Tag: Weekly Review

Weekly Review: November 12-16

Grace-Filled Writer

First off…did you see my review of these great Bananagrams games? The giveaway I hosted is over, but you can still see what these games are like by reading the review.

Second of all…is a laminator on your Christmas wish-list? If so, check out my review of the Purple Cow Laminator from MyBinding.Com!
Lastly…come get a glimpse of a less than spectacular moment in our home. I’d love to tell you everything is all sunshine and roses around here, but let’s be honest…anyone who feeds you that line about their family isn’t being completely truthful. While being a stay-at-home-mom and homeschooling are both God-given callings and a true joy for me, there are a lot of moments which would be easy to ignore and pretend to everyone on the outside they didn’t happen. The beautiful thing about these moments is God usually teaches me through them. Some come on over to Vintage Womanhood. This is my creative outlet for sharing the things God is teaching me through my family, particularly being a mommy.  
And now on to our week in review…which I have to preface with the horrible news: The flash on my less-than-a-year-old camera sparked and exploded on our lovely trip to the zoo last week! I’ve been very frustrated not having my camera this week, but was grateful we saved our old one, even though it has some issues. I do have a few pictures though. Pardon all the red-eye. (I’m so spoiled with my new camera!)

So, without further ado…

Little Hands to Heaven: Week Off
Little Miss Grace has been working so hard at her lessons I decided she could use a little break this week. She was very good, much better than I expected really because she’s always crying about not having enough “work” during lesson time!

I changed her schedule up a bit and schooled my older girls separately so they got to have some one-on-one play-time with their little sister this week. That was a fabulous idea! At the end of the week family came for a visit so we had a houseful! This picture isn’t even everyone who is here either!

Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 14

Beth had a great week. She was so very focused and worked so very hard. She also played really well with her sister which all by itself made the week fabulous!

This week we studied several of Jesus’ parables. She enjoyed acting out the parable of the prodigal son with Little People. I tried something different with the Good Samaritan story. I knew she knew it, so instead of telling it to her I had her tell it to me. It was a really fun way to review something very familiar. My little girl is a storyteller too so it was incredibly entertaining!

She insisted on writing her spelling words using just one line on the notebook paper just like her big sister. I am amazed at how much her handwriting has improved in the last few months. She tries so hard and typically gets very frustrated when it isn’t he way she wants it to be! I really was surprised at how good his was!

She continues to excel in math and reading. I love how homeschooling allows her to work at her own pace!

Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 15
If you follow my updates you may have noticed a weird jump from unit 12 last week to unit 15 this week. I have no explanation for this. I didn’t even realize I’d skipped two entire units until Thursday morning. I’m taking next week off and will be debating on whether I should go back or not. I may just hit some highlights because at this point I’d rather keep moving ahead!

I really like that Rose is able to complete her vocabulary mostly independently. She was frustrated with the dictionary when we first started using it, but now she has it figured out. She likes looking things up on her own. When she gets stuck she just asks me to help her find the page so she can still find the word. Using the vocabulary sheets I created really helps this a lot. Hopefully one day I’ll get that uploaded for your own use!

We also celebrated completing level 2 for All About Spelling!!!! I really love this program and can’t say enough good things about it! Way to go Grace! We start level 3 after Thanksgiving.

My girls completed their reading goals for the month of October and so we let them get their free Book-It pizza’s from Pizza Hut! I used this program when I was in grade school and I’m glad they include homeschoolers. The girls chose olives and mushrooms for their toppings and shared their free pizza with their little sister. Way to go Rose and Beth!

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. My Rose made this video when she was in kindergarten and I love watching it every year. Such a wonderful reminder from Scripture about thankfulness!

Weekly Review: November 5th-9th

Grace-Filled Writer

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

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

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 10

Grace has beautiful pencil grip! I’d love to take credit, but it’s all her. I do have to remind her to hold it lower down sometimes, but I only do that because she is frustrated that she can’t control her pencil the way she wants to. 
There were several highlights this week for Grace. She completed her first Rod and Staff About 3 Book and moved on to level B, which made her so happy. She has not been happy that I am making her go in order in these books, but they are designed to build upon one another in skills so there isn’t another way to use them. 

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

113391: Josh and the Big Wall (reissue) DVD

Josh and the Big Wall (reissue) DVD

She went to get her Bible to match the pictures in her story with what was happening in the movie!
Her favorite activity was building and crashing the wall down! She counted to 7 as she went round and round! She wanted to clean up as soon as she finished crashing the wall! 
The highlight for me was when we reviewed. She did such a great job remembering her letters, their sounds, and the finger play we do with each one! She has changed B from “B-B-Boat” to “B-B-Baby in the basket” after our time spent with Moses. I was pleased she remembered the same beginning sounds in the words! I was also happy to see how the hand motions triggered her memory for the correct sound…just like they are supposed to. Check out the video to see Grace in all her cute glory! 
Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 13

Since Beth is flying ahead in math I decided to go ahead and work with her on a new concept this week: greater than / less than. I drew a greater than and less than symbol on each side of an index card and drew eyes and monster teeth onto it. Then I gave her two sets of frogs in two different colors. She would place the smaller amount on point and the greater amount by the mouth of the monster. 
Beth loved doing this each day. By Thursday she insisted that the monster only liked purple and pink frogs and that he was very, very hungry! 
She also really enjoyed reading in her science text book this week. She liked finding out about snowflakes. I never knew that every snowflake had six sides. I love how I am learning alongside my girls! Beth insisted on counting the snowflake in the book just to make sure they got it right! 

Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 12

I will admit that I have been pleasantly surprised at how much Rose enjoys working on her grammar. She sees it sort of like a puzzle she has to figure out. We do the majority of the lesson orally and then she has a little written work. I’ve also added in the Grammar Jingles from Shurley English. I did not care for the majority of the grammar program, but I did like the jingles! There is a song for the various parts of speech, how to build a sentence, and much more. This week we’ve been working on pronouns.
We began studying George Washington this week. One day we studied rules for dealing with others in public which he complied at age 14. She was pleased to find out that she already does 5 of the 8 and chose to work on this rule for the week: 


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

Rose did quite well working on this throughout the week!



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

Don’t forget to check out this giveaway I’m sure you’ll go bananas over it! 

Weekly Review: October 29 – November 2

Grace-Filled Writer

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

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


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

I am so blessed to have such a supportive husband who not only is 100% on board with homeschooling, he also willingly teaching the younger girls on Friday while I go teach at Deerstream Learning Center. I’ve mentioned this before, but I finally had the chance to snap a picture this week!
Now on to our week….
Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 9
This week Grace continued studying about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. She kept wanting to skip ahead and read the stories she wanted to, but we were able to get through all the stories for the week without minimal hullabaloo.
She counted to 10 using stickers and surprised me with how straight her lines were on her matching worksheets. I continue to love Rod and Staff’s About 3 series for her! When we started these books back in August she didn’t quite grasp the concept of matching and I had to hold her hand to help her draw straight lines. In only three months, completing about four pages a week, she is now able to match and draw the lines all on her own. Watching her learn has been so much fun! 
Her favorite activity by far during the week was when her sisters helped her build a tabernacle. I love that after they were done they wanted to play with the tabernacle. After all, Little People need a place to worship God too, right? I have no idea what Grace is doing in this picture. She’s quite a ham! 

Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 12
Beth continued on studying the life of Christ in history. This week we focused on several of the miracles Jesus performed. We reviews five different Bible verses she has already studied and she was incredibly proud to still remember them all. We also continued working on the months of the year. By the end of the week Beth could say them all in order and was quite pleased with herself.
What was the highlight of Beth’s week? A new math book! Since Rose struggled last year in 1st grade with Singapore we decided to go with a more traditional math program. Rod and Staff math has been a great fit so far for Rose so we decided to move Beth into this as well once she finished her kindergarten Singapore math book. She started the 1st grade book this week and couldn’t get enough!
(Read my review of Singapore vs. Rod and Staff here!)
Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 11
Rose loves homeschooling. The other night she prayed and thanked God that He allowed us to homeschool. Isn’t that what every one of us on this journey wants to hear? I know she meant it, but I also know there will be times she may not feel this way in the future, so I wanted to make sure I recorded it for a later date when I need some encouragement! 
This week in history we talked about the slave trade. I’m not sure she was aware of slavery before this lesson. She seemed rightfully appalled when I explained it. Then she asked if there still was slavery. I explained there wasn’t slavery anymore in America…then she asked about the rest of the world. How do I explain to my innocent daughter that there is still such great evil in our world? I did so gently without much detail, but I realized that as she grows up there will be many moment like this when small bit of her innocence is chipped away. 
She really enjoyed learning the three main climate zones: Polar, Temperate, and Tropical. She took her small toy and hopped her around the globe. The activity first asked for me to point to a zone and she would act comfortable, warm, or cold…however she seemed a little self-conscious about this so we chose a different approach. I loved the voice she gave her little character when she said, “Oh my! It’s so cold here!”

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

I had one more highlight of the week…the girls listened to The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe audio drama by Focus on the Family. Watching them experience this great literature for the first time is something I’ll never forget. I expected Rose to really enjoy it, but I was pleasantly surprised for the younger two to also get really excited! They’ve been playing Narnia all week long. How exciting to see my girls so in love with such great literature! 
75031: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - Focus on the Family Radio Theatre audiodrama on CD
 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – Focus on the Family Radio Theatre audiodrama on CD

Weekly Review: October 22-26

Grace-Filled Writer

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

This week  we learned about the parting of the Red Sea, the birth of Jesus, John Audubon and more about Benjamin Franklin. One of the great things about using three different curriculum guides for my girls is we experience so much more. We do all of our schooling together so even though at any given moment the girls are working on various assignments, they are still absorbing so much of what their sisters are learning! We also completed our art once again! (Yay me!) The link for that post is at the bottom of the page.
Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 8
Grace remembered so very much about Moses from last week! This really pleased me because she just recently turned three and I know her ability to retain information is still growing. Every time we read more about Moses she would say, “That’s the baby in the basket!” 
With this preschool program I find my sweet Grace learning things I know I would neglect without it! One of those is simple preschool math concepts. She can already count to 15 (or 20 on a good day) and recognizes her numbers up to 10, but something I hadn’t though to teach her yet was the the concept of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. She brought in her collection of cars (You may notice we use these a lot during our learning time!) She loved moving Lightening McQueen into first place. What a fun little game to learn this concept!
She also wanted to work on math this week like her big sisters, so we pulled out a math workbook our neighbor gave her for her birthday. Since it was money and time I wasn’t really sure what she would do with it. I gave her a variety of coins and she enjoyed matching them to the page. It’s great to see how even small things capture Grace’s attention and help her learn at the same time! 
Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 11
Beth’s reading has blossomed so much! She’s moved on to the 1st grade curriculum already and often asks to read her history aloud rather than just listening to it. She is a natural reader and retains any new concepts she learns very well. She was especially interested in reading this week’s history since it was about Jesus’ birth. 
This week we also learned the months of the year in order. She remembers them all for the most part, but we’ll be reviewing those again next week. 
We have finally reached a math concept I actually had to teach my smart little girl…counting by 10’s! She had the right idea, but we practiced a lot so she could get comfortable. We also started learning about money and used dimes to count by 10’s. She really liked this! 
I’m expecting the 1st grade level of Rod and Staff in the mail this week. I’m looking forward to this because Beth really loves math, but always wants to do more. With Rod and Staff she’ll get the more she’s craving without learning too many concepts too quickly.
Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 10 
Rose is now reading all of her history and science on her own. The passages are meant to be read aloud, but she enjoys reading on her own rather than having to wait for me to finish with her sisters. Since she is reading 5th grade level books for fun, I don’t see anything wrong with this. She also tends to comprehend better when she reads the selections herself.

She will soon finish up the second grade Abeka readers we have. I am pleased with the progress in reading comprehension. My plans are to move her to more formal literature studies after this. I also have a variety of second grade literature books given to me by a retired teacher. She is really looking forward to this change!
We have been studying Benjamin Franklin for both history and science and this week moved on to learning about John Audubon as well. I’m very excited about this study. I have a good friend who has an original Audubon painting in her home. I didn’t know this until I mentioned a few months ago that we would be studying him as part of our science this year. She became very excited and told me to make sure to come over at the end of the unit so my girls could see the painting. I’m really looking forward to this!

Rose is definitely spoiling me with her independence. I will have to remember that my daughters coming up may not be quite so ready to do as much work on their own at this age! She is thoroughly enjoying looking words up in her dictionary, writing the sentences, and drawing pictures. It took some time for her to learn how to look up words in the dictionary, but this week she didn’t need to ask for help at all. 
Here is a link to the promised art projects!  I hope your week was as smooth as ours. I’m so grateful for our established routine. This is what keeps us all on task and sane throughout the week! The girls are so used to things now that if I get busy cleaning up in the kitchen after breakfast they will start working on school without me even in the room. For us, routine is what gives us freedom. We have the structure and get done in a timely way so the afternoons are more free to do other things. I wasn’t sure how running three guides would go, and the first few weeks weren’t so easy, but I’m so glad I stuck with it. 

Friday Art Projects: October 26

Grace-Filled Writer

Our art projects went really well this week. Really, really well! I guess my assessment that doing more art projects would be good for my girls even if it isn’t something I’m very good at! This week they all three waited patiently while I prepared the projects, gave individual directions, and took pictures. They all three had a good time as well!

Rose’s project this week is still in progress. We’ve been studying Benjamin Franklin and several of his experiments, including the famous kite experiment. After I made 2 inch strips on her painting paper she created a rainbow colored kite by mixing primary colors. It turned out beautifully!

Beth’s collage of children cut from magazines was inspired by this week’s Bible verse, Matthew 2:52 which says, “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” She chose pictures of children in all different stages of life. She really got into cutting these out!

Finally is Grace’s art! I think she had my favorite project of the week. First I helped her tape the center portion of a piece of photo paper. Then I drew fish using sharpie markers. She asked for an octopus even though I’m not certain there are any in the Red Sea! There is also a yellow shark with teeth, but it’s hard to see. Finally she used blue and purple water colors on the page for the water. We removed the tape so the Israelites could walk on dry land. After it dries I’m going to let her use some Little People to act it out!

I think one of my favorite moments of our art projects was with Rose. I explained the project and she said, “How does this go with what we learned this week?” One of the great things about Heart of Dakota is that all science, art, history, story times, and Bible are tied in so they correlate together. Even at her young age of 7 she is recognizing the connections!

Week in Review: October 15-19

Grace-Filled Writer
We had a wonderful week and all enjoyed the cool turn in the weather. Fall is here and so are the days of pumpkins, leaf jumping, and apple recipes. Try my recipe for Friendly Neighbor Caramel Apple Ice Cream Bowls for a yummy treat! 

And now on to our school week! 
It has taken a few weeks but we seem to have our routine running three guides well in hand. I’m not going to claim every day runs perfectly, but some of the earlier kinks have smoothed out. One of those kinks was keeping Grace occupied, content, and quiet during school time for her older sisters. 
Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 7
Grace knows which books are hers and always pulls out her Bible first. She never tires of reading the stories and is improving on her ability to retain what I read to her. If I ask her a question she says, “I don’t know that. Read it again Mama,” and I happily oblige. This week we learned all about Moses. She really loved the story about Moses in the river and wanted to read that one over and over.

She continues to enjoy her About Three Rod and Staff books and does so well tracing. I am also pleased to see how well she holds her pencil. I tried giving her a pencil grip, but she seems to do better just holding it on her own. I may have to remind her to hold it lower, but overall she does great on her own.

One of the activities I’ve found Grace loves to do is sorting. She’ll sort alphabet tiles, erasers, colored beads…anything! She is so very pleased with herself when she can organize these little doo-dads into jars or compartments. I’m happy to indulge this little sweetheart! 
Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 10

Beth is so easy to teach! She loves school and gets frustrated with me when I won’t let her keep going! I don’t want to rush her too quickly through this guide, but I am allowing her to move a little more quickly through her math book. I have tried slowing her down some so I can make sure she is mastering concepts like time, money, and the calendar. 

She also really enjoys  spelling. We’re working on handwriting, but she is so pleased with herself when she is able to spell words all on her own. One of the things I enjoy most about homeschooling is being there to see the joy and satisfaction my girls feel as they learn something new. I love being my girls’ teacher! 
Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 9
We really love Bigger Hearts! Rose has completed the three previous guides from Heart of Dakota and each one gets better. She is learning so many new academic skills including research, vocabulary, diagramming  and narration. Narration is basically retelling information in her own words. Think of it like summary on a higher level with more emphasis put on making it sound like a story. Our history and science are meant to be read aloud, but since she is reading on a 5th grade level and asked to read it on her own, I allow her to. Sometimes we take turns. Some days I still read it all. We still discuss the material together afterwards  but I’m glad she enjoys doing this independently.
This week Rose learned how to do carry addition in math. She was so excited and found it very easy to do. The only hang-up we had was that she tends to charge ahead without waiting for me to teach her a new concept. She had to go back and redo the first section, but she just laughed about it instead of getting frustrated for having to redo the section, which surprised me! 
One new skill we’re working on this year is expository writing. I want to make sure Rose learns how to write well so starting this year we are working with a writing curriculum published by Scholastic called Grade 2 Writing Curriculum: Week-by-Week Lessons. I have been very pleased how it has taught her how to think through an idea, sequence her sentences, and create appropriate introduction and concluding sentences. I feel this has been a great introduction to formal writing for her this year. Rose has completed 8 of these assignments and her writing improves each time! Her favorite part is the typing and now she is anxious to learn how to type formally. Maybe in a couple of years!
Happy Fall everyone! I hope you all have as much fun as we are this season! 

Friday Art Projects: October 19

Grace-Filled Writer

So…I’ve been a little slack with art lately…okay, a lot slack! But we’re back at it again this week! The girls always enjoy it and I have high expectations of their projects, but today I realized what my hang-up about art is: They don’t like to listen to the directions. This really gets at me. I don’t expect their projects to be perfect and I never try to take over, but I do want them to listen. My girls are used to random art at home, not art with a purpose. So what is the cure? More regular art, right? Hopefully you’ll see an improvement on my part in this area!

Grace: Little Hands to Heaven Unit 7 ~ Moses in the Bulrushes


Beth: Little Hearts for His Glory Unit 10: Three Men in a Furnace + One






















Rose: Bigger Hearts for His Glory Unit 9 ~ Initial Potato Prints


Weekly Update: September 10-14

Grace-Filled Writer

First of all…don’t forget about my All About Spelling giveaway! If you haven’t entered you still have plenty of time! Heart of Dakota uses dictation as the primary learning tool for spelling and we have chosen to add in All About Spelling because of the rule oriented nature of my oldest daughter. The balance of the two has improved her spelling on so many levels!

You can read my review and enter here! (And spread the word!)

Now on to our week in review…

Deerstream Learning Center

This week we got down back to our regular, full-time schedule including Deerstream Learning Center. I teach Junior Division English which includes literature and writing. I started teaching at Deerstream before we were homeschooling and it feels like my dream job! The picture is from 2 years ago, but that’s me teaching my wonderful students on the left! The video is a promo for my class. I’ve been a little shy to share it, but here it is!


Rose is in the 6/7 year-old class with Mrs. Smith this year. She has so much fun and is excited to see her friends again! Her favorite activity of the week wasShe also made a poster this week all about the things she loves and I learned even more about my daughter. I am so grateful for Deerstream. It feels like the last piece of our homeschool puzzle which makes everything else just fit right!



Little Hands to Heaven
This week didn’t go quite as planned. I found it very hard to keep all the plates balanced, so school didn’t happen exactly as planned for little Grace! But we did do some fun things together, like sorting colored frogs I found in the dollar bin at Target a couple of months ago!

She enjoyed reading books with her sisters and we made it to story time at the library for the first time in months! She chose three books and Beth read them all to her as soon as they got home!

I used another fun Target dollar bin find for a little game! Every year they have pocket charts of various colors. They are a mini version, but great for manipulatives! I have a set of matching alphabet cards (Thanks Grammy and Grampy!) I’ve used with all three girls. I put one set in the pockets and Grace matched up what was left. She had a lot of fun with this!

Little Hearts for His Glory
We finished unit 6 this week! Beth also had her yearly check-up at the doctor this week. Ouch for shots! But she was brave and did really well!

Unit 6 was a lot of fun filled with a lot of fun! The poem was a hit as always. She snuck into Jericho, climbed up the wall, and walked around to make the walls fall down all to the tune of Row, Row, Your Boat. She loved all the weekly activities and did very well with Daddy taking over the teaching on Monday. One thing I love about Heart of Dakota. My husband can take over the teaching while I go and teach once a week. It truly is open-and-go in its best form!

She also practiced putting letters into ABC order for spelling lessons. She loves this! The only trouble was when I mixed up the letters and some got upside down. I was very seriously informed I should know better!

Something new I started 2 weeks ago was having her write words on her own word wall. A retired teacher friend was cleaning out her teacher stuff and gave me these great word wall folders! We’ve been finding words each week for a specific letter. She chooses all the words to put on her word wall, and Beth really enjoys going on a word hunt in her books. Sometimes she gets so caught up reading the book she forgets to look for words!

Lastly is a little teaser for a fun giveaway coming in about two weeks. It’s great and my girl had a blast playing this sight word game! I love she sees learning as fun!

I know you can’t wait for this giveaway!

Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 5
Full speed is beautiful! Even with our added co-op full speed is definitely where Rose is at! The only part of the day she really doesn’t like is cursive practice. It isn’t that she dislikes it, she just likes everything to be perfect and she’s still learning this skill, so it sometimes frustrates her.

Heart of Dakota follows a Charlotte Mason style of learning which incorporates living books and teaches students how to narrate. This has been a new way or learning for both of us, but I think we’re finally getting the hang of it. This week she also did very well with her vocabulary assignment! This is another area she has complained some and it was good to see her complete the activity and have a little fun at the same time!

Science is always Rose’s favorite. I considered not doing extra science this year because it is covered so very well at Deerstream, but she loves it so much we went ahead! This week she was learning about vertebrates at the beginning of the week. Then we moved on to science which centers around life in colonial America. She learned about the spreading of germs and why it’s important to wash our hands!

We finally got around to doing some art projects this week. (Don’t judge!) Scroll down to see that post! Overall it has been a great week!

Weekly Update: September 3-7

Grace-Filled Writer

After 3 weeks of being off our routine because of vacation and sickness it was good to be back to our normal days. I took lots of pictures and thankfully the girls were in a mood to be photographed!

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 4
Sweet little Grace loves her daily work so much she begs for more every day! She loves everything we do and is just sad when it’s over for the day!

One of her favorite activities was “meeting” and greeting her favorite stuffed animal, Hoppy. She had so much fun asking Hoppy questions and answering Hoppy’s questions to her.

She also loves her workbooks! They are a set from Rod and Staff called About Three. She loves these and they are teaching her to draw straight lines, matching, and same and different. They will become progressively difficult as she goes through all four books. She wants to do them all right now and it has been hard for her to hear that she has to wait!

Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 5
Beth is already growing more mature as we move into a more regular routine. She works so studiously and seems to enjoy all that we do! I do have to remember to give her more breaks because it’s easy for me to just forge ahead without them! Reading anything and everything is her favorite thing to do! Here she is reading one of our favorite stories: The Best Nest.
She is progressing well with spelling too! Beth has mastered all of the basic phonemes in All About Spelling and we have moved on to segmenting words by each sound. She caught on so quickly! She once again loved her poem! She learned about the 10 plagues and 10 Commandments. She wasn’t so interested in actually learning about the specifics of those things, but she REALLY loved poem! Math is still a favorite subject and it’s been very hard to tell her we have to stop for the day! I’m basically letting her go at her own speed and we’ll just move on to 1st grade math a little early and maybe go half speed with that for a while. Over all I am just so pleased to see how grown up Beth has become!

Bigger Hearts for His Glory

Rose studied the poem, “The Arrow,” by Richard Henry Stoddard this week. I was pleasantly surprised by her insights into the poem. She is still very young and needs help guiding her thinking about what the poems we study mean, but this week she was able to catch the message more than before. Just for fun she practiced her archery skills after we worked on the poem the first day.

Creating the Pocahontas acrostic was a highlight of the week for both of us. Rose really enjoyed Pocahontas and understood now why we had chosen not to watch the cartoon version. She agreed that she wanted to learn the true story about her and was so excited to know that one day she’ll get to meet Pocahontas in heaven!

I’m learning more to use the white board for teaching. It was good for her to be able to brainstorm her ideas and then write them on paper rather than trying to do both at the same time.

We also tried out full speed this week. Everything went so beautifully! We started our schooling around 7:30, took a 30 minute break at 9:00 and was finished by 10:00 most of the days. She loves learning and doesn’t need a lot of breaks so for now this schedule is working for us!

Overall our week was great for school! Our only snags came with getting along when we weren’t schooling. It would be nice if our kids got along all the time, but then I remember my days as a full time teacher and how the kids rarely all got along. I try to give them each some attention from me individually as well as some time alone. They don’t always like the idea of alone time, but it really is good for them to be apart from one another.

Next week start Deerstream Learning Center and our full school-year schedule will be in place. It will be busy, but good!

Weekly Update: August 20-24

Grace-Filled Writer

Well…life happens, right? My girls got to spend the previous week in Florida with their grandparents and two of them came back with colds. Then they graciously shared those germs with me! So needless to say, I wasn’t at the top of my teaching game! We got through the week and the girls learned, it was just a little less exciting than normal.

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 3

We completed three days of unit three and will finish the unit this week. I’m still trying to tweak how we do this program. I’m not trying to rush through it, but our schedule makes it easier to only teach it three days a week. I’ve tried squeezing all 5 days into 3, which was doable, but not as much fun. This week was much better, so we’ll see how it goes.

Grace is really enjoying the rhymes which teach about our Bible story as well as reinforce letter sounds. Her other favorite thing is the Bible story. She enjoyed counting the stars on the page with Abraham over and over again!

Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 4
Beth did not ask one time this week why she couldn’t go to school for kindergarten and I’m so happy! I hate for her to feel like she is missing out on something, but we know this is the right thing for all of us during this season. Next year she’ll get to be in a class at Deerstream Learning Center where her big sister attends and which is something to look forward to.

She continues to amaze me with how quickly she picks up on reading. We are working with a 1st grade phonics curriculum now and she is breezing through. Even though it is easy, I feel the reinforcement is necesessary to cement some of this in her mind. Her favorite part is still reading Dick and Jane. I would love to get her some more of these, but they are so expensive because of their value.

Math is also an easy subject for her, probably from listening in on her sister’s math lesson last year, but we have finally reached something new in her math book! Place Values. I was all prepared with our manipulatives, but forgot to snap a picture. I picked up some little erasers from the dollar bin at Target which were perfect for sorting. groups of 10. This picture is from an earlier lesson when she was counting. I’m also excited to see how nicely her handwriting is coming along!

Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 3
This week was a lot of fun for Rose. She really loves science and it was our week to work on science! I’m going to try full speed next week for her because we are finishing so fast. I’m glad we started at half speed, but now that she is back into school mode she is working quickly now.

One of her many talents is drawing and she is really enjoying the notebooking assignments. This week she drew pictures of two animals from different areas near the shore. She enjoyed picking them out from the book and worked hard to make them look like the pictures.

The highlight of the week for me came from highlighters! I decided to try something new with poetry to help her see rhyming patterns and it worked! We highlighted the words that rhymed at the ends of the lines with the same colors. I ran out of colors, so I know now to use the same colors from stanza to stanza. This helped her see the pattern easier. Since I’m also a junior high literature teacher I introduced her to rhyme scheme using the alphabet which she caught on to very quickly. This idea is DEFINITELY a keeper!