the picture to read about how we found Heart of Dakota as our home curriculum.

We also have had a great time reviewing more products for the Review Crew! This week I posted my review for Touch Math. If you are looking for a multi-sensory math program this is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Click here or on the picture to read my review.

Even with taking Monday and Tuesday off from lessons, we still managed to squeeze in the entire unit for each of my girls and I didn’t even feel like I was rushed to do so!

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 15

This week we focused on Solomon. Grace built Solomon’s Temple out of building blocks and insisted she needed to Bible story book to make sure she built it correctly. She even placed two half- circles together for the bowl shown in the picture! I was surprised at her attention to detail for this activity.

She also insisted on including water-slides (the blue blocks) at the temple as well as bringing a bus-load of people to it. I wasn’t certain if she understood the point. So I asked her what the people were doing. She looked at me very indignantly and said, “They are worshiping God!” I’m so glad she understood the meaning behind the story even if she wanted to add the water slides. Anyway, who wouldn’t want a water slide at church?

I really like how the Heart of Dakota Guides build math concepts for preschool into their week. This week Grace enjoyed matching socks. I had this activity already made up and pull them out to play with every once in a while. These are some wild socks I saved of her baby socks. She has a fun time putting them together.

Grace realized this week she couldn’t read. She never seemed bothered by this before, but she suddenly feels frustrated that she can’t read books. I started teaching her sisters around this age with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, but when I asked she said she didn’t want to learn yet. I don’t like to push my girls faster than they are ready, so I’m just going to wait until she asks about it. My other two daughters did great even at this young age, but they both begged me to learn. We’ll see how this plays out with Grace!

Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 22

When Mommy isn’t feeling well school often moves to the living room. It’s nice we aren’t tied to the table all the time. Beth curled up with me on Wednesday and we caught up on her reading and history. This week she learned about Martin Luther. It dawned on me at some point during one of our readings that I was in college before I had even heard of Martin Luther, or at least retained the information I had heard. I thankful to be able teach my children history which includes church history. It is a blessing I do not want to take for granted.

Beth finished up her K-5 handwriting book a little early. My mom found a great 1st grade level handwriting book which also incorporates phonics. She’s now practicing whole words and there are still pictures for her to color. She also finished up her first grade readers this week. We will be working on the emerging readers found in Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory soon, but for now I’m just having her read from the books on our bookshelf. I don’t want to push her too far ahead, but reading and handwriting are two areas I’m happy to let her take the lead to pace herself!

Beth loves math…and loves to sing during math! She sometimes sings songs she knows and sometimes sings the addition facts she is practicing. She also tried out a funny new pencil which helps teach grip. She’s using it here and seemed to really enjoy how different it is!

Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 24

My Rose can be so thoughtful while she works! She often prefers to skip breaks just to keep on working. This picture is not posed and shows just how thoughtful she can be. She is very anxious to start learning multiplication. Knowing my girl she’ll want to start in her 3rd grade math as soon as it arrives!

She enjoys doing her vocabulary with World Wise each week. Heart of Dakota begins teaching vocabulary each week from the history books, but she wanted to learn more about words and I like the more traditional format of Wordly Wise. She is learning about context clues and how to use words with more than one meaning correctly.

Rose studied about inventions like the telegraph and tires this week. She very much enjoyed writing out the alphabet in Morse Code and also writing a message using it. I appreciate how the history and geography activities engage my girls and give them a love for history.

We can’t wait until next week!

We have had a full week. I had the week off from reviews, but my Crewmates were busy posting all about some great homeschool products!

I didn’t plan it this way, but it was a really good thing to have the week off from posting reviews because we were busy the first of the week with our Global Focus Week! Our denomination, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, was not founded in order to be a new denomination. It was created in the 1880’s to be a movement of Christians from all denominations who were passionate about missions at home and abroad. Churches eventually emerged from this movement and the denomination was officially formed in the 1960’s.

We love when our international workers come and tell about their work overseas. Our girls are especially excited about our visitors. Grace was being shy in the picture of course! One of the great things for my girls about these times is it helps them understand what missionaries do as well as how and why we need to pray for them. It is a blessing for our family to personally know so many serving Christ overseas.

We did have our regular school days, which made everyone tired! In retrospect I will plan a lighter week during our next Global Focus Week. We managed, but Grace is the only one of my girls to still take naps and Beth and Rose had a harder time focusing because they were more worn out.

Little Hands to Heaven: Week Off

Grace is usually begging for more work, but I suppose being quiet at our meetings every night wore on her and she didn’t seem to even notice that we didn’t do her normal schoolwork! She enjoyed cutting paper. At first I drew lines for her to cut on, then she started drawing her own cutting lines.

She played some learning games online…a HUGE treat for Grace! We limit the girls’ time in front of a screen and she was given a little extra time to play this week than usual. Her two favorite websites to play games at are PBS Kids and Disney Junior. She is particularly fond of Mickey Mouse and Elmo.

She also  enjoyed drawing on the chalk board quite a bit. When she got done with this particular picture she said, “Mommy, do you know what kind of animal I just drew? I’m not sure!” She’s just so funny sometimes!

My favorite part of the week was when I caught Grace teaching the Incredible Vegetables a Bible story. I heard her ask Junior what he learned. He said, “I didn’t learn anything!” She gave an incredibly dramatic sigh and said, “Oh Junior. Now we have to learn all over again!” 

Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 21

Beth has begun to really enjoy her history readings. She had always listened well, but she now gets really excited about reading them. I love history so seeing my girls get excited about history! I credit my love of history to my dad who used to tell me stories about real people and interesting things about them when I was a child. He made history alive and interesting, so much more than mere dates and facts. The living books used in Heart of Dakota remind me so much of these stories and just like me, my girls are falling in love with the past as well!

An idea borrowed from traditional school that I’m implementing is a word wall. Each week Beth looks for words beginning with a specific letter in the alphabet. This week was the letter M. A retired teacher friend gave me several word wall pages and it’s something else she really looks forward to each week.

Our cat, Zoe, really loves Beth. She can typically be found in her lap, on her bed, or just sitting beside her at any given moment throughout the day. Beth read her a story out of her reading book one day and I was quick enough to get a quick picture of it!

Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 23

We received next year’s guide, Preparing Hearts for His Glory, at the end of last week. When your child gets as excited, maybe even more, than you are, about your curriculum, you know you have something fantastic happening in your homeschool. Rose asked to see all the books we’d be using as well as the teacher’s guide. I mentioned already my love of history. Heart of Dakota is helping me pass that love on to my daughters! I can’t say that everything always goes as planned, that my girls love every activity we do, or that I never have to deal with any complaining. That’s life as a teacher, homeschool or otherwise! I can tell you that overall, my girls genuinely enjoy school more often than not. I really can’t take credit for this because I just follow my guides!

This week Rose learned about John Audobon, Louisa May Alcott, and a handful of other authors as children. It is so easy to think of the great minds of our past as always being adults. I’m glad that someone took the time to research and find out some of what they did as children years ago so my daughter could see that she could one day grow up and do great things as well. Rose is getting much quicker at vocabulary now. She has come so far from week one when she looked up her first word in the dictionary.

Rose continues to do well with cursive in A Reason for Handwriting. We had it on hand already and so I went with it this year. She does quite well when copying, but still has a hard time spelling words correctly when she writes in cursive on her own. I’ve been told this is fine and it will come soon. For now if she is going to write something in cursive she tells me what she wants to write and I write it for her first in cursive for her to copy.

I have to confess…we didn’t get to any of the history activities this week which we normally do. Our week was so full with the special services every night. I was planning on playing catch-up on Friday…but then we had a surprise visitor for the day! A sweet family in our church needed childcare for their adorable little boy. We of course jumped at the chance and you can believe this little guy was spoiled rotten by my little girls for the day.

One of the things I like about homeschooling is we are available to help friends out like this. My older girls still did their schoolwork while Grace and I kept an eye on Little Dude. Since Fridays are light anyway they pretty much worked independently. I was so pleased with how well they listened to directions and worked so diligently.

And so another week of our lives comes to an end. It is amazingly easy for moms to feel as if we’re just marking time. Whether we’re stay-at-home moms, working moms, or a little of both Satan has a way of making us feel unsuccessful and not doing anything that will make a difference in the future.

Every once in a while God allows me to get a little glimpse of the truly important roles I fill each day. Rose and Beth both have a love for far away places and foreign languages due much to the passion for missions my husband and I are trying to show them. Beth loves to pretend she is a mommy and today when she had a chance to care for someone younger than her she did her best to entertain and teach.

This week when you feel discouraged for whatever reason, remember that training your kids is an important calling, kingdom work from the ground up.

We had a routine week and things went smoothly. Nothing spectacular happened, but for me that makes a good week. I did finally get around to finishing up a few decorations and photographing our updated schoolroom!

I also had three different reviews from TOS Review Crew to post. We have had so much fun reviewing for the Crew! This week I posted reviews for Lone Star Learning’s Greek and Latin roots cards, Abraham’s Journey (an e-book from Inspiring the American Dream), and Going to College and Paying for it Online Video and Workbook from College Common Sense.

We also celebrated my birthday…sort of! I’m a Leap Year kid…yes really! So my sweet family spoiled me for a couple of days with a breakfast of donuts, a Starbucks chai tea latte, an ice cream cake from Marble Slab, lunch at Firehouse, a new patio set, and a pile of sweet homemade birthday cards (personally, my favorite part!).

They also marched around following a pretend Ark of the Covenant singing praises to God just like King David did! We didn’t delve into the fact that no one was supposed to actually touch it and so Grace carried it as they marched. 

Rose loves participating with her sisters. At first I wasn’t sure if it was best because I didn’t want to take away from her younger sisters’ learning experience, but she has learned to let them take the lead and be a bit more of a follower rather than always the leader which is also a good lesson. She does a great job reading so I had her read the Bible story again before we did any acting out to remind the girls what we were learning.

Bible memorization has never been difficult for Rose. She easily memorizes long passages and typically has her weekly verses memorized within 2 days. I really appreciate how the Heart of Dakota curriculum gently introduces Bible study to my young girls in a way which feels natural and not forced. Rose is beginning to understand more about the Scriptures she reads and also apply it to her life. She will often quote a verse memorized from her lesson or Awana with appropriate application.

Here is my studious girl taking a grammar test from Rod and Staff. I know testing is controversial in homeschooling circles, but assessment is crucial for my benefit of knowing if they understand the material. It is also good practice for Rose who tends to get nervous about tests. I have more opportunities to tell her I just want her to do her best, not be perfect.

Thanks for stopping in to see about our week! I hope yours went well too!

This was one of the best weeks we’ve had since the craziness that was our Christmas break! I remind the girls frequently to work diligently and Beth has started praying at meals and bed for her and her sisters to work diligently during school. I make sure to take time to praise them when this happens and it’s been neat to see Beth recognize answers to her prayers!

We’ve been busy checking out some great homeschooling products for the Schoolhouse Review Crew and are having so much fun! My daughters are loving all the new areas. This week I posted my review for A+ Tutorsoft math for 1st grade. If you are looking for a computer based math program you really need to check this out! Also don’t forget to check out the other reviews from my Crewmates!

I was trying to figure out why our week went so well. Everyone had good attitudes…the girls worked diligently every day…we completed our work most days before lunch with out a little left after lunch for my oldest daughter to finish a couple of days. I think there were several factors…1. I kept the girls on their chore routines so they started out the day knowing they were going to be held accountable.2. The school room was neat and orderly each day.3. My husband made sure we had family devotions before he left for the church each day.4. My daughters prayed for each other each night (on their own!).5. I spent more time in His Word than I have been.I know the main reasons for our success were the last three. I know centering our family and our day around Christ is going to change the atmosphere in our home and throughout our day. Other things helped of course, but nothing can compare with it. Did my girls still disobey? Yes…Did I still sometimes get frustrated? Yes…Did they bicker with one another? YES…The difference was how quickly our hearts responded to what we were out of step with the Holy Spirit. I’m hoping this lesson will stick with us for a while!Now for the learning of our week!Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 13 (Finally completed!!!!)

Grace had a great time finishing up Unit 13. We started last week, but since I caught their cold from the week before we didn’t quite get through everything like I wanted to. She continues to adore her About 3 books from Rod and Staff. She is about half-way through the B book, although she would happily finish these all up in a week if I let her! I’m still limiting her work to one page a day, but since we’ve always done this she isn’t upset about it like she used to be.We’re also in the process of reviewing one the best preschool math program I have ever seen! I can’t wait to share more about it with you in a few weeks. It has been a perfect addition to my littlest learner who literally cries each day when her lessons are over! It is difficult for her to understand I have to teach her older sisters as well!

The activities in Little Hands really are so much fun for all of us. I love when my older two daughter don’t hesitate to jump right it and play with their younger sister. This has been one of the joys of home learning for our family. It means so much to Grace when her big sisters willingly participate and have fun doing it! I typically have my older girls working independently while I teach Grace first and they often both stop what they are working on the listen in on our stories, say the letter poem, and join in the dramatic play! We read Bible stories last week about the early life of David. We talked about how David and Jonathan were friends and probably shared secrets with one another. The girls really got into this and enjoyed playing Pass the Secret with each other. There was a lot of giggling involved as you can imagine! 

These girls are just such sweet sisters! 

For our letter play this week Grace learned about K. She is so easy to teach because she tends to be a good listener and rarely defiant. This results in very good direction following! She loves gluing things onto her letter of the week and also working with Do-A-Dot markers. There are a number of websites with free printables and since my little girl is so anxious to keep working I try to give her a variety each week. The only trouble with the gluing was she kept wanting to eat all of the Cheerios. She was sweet and shared her Cheerios with her sisters.




Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 19 (Finished up!)

Beth has been asking recently, “Do we have to do school today?” I reply simply, “Yes.” And then we move on. She doesn’t complain at all, but she still likes to know! I am blessed that my daughters enjoy learning and work well for me most of the time. I typically schedule a break about 9:00 so they can have a snack, but I’ve been careful to watch for cues they need breaks other times as well. Beth especially seems to need more breaks in between her work. I’ve been giving her active ideas, like bouncing 3 times around the house on her bouncy ball. She gets her energy out, has a great time, and doesn’t mind getting back down to business afterwards! One of Beth’s favorite parts this week was her poetry. Each week she has a rhyme which helps her remember a concept from history, learn things like the days of the week, and spiritual truths. This week she learned about the Trinity, not an easy concept for a Kindergartner! She loved the poem though and went around the house saying it even when we weren’t doing lessons. This is a posed picture because during the action shots of her poem she was so active I couldn’t get a picture not blury!Another reason I love learning at home is my little sweeties are not limited in their learning. They can move forward to stay still for as long as they need to. Beth has mastered addition. She doesn’t mind the practice at all, but allowing her to move forward into the 1st grad math material was a fabulous decision. She never misses an answer and she’s excited to be able to move at her own pace, often doing more than one lesson a day. She continues to excel in spelling as well. She loves spelling and I’m so glad since this is not a subject I enjoyed as a child! All About Spelling has really changed how I view this subject. I have become a better speller as well. Beth is halfway through level 1. She’ll continue at her own pace, which is typically one lesson every 1 or 2 weeks. I want to challenge her, but not so fast she can’t master the concepts.

Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 21One of the benefits of my daughters growing up is a result of the training them from preschool to do some work on their own. Now that Rose is now in 2nd grade she is very used to working independently. If she becomes distracted by her sisters she either joins in their learning or asks to move to another room to work. She sets a fabulous example for her younger sisters and knows I will be working with her individually as well. 

Rose moved forward in Level 3 of All About Spelling and was excited to start using her Silent E detective book. As she finds different words which utilize silent E she places them on the page showing the rule it is following. There are way more silent E rules than I ever knew! We still use the dictation from Heart of Dakota. I am really seeing a difference in Rose’s spelling using both of these methods. 

We did have one activity last week which we didn’t get to in Bigger Hearts about map coordinates. After we completed the activity she asked if she could make her own map of our school room and include coordinates. Of course! What a great way to see how well she mastered this concept. Rose told me the reason it was so easy was from playing Battle Ship. You have to love when learning happens without even realizing it!

We both loved the poem this week called The Land of Counterpane. I love the beautiful poems chosen so carefully for each unit. Rose has begun writing her own poetry and even was chosen for publication! She told me this morning the reason she loves poetry and knows how to write it now is because of studying poetry for lessons. Wow! Thank you once again Heart of Dakota!

A new aspect of homeschool we started this week was literature study. I have been assigning Rose books at her reading level all year, but have chosen to just let her tell me about the story and discuss the aspects of literature like character, setting, and conflict. I felt now it was time for her to begin literature as units. Heart of Dakota has a great literature program, but I chose not to use this for two reasons. The first is my background is in teaching literature. My husband confidently encouraged me to develop my own units because it’s what I know and love! The second reason was cost. I was able to piece together literature units by genre which I’ll be able to reuse with each of my daughters and after this week I am thrilled with the outcome! 

We began with the mystery genre at Rose’s request. She is reading a book she was given for Christmas. I chose her project to be a clue journal where she will record clues from the mystery for each chapter. In addition to the clue journal she is recording vocabulary words she is unfamiliar with and tracking the emotions in each chapter. The last part of her literature study is a page which she will complete for every book she reads which will record all of the basic elements of literature for each novel. We had a really good week. I’m looking forward to next week to be just as much fun!