Week in Review: October 5-9, 2015

Wow! I can't believe we completed week 11! We finished Unit 11 in Bigger Hearts for His Glory and Little Hearts for His Glory. I am so pleased with the progress we are making!

Little Hearts for His Glory: Unit 11

Silas learned the letters E, F, G, and H this week in All About Reading. He can recognize A-H, although he gets tripped up sometimes on D and B. He used play-dough today to make the letters A-H, and was so proud of himself. He also drew all the letters in his salt tray. {I have to refill the salt tray almost daily...with a three and five year old using it, salt gets everywhere! It is so worth it, though, because the sensory aspects help him so much.} He loves making his letter craft each day and putting a sticker on his chart. We also worked on rhyming, and he finally understands it!

In math, he continued working on measuring. He enjoys measuring the objects with erasers, paper clips, and blocks. He had to guess how many blocks something measured and then measure to check his guess. He was so close on each one! I have been reviewing the numbers 1-10 this week. I wrote each number on an index card and he had to put them in order. He did great, but he got mixed up with the 7,8, and 9.

He worked on a few pages in his thinking skills workbook, Do It Carefully. This book is his favorite and I am considering ordering him a few more in the series to do. His handwriting is getting so much better, although he had considerable difficulty writing K's this week. The angled lines were just too much for his fine motor skills.

In Bible, he learned about the birth of Jesus. I had so many crafts planned, but decided to wait and make them around Christmas. He did make an angel with hand print wings and a pipe cleaner halo! He also made a collage with pictures of children he cut from a magazine. His memory verse was Luke 2:52, "Jesus became wiser and stronger." He especially loved the Rhyme in Motion this week. We went through the months of the year, and he had to somersault when I sang his month!

In science, we read about stars, and he did a star dot-dot with the numbers 1-10. He also made his own constellation with star stickers.

Bigger Hearts for His Glory: Unit 11

In history this week, we read a story about a small boy who was kidnapped from his home in Africa and sold as a slave. His name was Venture Smith. We also read a story about a man who tracked down a wolf that was killing his sheep. The wolf had killed seventy of his sheep and goats in one night! Eli and Mercie made a picture of a cave and painted wolf prints walking up to it.They also read about Thomas Jefferson this week. We put Thomas Jefferson and Venture Smith on their timelines, and they mapped the slave ship's route from Africa to North America. They also colored a climate zone map and talked about the different climate zones in the world.

In science, we continued reading about John Audubon. He was very interested in birds, and the stories in the book are quite entertaining. The kids drew a picture of the three types of feathers: flight, body, and down feathers. We look up pictures on the internet and talked about what each feather's purpose was. They also drew a picture of a thrush and we listened to the song of the thrush. Today, we made edible bird nest using chocolate chips, peanut butter and chow mien noodles. They had fun, but a few bites was all they could handle of the sweet mixture.

Our poem this week was called "Hold On." They illustrated it and discussed the meaning.

Our hymn this week is Amazing Grace. We have been singing it every morning during "Morning Meeting." They memorized Proverbs 20:22. For story time, we are reading The Sign of The Beaver, which is one of my favorite books!

In math, Mercie is being introduced to multiplication and division. We used chocolate chips and crackers to multiply and divide. She thinks it's great fun, and she practiced more on Khan Academy.

Eli is learning ratios in math, and I hardly ever have to help him. He has a very mathematical mind!

In grammar, Mercie reviewed verbs this week. Eli is learning irregular verbs, like sit and sat, lay and lie, and raise and rise. He is finding it so confusing. I had him make a chart for each set, and then make sentences with the present, past, and past participle forms of the words. That seemed to help.

They are both learning cursive using Cheerful Cursive. I am amazed at how well Mercie is catching on!

7th grade week in review

Mikaela started using Khan Academy this week for math. I am really impressed with this program so far. She watches videos and then has as much practice as she wants. She has been working on negative/positive numbers, and adding and subtracting them.

In grammar, she is working on past, present and future verbs {way easy}. She is working through Easy Grammar, and I told her not to skip any because review was always a good thing! She did some writing in her Spectrum writing workbook.

In science, she did two experiments. The first one, she made a pinwheel and held it over a pot of boil water to show how steam can power engines.

The other one showed her how siphoning works. She used two straws to siphon water from a cup into the sink. Then she had to cut the straw and poke holes to show how air will stop the flow.

In history this week, she learned about Lewis and Clark's expedition and the Indians they encountered on the way. It was pretty interesting to read about the different ways of life certain Indians had. She had several mapping and timeline entries to make. She is supposed to make a trivia game with index cards this afternoon.

She also read several articles in We the People, including journal entries that Louis and Clark made.

All in all, we had a productive and fun week! And I will leave you with this photo of my four youngest reading on the couch together.