Tag: Weekly Review

 

We had a lighter week this past week. Each of the girls did half of a Heart of Dakota unit this week and will finish the other half next week. We had dentist appointments and a day planned with friend on Good Friday morning as well as services at church Friday night. The girls still had school work every day, but it was a little bit lighter on Thursday and Friday. 

One of the fun aspects of homeschooling is the various mediums the girls use for learning. One of their favorite things is when they listen to the What in the World? CDs from Diana Waring’s History Revealed. Both Beth and Rose listen to these as a part of their Heart of Dakota studies. They enjoy them tremendously. And of course they enjoy listening in their bedroom! It’s not always neat, but it is cozy and their favorite place to study when appropriate. Usually they listen to CDs or read up in their room.

Rose is such a diligent worker these days! She has learned that if she just buckles down and focuses on her work she is easily finished by lunch. One of the fun things I’m starting to see is her retention of the history she is studying. There have been quite a few moments in the last few weeks when she would mention something she learned outside of our school time. We were playing a new game with my parents today called Codenames. The idea is to try and get your teammates to choose word-cards based on single-word clues you give. Several of her clues were related to her studies in history with Heart of Dakota! It is a joy to see her retaining, but also enjoying what she’s learning. 

 

Our sweet pup, Penny, is ever present with us during our studies! You can see Beth playing with her with her feet while she is reading! She is such a good little doggie and our girls absolutely love her!

 We ended our week by spending Friday morning with good friends who were off from their traditional school for spring break. They have three girls close in age to my own and we had such a great time with them. Their mom is a very good friend of mine and we often talk about the benefits and struggles of our different educational choices. She relayed the most interesting story to me about her daughters. She said that inevitably the topic of homeschooling comes up within the traditional school setting and most of the kids make comments about how weird homeschoolers are. She said a wonderful side benefit of the friendship our daughters have formed is when people say things like that they are quick to respond with statements like, “Weird? We have friends who are homeschooled. They aren’t weird!” I also love that my girls have friends from all different styles of education. We talk openly about why we homeschool and how they are feeling about their studies. They know we will always make the final decision about their education, but they also know their opinions matter to us and it helps for them to have friends from many different educational backgrounds. Inevitably, they tell us how much they love homeschooling and their friends sometimes ask their parents if they can homeschool. I know it may not always be like this, but I’ll take it for now! 

Rose is getting excited as we are rounding the corner for the final weeks of Resurrection to Reformation. She’s doing great and just moves through without any trouble these days. So much is independent with these guides. This is great for her age because she is pulling away more into independence in many areas of her life. She’s also becoming more of a writer! She’s using a baby name book here to choose names for her characters in a story she is writing. I love seeing her create!

 Another week has passed. All went well and we are excited to head into the weekend!

 Beth (4th grade): Creation to Christ Unit 9

 Beth had a good week. In math she worked on measurements including temperature and weight. History focused on the time leading up to King David’s reign. We are working through level 4 of All About Spelling. Spelling is very easy for Beth, but she enjoys the lessons and I see great value in learning the why behind our sometimes very strange English spellings. In the picture Beth is using white board colored pencils I found once for some spelling practice. She finished reading her novel this week, Mandie and the Secret Tunnel. This is a very special book series to me and I’m so excited to share it with my girls!

Grace is maturing now very quickly. My mom commented on a picture I posted this week that she just doesn’t look like our little girl anymore! Bittersweet it is, but it is also fun to watch her find her independence! We are moving right along at full-speed in Bigger Hearts without any problem at all! Grace loves vocabulary and spelling. She told me so this week! When I asked why she said it was probably because she loves to talk so much and it’s nice to have new words to say. I got a little giggle out of that. 

She also is continuing in both Math Lessons for a Living Education and Math Mammoth. You would think two curriculum might be too much, but honestly it isn’t for her. She loves both and happily completes it all. We will back off of one or the other if it gets to be too much. 

Rose and Beth are working on dictation here. Grace is too, she’s just out of the shot! I find doing the same subject at the same time can be a great time saver for all of us! Especially now that all three are completing dictation. I recite the sentences and when they are ready for the next part they put their pencil down. It is also an exercise in self-discipline because I require them to stay silent so as not to distract their sisters. 

Rose is devouring history and anything else she can get her hands on to read! She loves reading anything and everything she can find. She also found joy in reading some of the Imagination Station books she never read before. They are geared towards a younger reading level, probably 2nd or 3rd grade, but the stories are still wonderful. She finished one in just about an hour I think, but said she really enjoyed it. It is so lovely to see my girl who is reading on a high school level still enjoy the simpler stories! 

Here are a few more pictures from our week…

 Rose: Reading for literature – Beth: Reading for History

Beth: Weighing a little spring creature for math

Grace: Sitting in my lap reading dictation to her sister on the front porch. 

(This is actually from last week, but it’s such a sweet picture I didn’t want to miss posting it!)

And now our beautiful spring weather has turned to watery mush for the weekend it seems. The girls are all done with school early today. They played with some remote controlled cars in the kitchen for a while, then used items from the recycling bin to create something for the cars. They have made cards and creations and some other things. Now they are getting a little screen time. They have been busy, busy bees this morning!

I don’t fully understand the reason, but Grace has easily glided into Bigger with no apparent struggle with the jump in work-load in any way. My older two did not have this blessing! We are completing everything without any trouble. Being the youngest in a homeschool family has its benefits for certain. One being she will almost always be done with school before her sisters so she doesn’t really feel like she’s spending extra time working. She had already been asking for more work recently, maybe because she is such a little extrovert and felt left out since her sisters were still completing schoolwork an hour or more after she was done. Whatever the reason we are now completing full units in Bigger Hearts. I took four full units at half-pace with my older two before we jumped into the full load!

 We are studying early explorers. One of the activities was making a little paper boat and following the explorers’ routes on the globe. Grace loved it!

 The verses are a bit more demanding this year. She loves to memorize so this is not a challenge at all. 

 Poetry is a favorite for everyone. This year we learn about rhyme scheme. The best way I’ve found to teach this is to have the girls underline the rhyming words with the same color. Then we follow with the corresponding letters. This has been a great visual for learning rhyme scheme. 

We are closing in on the end of our guide We have about 8 units left so I’m beginning to piece together the next guide. I buy all of the guides and notebooking pages new from Heart of Dakota every year. I really want to support this small family business and this is a way to do so. The rest of the material I try to find used. I have a big spread sheet my husband helped me make. I have all of the books listed along with the best price I can find new. I scour multiple websites to find these prices. Then I scour for used books. I aim for at least half the cost of the original, but sometimes that is hard to find. Sometimes the best used price is more than the new prices I find! It’s a great way to save money and honestly I enjoy the hunt!.

 I’ve been pleased to see the effort Rose is putting into her notebook this year. We did go through a season last year of minimal effort, but thankfully this seems to have passed.

Math continues to be her most challenging subject. I try to reiterate to her she understands the concepts. The breakdown comes in little mistakes in the steps. I’m not sure how to get her through this besides just plugging away. If anyone has any ideas I’m open to them!

 Our weather has finally warmed back up again! We had a beautiful, warm, and allergy filled February only to be greeted with a March snowfall! I went on the porch for a little while one day, but with pollen season well under way I couldn’t stay out very long! It was nice to complete dictation out there though.

Beth is taking longer to finish her work these days. I’m finding her focus is drifting some. I remember Rose getting to this point as well when the CTC had worn off its “newness” but we also weren’t very far along into it. She gets it done eventually, but she is currently the last one finished and not very happy about it! I’m trying to find ways to help her see that if she would just buckle down and get things down she wouldn’t have to be last!

Little miss math whiz does not like it when we have to explain a new concept in math to her. She feels she can handle it on her own…which she probably could if she actually read all of the directions! Several times this week she came to me frustrated about not knowing how to complete a math assignment. “Did you read the directions?” Her answer was, “No,” every single time! Hopefully this is a season we move through quickly. 

 Penny likes laying in the sunshine so the girls often sit by the front door with her to work. Beth is reading her history assignment here.

We had a magical cure for Beth’s handwriting this week! She has very nice handwriting, but rarely wants to use it. Then she received a pen-pal letter from her cousin. Poof! we suddenly have great effort being expended into her handwriting once again. 

There is our week in a nutshell! How was yours?

We had a very good week back after our break. We will have another break in six weeks! 

 I think Rose was working on her writing with Writing Strands in this picture. She loves sitting by the front door while working because our puppy likes the sun and they enjoy one anther’s company. Writing strands is such a great program! It’s simple to follow and very content rich. Rose has always loved to write and writing strands is helping her really hone her skills.

If you have followed our journey very long you already know math has never come easily to Rose. We have a good fit for her now, but it is something she has to work hard to find success. When she offered to help Grace with her math (2nd grade multi digit addition with carrying) I was just a little unsure. Then I remembered how teaching can help cement learning. It was an absolute beautiful moment to see Rose working to help her little sister learn, make sure she had the right answers, and then help her when she missed a problem. The fact that she had the confidence to do this was really encouraging and also showed me how God is shaping her desire to be a teacher one day.

Beth absolutely loves the timeline portion of her notebooking each week! She can’t wait to get to it and spends a long time making sure the pictures are just to her liking. She’s also really progressing with her cursive and doesn’t have to reference her page to know how to make the letters as often.

Another part of her new guide which Beth really enjoys is her quiet time. I love that Heart of Dakota helps my girls to build a habit of daily time with the Lord. 

 

Math was with Daddy (And Lucy the cat!) this afternoon! She had already completed the work earlier in the day buy my husband was nice enough to go over her work with her when he came home at lunch. I’m so blessed that he is willing to jump in and help out anytime he can!

 Our curriculum does an amazing job of teaching geography! We reviewed the continents and oceans this week. I still have trouble remembering to include that 5th ocean sometimes because we only had four when I was a kid! She of course loves to spin the globe as fast as she can every time we get it down!

 Grace was over-the-top excited to learn to use the dictionary for vocabulary! I didn’t actually have to teach her though. She has been using a dictionary since she was five. We used to call her our little dictionary because she loved words and always wanted to know what different words mean. She also can often be found reading one of our many dictionaries for fun in the afternoons.

 Beth (4th grade): Creation to Christ Unit 5

 Beth was so excited to work on her history project this week! It was as simple recipe but she thoroughly enjoyed creating the honey bread and the eating it. As I’ve said before this was a smooth transition into a new guide. Preparing is such an amazing learning year and that coupled with the previous guide (Bigger Hearts for His Glory) both of my girls were eagerly ready to move up and become more independent. 

I’ve been especially impressed with her effort and success with memorizing chapter 2 of Philippians. My oldest, who memorizes very easily, did not like this part of CTC. I think she saw the length and even though she knew it would be in short amounts she felt it was too hard. Beth, on the other hand, just put her mind to it and is now a full 5 verses in. She can quite word-for-word with ease and seems to really enjoy it! Beth rarely struggles with schoolwork. Really none of my kids do, but she especially finds everything easy. It is hard to know if it is a result of being the second born and therefore she’s watched it all happen before, or if things are just easy. Either way she’s a joy to teach and finds joy in learning!

 You might notice a jump from unit 31 last week to unit 34 this week. What happened? Well… this little miss asked me if we could squish the end of Beyond into one week. She is eager for more work. Although she is officially in “1st grade” as far as her age is concerned, she’s working at a much higher level. She’s asking for a challenge, and I understand. This is one driven little 7-year-old when it comes to academics. She dreams of becoming a nurse and has sought out nurses in our church to ask all sorts of questions. She reads everything she gets her hands on and questions everything she doesn’t understand. How could I say no? 

Well, I did say no to squishing 3 units into a week. I said yes to skipping a few units and finishing up this week before our break. It’s a good time anyway so I can prepare for her to start Bigger. There will be some changes this time around and I’m looking forward to those! Stay tuned to see some of these in about a week!

We are over half-way through grammar 5 of Rod and Staff Grammar. The girls learn so much with this curriculum! It’s not the flashiest, but it is so solid. Rose is learning more about diagramming and when we finish she’ll know more grammar than most high schoolers do. She’s definitely learning more than I did in class. My dad taught me most of my grammar. So here we are carrying on the tradition! 

Everything is going well in all other areas. It’s time for me to start piecing together next years curriculum. I buy the guides directly from Heart of Dakota because I like to support this small family business. I try to buy everything else used from a variety of sources. With only 10 units left it’s time again! I love this part. I know that sounds crazy, but my goal every year is to spend $300 or less and I usually do quite well! It’s all about hunting for the bargain. 

Well, that was our week. How was yours?