Tag: Weekly Review

Before I get into our week I just wanted to thank everyone who voted in the Homeschool Posts Blog Awards. The winners are up so take the time to go see who this year’s winners are!

There is also plenty of time to enter the Homeschool Helper App Giveaway! I’ve really enjoyed this app and have found it to be very compatible with Heart of Dakota. Click here to find out more.

And now onto our week…

Nothing really spectacular about this week, but that is a good thing. We had some bumps, a few successes, but mostly it was just a regular week and blissfully uneventful!

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 29

Grace learned about the letter X this week. Her older sisters both have a class on Wednesdays and she has really enjoyed the time we get to spend together one-on-one. It is also nice to have this time in case things don’t go as planned earlier in the week.

I particularly like how the devotional book, My ABC Bible Verses, is preparing her little heart for discipleship. After a brief story involving children and written in a beautifully simple way, short questions are presented to help the children recall and think deeper about the Scripture. I know I write a lot about how much I appreciate the Biblical training and instruction, but it really is my favorite part about this curriculum. Even in the preschool guide children are led to the throne of God in a very gentle way.

Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 11

Beth read the chapter book Tornado this week and spent more time learning about the Pilgrims. I find it particularly excellent timing with Thanksgiving next week. She has very much enjoyed this even though we’ve been studying the Pilgrims for several weeks now. She does not find this at all boring and is even enjoying reading some on her own. She really enjoyed Tornado as well and Rose mentioned remembering reading that book and how much she liked it.

This is Beth’s 1st grade math with which she is almost finished. You may notice her writing on the left-hand page while the right-hand page is already finished. It may seem as if I was posing her for this picture, but I wasn’t! While I don’t have my girls “pose” for these shots I do sometimes say, “Freeze!” and they know they keep still so the picture isn’t blurry since I’m really not that great of a photographer! Anyway, while she is “freezing” this is how she has been doing math recently. She may start on the left side, do a few on the right, move back to the left, and so forth. It may be a little unorthodox, but as long as she knows what she is doing I’m fine with it! She did have a little trouble with one section where she was supposed to write the number preceding and following the given number. The reason for this was that she did the jumping around thing. It was this lesson when I realized what she was doing and hadn’t given her directions for that part yet. She was only mildly frustrated when I erased the one section and made her redo it.

I only add in two items to our week which are not included in the early Heart of Dakota guides. The first is paragraph writing. As an English teacher it is very important for my girls to have a solid writing background. While I do feel the path for writing in Heart of Dakota is very well planned out, I wish it were started slightly earlier. There are very good reasons given by the author about why it is structured the way in which it is, but I just decided to add in my own writing. We’re using a Scholastic book which I purchased during a $1 sale and I’m really enjoying it, as is Beth! This week she wrote about what she would put in a mystery bag and had to include clues about what it was. She wrote: I have something special in my bag. They build nests. They eat bugs and worms. We like to hear them sing. She came up with these sentences, but we spent time throughout the week brain storming before she actually wrote them into a paragraph form.

Preparing Hearts for His Glory: Unit 7

Rose is checking out our beautiful map of the United States for math…that’s right! Math! I cannot emphasize how much we adore Life of Fred. I’m so glad I borrowed the first book from a friend to see what we thought. If you lean towards a Charlotte Mason style of schooling you should really check this out. I use it alongside our traditional math curriculum. I love how it takes math and crosses it into other subjects like geography, science, and history.

We both love love love Vocabu-Lit! This is our second unit with the book and I prefer it far and away over Wordly Wise. Rose said it is also more fun and actually asks to do this first!

Grandpa’s Box continues to be a highlight during the week. We are alternating between this and a Child’s History of the World, which I’m not as excited about reading to be completely honest. Rose does though so that is good. She is reading at a very high level and sometimes like to read on her own. I do like to read with her, but she is very good about reading passages if I get interrupted by her little sister.

Grammar is going well…extremely well actually. I remember groaning with my classmates in grade-school whenever my teachers pulled out the grammar book. I didn’t really feel that way inside, but you know, peer pressure and all that jazz. Rose seems to like the logic and order grammar provides. I have also seen a bit more order and structure to her writing aside from grammar. She is providing beautiful written narrations each week (scheduled in Preparing Hearts for His Glory) and wonderful 3-paragraph non-fiction pieces (another Scholastic resource).

And here is my favorite shot of the week. Yes, gum is allowed at Lighthouse Christian Academy, as long as it doesn’t interfere with learning or speaking. Rose recently learned to blow bubbles and I snapped this just in time! Gum chewing also seems to help the girls focus sometimes and curbs the urge to snack. I’m curious, do you allow gum chewing?

I have my own space at our school table. We’re learning in my MOPs group this year about how life is a beautiful mess and our homeschool is no exception. I am fairly well organized, but the actual process of teaching three little girls often looks quite messy. I’m beginning to think the bigger the mess, the more learning occurs. My struggle is getting things cleaned up afterwards, but I’m getting much better at it!

First off, there is only a little time left to vote for Grace-Filled Homeschooling for Best Encourager Blog over at the Homeschool Blog Awards hosted by The Homeschool Post! There are lots of other blogs to vote for as well in many wonderful categories. Don’t forget to take time to vote for your favorites! 

We also got to have a very unique field trip this week with our sweet friend Diego who is going through chemotherapy for cancer. Click on the picture to read more about that. 

Here is a bit of what we did this week for school…

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 28

We’re getting very close to finishing up Grace’s Little Hands to Heaven curriculum. This week we worked with W and she loved the poem which was done to the tune of Jesus Loves Me. This is her absolute favorite song and so learning our rhyme for the week was easy. We’re still mostly doing tracing, but will be moving to more formal handwriting soon.

Grace is doing amazingly well with her reading lessons. The only problem is she thinks she can read absolutely anything now and gets frustrated when I try to gently tell her what word is correct. I’m grateful she enjoys reading and am grateful to have three girls who love the written word!.

The older girls have a class on Wednesdays. Grace and I are really enjoying our time together. We usually do her lessons in the living room and this has been a very special time for us.

Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 10

Beth does not have a formal vocabulary curriculum for 1st grade, but I like for her to use vocabulary worksheets from a couple of different scholastic e-books. She especially enjoys the word ladders.

We continue to study the Pilgrims for history. This has turned out to be absolutely wonderful timing with Thanksgiving coming. The first time I worked through the Beyond guide with Rose I felt like the Pilgrim portion went on  for a really long time. I don’t feel that way anymore and I appreciate the great detail put into knowing more about the Pilgrims. I was even more grateful after I found out some of my girls’ friends in traditional school are not studying any history.

I just love how Heart of Dakota bring my girls along in their walk with the Lord. In just 10 units Beth has gone from feeling as if she can’t possibly understand what a Scripture is saying to openly discussing a short verse or two with me, even asking some of her own questions. Discipleship is so very important and I’m thankful to have the resource I do with these guides.

This week Beth wrote her paragraph about singing. She did a great job and then drew a picture of singing birds. In her paragraph she added that she really enjoyed singing Amazing Grace. We heard a song this week on the radio which is fairly new but has the words, “Amazing Grace,” in it. She got very excited and said, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Is that the same amazing grace I like to sing about?” What a fun conversation which led to about how God’s grace is for everyone and it is the same for us all.

Preparing Hearts for His Glory: Unit 6

Although we did seem to find our stride last week we are still adjusting to the pace of this guide at full-speed. It is where we need to be as Rose is definitely ready, but keeping everything on track is a moment-by-moment task. Rose has very much enjoyed our study of the Ancient Egyptians. She said to me more than once this week how sad it was that they thought there were so many gods and weren’t interested in knowing the One God who is true. Hieroglyphics have been enjoyable to study and she even wrote Deigo a note in hieroglyphics for him to decipher with a key she made.

We have continued to work through our new vocabulary curriculum, Vocabu-Lit and I have found this to be a favorable change over Wordly Wise. Rose has also said how much she is enjoying this change.

A fun activity each day for Rose is her history notebooking. She enjoys art so very much and this week she drew the Sphinx and Joseph using Draw and Write Through History. She is very precise and the only trouble I ever have for this assignment is when she becomes frustrated at the lack of perfection in her art. She is, however, becoming more patient with herself every day.

This week has been good…just so amazingly good! Not only has our week been incredibly fun, I was surprised with a nomination for Best Encourager Blog for the Homeschool Blog Awards hosted by The Homeschool Post! Wow! I was shocked, humbled and really, really excited! What excited me most wasn’t so much the nomination, but knowing I was meeting my purpose. When I started out blogging it was with the full intention of encouraging other homeschooling families. If you were the one who nominated me, can I just say, “Thank you?” I’d love to give you a hug and speak to you in person, but I can’t. I may never even know who you were, but know this was a great blessing to me.

You can vote for my blog and your other favorites in the other categories once a day through November 18 on multiple devices, so make sure you pop over there to show your favorite blogs how much you love them!

I’ll be honest, writing my weekly updates has not been very exciting for me this year. I’ve been highlighting the best moments, but it has simply been a struggle because we just couldn’t seem to get into our groove. I know there is an adjustment period at the beginning of every year as you begin new levels and challenge your kids in new ways, yet no matter how hard I tried, we seemed to be getting nowhere. After some evaluation and discussion I decided to start our days earlier and consistently, more in line with what we had done in the past. The complete turn-around was quite amazing to behold.

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 27

Grace is finding that learning to read is quite easy, and this week she figured out she could read words in books other than her reading book. How fun it was to have her run up to me and say, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! I just read is!” It is pure joy to see these learning moments with my girls.

Grace was thrilled to have her sisters join her in some of her Little Hands to Heaven activities this week. We talked about how if God takes care of the flowers we can trust He will take care of us. They pretended they were flowers growing through the seasons. It was so sweet for them to join in with her!

 On this day Grace insisted on being Hello Kitty. She’s so funny! Rose also was eager to be teacher this week. She helped Grace with some of her About 3 workbook pages and I think they both enjoyed this quite a bit.

We have very much enjoyed the ABC Bible Verse devotional. I like the questions at the end and the discussions we’ve been able to have. I’m constantly amazed at the depth of understanding even little children can have of deep spiritual truth. Part of this is because they do not question as we grown-ups tend to do. My children are a constant reminder of what child-like faith should really look like.

I love how Little Hearts for His Glory helps me make sure I cover all the typical preschooler skills. Maybe I should know these things intuitively, and sometimes I have already done the suggestions or variations of them, but knowing I have something to make sure I don’t miss anything gives me great peace of mind. This week she spent some time sorting. We used our Nature Blocks to practice sorting. She really enjoyed this!

And here is what my other two sweeties do being so very diligent while I teach Grace! They never even knew I snapped this shot. It is a great blessing to be able to assign my girls’ tasks so I can work with Grace with more focus. I won’t pretend it’s always this easy, but it really is more often than not.

Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 9

Beth adores old-fashioned readers. She zipped through the Dick and Jane reader from her great-grandmother last year and Grandma found a book called Busy Times from Rod and Staff which she is using now. We are still doing the emerging reader’s path, but she really wanted to read with this so I’m letting her. I am using the opportunity to help her with narrating skills.

Beth likes our poetry study each week and really likes putting it in order now. This was not something she liked at first, but now she looks at it like a puzzle. It really is a fun way for her to think about the poetry.

This week I also started working with Beth on learning to write paragraphs this week. She did a great job writing about a classroom rule we have: Always work diligently. She wrote two sentences after her topic sentence and I am very pleased with her work!

She finished up All About Spelling Level 1 this week and is incredibly anxious to move on to level 2! She was actually a bi disappointed when I told her she was going to have to wait until next week.

For history this week we are continuing on with the pilgrims. Rose became really excited when I started explaining the history activity to Beth. “Oh Mommy! I remember that! It was so much fun!” You see, this is my second time through Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory. It makes me really happy Rose remembers things we did from two years ago and remembers enjoying them!

The activity centered around following north, south, east, and west directions to reach a basket of corn. I made out the grid and Rose gave the directions. Both girls had fun and did a great job!

Beth also really, really enjoyed the Bible activity. Just like the pilgrims persevered building a new life for themselves in North America, Nehemiah also persevered in rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem in spite of obstacles and individuals trying to stop them. We played a game where Beth would build a wall, three blocks high. I would slap the floor 10 times and start tearing down the wall until she made a trumpeting sound. We played until she was able to build the entire wall. We talked about how much harder it was to build this way and how much perseverance Nehemiah and the Israelites must have had.

Here I am drawing the grid for the map activity. Silly Beth grabbed my camera to take a shot of me writing. She loves photography and wanted to take some shots like I always take of her!

Preparing Hearts for His Glory: Unit 5

We are officially full-speed! Yay!!!!! It took a while, but with our minor scheduling change we breezed through unit 5 at full-speed. This made Rose incredibly happy because she has been complaining we aren’t doing enough history each day! She is really enjoying Draw and Write Through History.

Here is her picture of a pyramid. My little artist really loves this! I especially like how she gave the sky a sunset look.

Rose is now working on three paragraph writing assignments. This week her topic was about uncommon weather events. She wrote about a couple of years ago when it snowed. She is now very intent on seeing snow this year. Our area of the south is hit or miss, so I’m hoping she’s right!

Rose was so happy to be reading Grandfather’s Box once again. She is doing really well with her narrations as well. I have to admit I was pretty excited as well. This is such a great addition to our history and I understand why she is so excited!

Rose really showed patience with her sisters. I appreciate giving her opportunities to help teach them. I don’t do this often, but I may let her help out a little more as it seems to be something at which she is quite good.

So, overall, an excellent week. I can’t wait to write the post about our art projects! They turned out beautiful!

We were doing so well…just so so good! We were on track, everyone was having fun…it was fabulous!

And then the fevers started on Tuesday…sigh.

So what did I learn? For all my good intentions, for all my planning, life still happens. And it is okay. Grace for every moment is how I try to live. I used to get really frustrated when we got off, but this past year has taught me so much about leaving room for life and being flexible.

Unfortunately because of their fevers the girls have not been able to spend as much time with Diego as they usually do. He is our sweet neighbor who is currently battling cancer. Click here to read more about his story.

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 24

We’re getting really close to finishing up the About 3 series from Rod and Staff. I have loved these books for helping her fine motor skills. They are age appropriate for preschoolers ready to learn to write. They progress well from the beginning to end of the four book set and they are inexpensive. Grace loves these too and will even go back and do the pages again.

Grace’s favorite new show is Peg Plus Cat on PBS. It’s a funny little show and she was thrilled to find a game online she could play!

Beth was the first to succumb to the fever of the week, which started the evening after these pictures. She’s so very easy to teach. She may sometimes ask if she has to do work, but when I say, “Yes,” she goes right to it with a good attitude. She is also often the first one to have her school books out on the table. (…Or on the living room floor!)

She very happy to move on in her cursive book. She loves the artistic aspect to what we’re using now from Classical Conversations. I’ve encouraged her to be more careful and take her time using her colored pencils for the fine details. I’ve told her it is better to take a break and come back to it if she gets tired of coloring than to just scribble. This seemed to be an incredible revelation to her and she is much more willing to do fine detailed work now.

Life of Fred continues to delight and we finished up with our 3 times tables. Next week will be review of 0-3, which I anticipate going very well. Rose started Butterflies from the Life of Fred and is happy to be moving on through this new book. She’s already on chapter 5!

Rose was also excited to get back to history and continue on with her notebooking pages. She has loved history so much! I understand now why so many on the official Heart of Dakota message board rave about how Preparing is their favorite guide. We are also looking to start full-speed next week. We did the last two days of the week at full-speed and it went very well! I just have to include several short breaks and be willing to do some work after lunch if needed. 

Playing Kids of Catan with Grammy and Grampy. This was actually the previous week, but it was fun!

Beth lost her 2nd top front tooth. Now we’re working on learning All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth. If it goes well I’m sure you’ll get to hear it!

And of course the sickness. Poor sweet Beth got the worst of it and has a fever which keeps spiking throughout the day and night. Her sisters tried to make her feel better by surrounding her with their favorite stuffed animals. Poor thing…she felt so bad, but gave me a sweet smile in this picture anyway!

We had a good week! Everyone was more focused, especially Grace, which made learning so much easier for all of us. We started off the week with a field trip. It was actually a kids concert on Sunday evening before our week actually started, but I’m including it for this week. We had a great time with Mrs. Kate! Check out the post to see just how much fun!

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 24

Like I said before Grace was much more cooperative this week when it came to lessons. She is very happy to do her work, especially her reading lessons. She has caught on much more quickly to reading than I expected. All my girls were reading at about a 1st grade level before they turned 5. Grace didn’t beg to read the way her sisters did because she was convinced she already knew! Now that we’re almost 20 lessons into Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (I’ve used this for all of them) she has really caught on well. She can already sound out words without any trouble as long as they include letters she has learned.

I’ve really enjoyed using the ABC Bible Verse devotionals each week with her this year. This is one book I never had with the set and I purchased it used this summer. Grace really likes the little stories that go along with the verses. It uses KJV which we don’t usually use, but I’m not absolutely opposed to either. I love the flexibility of HOD and being able to use whatever version I prefer!

Grace finished up capital F in Fundanoodle. I really wish I’d found this handwriting curriculum for my other two. She loves getting to put the sticker at the bottom of each page. Her handwriting is really good for a just-turned-four-year-old! Although she isn’t consistent, about 1 in every 6 letters looks amazing well-written. She also is easy because she doesn’t get frustrated that it isn’t perfect yet.

Beth read Buffalo Bill this week. Sometimes she read aloud to Grace who absolutely loved the story! Beth loves reading. I’m so blessed to have bookworms!  

One of my favorite aspects of the Heart of Dakota Curriculum is the early integration of poetry. The first two guides uses rhyme and poetry to teach, so by the time the third guide comes around they are very ready to listen to classic poems and think about what they mean. One of Beth’s favorite part of poetry is making motions that go along with words! She is just so sweet!

Beth’s handwriting has suddenly matured! I am not using the traditional copywork with her because we have a lot of handwriting each day through All About Spelling, her HOD spelling, and the journal activities we have recently begun. You can see at the top of this page where I showed her how to write a small r, but usually this is just a reminder because she likes to write them fancy. She’s also working on learning cursive so she sometimes likes to try to curly-cue her print letters.

Preparing has been such a fun guide and we’re only 4 units in! There is so much solid material here and we’re really enjoying it. We are unashamedly believers in a literal Genesis account of creation and I appreciate that Heart of Dakota falls in line with our beliefs. Rose loves the history and so do I! The last three guides have had a sweeping view of history from the explorers to early America. I have enjoyed starting at the beginning with Rose and seeing how Scripture is right in line with history. 

 Ahhh vocabulary…Rose really doesn’t like this part for some reason although this week has been easier than the others. I’m currently only having her do 3 of the 5 words, but I’m planning to have her up to all 5 by January. I’m also hoping we’ll be full-speed by January, but if we take this guide for 2 years I’m okay with that. Math and English will remain on course no matter what. 

We’re half-way through All About Spelling Level 3 and I’m seeing wonderful application beyond our lessons now. As I remind her to proof-read she will break down the words she has written into their individual phonemes and figure out on her own the correction. I’ve also caught her mumbling some of the All About Spelling rules under her breath. “This letter has to be doubled to protect the short vowel.” It is so wonderful to see a curriculum cross into life application! 

Poetry is one of my favorite parts of the unit! We’re studying poems all by Robert Louis Stevenson this year, one of my favorite poets and authors! I love that as we are studying the poems we also learn a little bit about the poet’s life. 

Oh my voracious reader! This picture was actually taken after our lessons for the day were over and I caught her reading her book for literature because she just had to read one more chapter! I struggle to get her to pace the books we read so I can discuss them with her, but I can’t really complain. I’d much rather see this than have rolling eyes when I mention literature!

We won’t have too many more days when the ice cream truck will come through the neighborhood. We usually do this once or twice in the summer, but this time the girls decided they wanted to use their money so Daddy took them down. This was a fun mid-week break in routine!

Grace turned 4 on Friday! She’s so very grown up. Her favorite gift was a digital camera. Her older sisters each got a camera at 4 and she’s been anxiously awaiting her turn. She already knew how to use it because Rose has been teaching her with her own camera. She took over 200 pictures on the first day! We enjoyed spending the day with my parents, especially since my mom shares a birthday with my littlest sweetheart! It is so special that they have this special bond. 

Another week has come and gone. We read, we calculated, we learned. Maybe this should be our mantra!

Little Hands to Heaven: Sigh…

That’s all I’ve got: a sigh. Grace is almost four and she’s been testing me in a lot of areas. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to do school, there were just other things which needed attention this week! We didn’t really go through a terrible twos or threes. She of course tested us, but not to the extent her older sisters did at that age. This week there was a lot of time spent seeing if Mommy and Daddy really mean what they say.

She’s spent a long time at the kitchen table after refusing to eat the very thing she asked for breakfast just minutes before and time in her room for being sassy with her responses to me. She’s told me she’s mad at me for making her lay down for her nap and yelled at her sisters for not doing what she told them to do. It’s tough being almost-four! Although at the moment I think it is tougher being the mommy of this almost-four-year-old!

We did manage to get a few reading lessons in and she enjoyed some more time on the computer using Reading Kingdom and a handful of other learning games. I’m hoping this week will go better since Friday she seemed to be quite cooperative.

Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 6

I think I am enjoying Beyond Little Hearts as much as Beth! This is my second time going through the guide, but the first time was with Rose during our first year of homeschooling. I had a hard time enjoying and appreciating it then because I felt such pressure. I’m really having fun with all the history readings and activities.

She did a “scrubbing day” just like the ladies in Holland did and she really enjoyed it. She scrubbed our stove completely and now it is shining!

The poem we studied was about the months of the year. She really enjoyed putting the poem in the correct order and showing off her knowledge of the months!

She is really enjoying her timeline now! At first she was so nervous about being able to do it correctly, but now she just goes right ahead. I usually write it out for her on another piece of paper so she can see just how to space it and to give her a sample of the picture.

For grammar this week we looked at question words. She was supposed to draw a question word from the pile and ask a question starting with the word about what I had hidden in a bag so she could figure it out. 
She picked “what”. 
Her question?
“What is in the bag?” 
Well played little girl. Well played.

Preparing Hearts for His Glory: Unit 3 (2nd half)
Rose finished up the second half of unit 3 in Preparing this week and begged me to start going full-speed because she just couldn’t handle not reading more for history! I explained part of the reason we were still going half-speed was because it was taking her so very long to do her work each day and honestly to even get started! We’re doing at least one more 1/2 speed unit and we’ll see how it goes.

Math is finally going really well. I found a wonderfully large pdf collection of math fact pages for her so she doesn’t have to copy the problems while she’s learning the facts. While addition facts seemed to take forever, this is going much better! I’m not sure the difference, but at the moment she is flying through her times tables! Click on the picture to the left to see the website. I happened to stumble upon it one day and I’m so very glad I did!

This is the newest book we’re reviewing for the TOS Review Crew. I seriously can’t tear her away from this! She loves this novel and has been taking it with her everywhere she goes. She very much takes after her mother and both of her grandmothers. I am just thrilled to watch her world open up as she continues to devour great literature!

Rose once detested spelling. She now loves it and actually asks to do spelling. We follow the HOD suggestion for dictation twice a week and do a unit from All About Spelling twice a week. I really believe both methods have improved her spelling and am grateful for the change in her attitude this year. She doesn’t always get everything right the first time, but she now has the skills to make corrections without me just having to tell her how it is spelled. She has also started proofreading her own writing better and checking herself for mistakes. Yay! 

We are studying a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson during each unit this year. She is supposed to share the poem in a special way so she rewrote Rain using the quill pen she got from Williamsburg. She’s getting pretty good at it although she does have to make lots of cross-throughs and corrections! 

I’m hosting another wonderful giveaway from Applewood Books through this coming Friday. Make sure you take a minute to enter by click on the link! The choice for the winner is going to be difficult. We loved all four books so much!

We had the chance to have two field trips in one at the end of this week! Take some time to read my review of the Children’s Museum of Alamance County…

…and the Art of Brick exhibit hosted by the Alamance County Arts Council.