Week 17

Some highlights from this week were:

Our Mariposa Class was titled Animals Across Cultures. We took a look at the Use of Animals cross - culturally in art, household needs, transportation, food, rituals, festivals, and religions. This was very interesting. I always find that the classes compliment our own studies as Sonlight Curriculum has a strong emphasis on learning about other cultures. At the end of this class Terry showed the kids how to make pop-up cards. Evelyn has been making them for everyone ever since.



Evelyn is learning to subtract with trading. We practiced trading one ten for ten ones using our base ten manipulatives.
** Quinn is nearing the end of Singapore 4A already. I have been very pleased with how easily he has embraced fractions. He has successfully learned to simplify, change improper to mixed and vice versa, add, subtract and multiply fractions and much more. Here's hoping that 4B goes as well!

**We are reading Pippi Longstalking aloud this week.

**Quinn is reading Beorn the Proud. I have been taking history and literature selections for Quinn from Veritas Press since they do medieval history in fourth grade. It lines up quite nicely!

WEEK 16

I know I didn't post anything for week 15 but I have to jump back on the blog wagon where I am. A similar thing happened last year about this time. I posted pictures of us making butter during our Little House in the Big Woods Lapbook project. Next thing you know we were attacked by an ice storm, then came Christmas and by the time I got back to blogging I felt overwhelmed because I had missed so much time and so I stopped blogging for the rest of the year. I really don't want that to happen this year. I really enjoy looking back over my blog at the end of the year and so do the children.

We had an interesting week! A small number of homeschool naysayers have been trying to pass some extremely burdensome laws over the past few years. Last year it was voted Inexpedient to Legislate and so we thought they would leave us alone and start worrying about more pressing issues like the failing public schools. But, low and behold they decided to try again. Only this time they amended the law to make it even MORE onerous. I do in fact enjoy bringing the kids to the State House for things like this. They might as well learn early on not to take freedoms for granted. Especially with the way this country's leadership is headed. So see this weeks " Wordless Wednesday" for some great pictures of the rally. Oh, and the bill was voted down again by an ENORMOUS margin: 324-34. Praise God! Still, i am sure we will have the pleasure of dealing with this again.


I posted checklists on the wall for each of the kids. The checklist shows each subject they are to do during the week and how many times it is to be done. So for instance math, Bible, dictation etc.. are listed as five times. At the end of the week they need to have 5 check marks next to math. Things like Science projects have a goal listed as one or two times a week. I decided to do this for their sake. You would think that after several years my son would know what things he has to do each day but inevitably I hear "What do I have to do today?" (Insert whiny voice here.) or "Can I just do math today?" and other such silly questions. So now that the list is posted on the wall I can simply refer him to it. I put them in sheet protectors so that the kids can use wipe off markers to check things off.

This was week two for skiing.

Wordless Wednesday - January 13, 2010 - Homeschool Rally

Week 14

The week before Christmas we...

...worked on building our castles


...learned about what people try to fill their hearts with..and the only thing that truly fits.
...Did a lot of baking

....some math
....some spelling
....read Bartholomew's Passage
....did our Advent Bible Study

52 Books in 52 Weeks

I have decided to take part in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge. I have always loved to read. When i was a child you couldn't tear me away from books. Nowadays however, life can get in the way. I still adore a good book but it can be hard to fit it in. Sometimes I am just so exhausted that reading puts me to sleep. Other times I am so worried about wasting precious reading time with a horrible book that I spend far too much time contemplating what to read next. After poring over book reviews and lists for hours I find myself again too tired to read anything else. So maybe a bit of accountability will help.

Haven't quite decided what the first book will be. But I WILL have made a decision by Sunday, which is when the challenge technically starts. I can't wait to hear about what other people are reading!

Week 13 -- Sick Kids

E started the week with a fever :(. I guess it was bound to happen. She was sick through Wednesday and then Thursday night Q got it. Happily, Evelyn was able to go to her dance recital Friday night. I was worried that she would miss it. Sadly, her brother and father missed it. But, Grammy, Gramps, Auntie and Meme were there.

Before Quinn became sick he did quite a bit of math. He is now doing addition and subtraction of fractions, changing to common denominators, and simplifying. I must admit I was worried when I saw this coming but he has caught on to it VERY WELL.
We did the long bone model in our Human Body Book. Then we did a simple experiment to see why bones are hollow. Quinn accurately predicted that that made them stronger. He said "See! God knew what he was doing!"
We started week 2 of our Advent Bible Study and added it to our Christmas notebooks.
Wednesday we got about a foot of snow dumped on us. I am determined not to complain about the snow this early on. Really, it was a perfect week for a snow storm since we stayed home from all of our usual activities. Quinn went out and enjoyed it. And the puppy went crazy. It was her first real snow. She was loving it (And eating it).


We didn't have any new spelling words this week. I just had Quinn review the old words with two dictation sentences a day.

We read about William the Conqueror and The Battle of Hastings in CHOW and Quinn read also in Our Island Story. The kids each did a narration and picture. (This was Monday morning before I knew that Evelyn had a fever. No...really I am not that mean!). I realized we haven't been putting our figures onto the timeline for a few weeks now. perhaps next week we will get caught up with that.

We did the first two DVD lessons in I Can Do All Things. Evelyn wanted to take part even though she was sick. She loves art. The first lesson had us drawing shoes with laces.

Quinn did a couple geography lessons. He is learning about latitude and longitude now.

That's about it for our week. We stayed home from CBS and playgroup. Co-op is over until January and we missed the lovely Christmas Craft Fair that our home school group puts on every year. Evelyn also missed a birthday party and we didn't make it to the Museum of Science as planned. However we enjoyed some quiet time at home which is pretty rare, believe it or not, for us homeschoolers.

Week 12

This week marks the end of co-op for the first half of the year. So tonight we had a presentation for the different classes. Grandparents came and it was great fun for all. The Beginning Public Speaking class had each student choose their favorite speech from the class to present to everyone. Quinn chose his Interpretive Speech of Click Clack Moo. Praise God he made it through! He remembered his lines and did all of his motions and voices very well. He even made everyone laugh. After some not-so-great practices this week I was really worried for him and wondering if he should have chosen one of his shorter speeches. But he did great!
Evelyn's Sign Language class got up on stage briefly. Each child introduced themselves and signed their names then they sang the ABC song while signing. It was very nice.

Evely6n's orchestra class did a cute presentation with rhythm sticks

Quinn's rocket class had a display table with bottle rockets and pictures and each child's notebook. They even did a live glow-in-the-dark rocket launch for everyone.
Evelyn's art class displayed all of the work that they have done. Some really great projects!

This week we also began our "Christmas School". In the past we have taken December completely off and focused just on advent. This has made for an extremely relaxing and special time for us. This year we are in such a good groove with our school work that I decided not to completely take the month off. We are however cutting out several things and keeping it simple so we can do some special stuff:


Last year we read Jotham's Journey. It was fantastic and made for some wonderfully snuggly evenings on the couch. This year I ordered the next book: Bartholomew's Passage. So far so good!
I found a FREE advent Bible study that is perfect for the kids. and we completed the first week.

We read about Christmas is Norway. The kids did a small narration about what we read and drew pictures to go with their narrations. We also made a Norwegian Christmas ornament.
Evelyn's narration
Quinn's narration

***We watched several Christmas movies
The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey
Samantha: An American Girl Christmas
The Sound of Music (Yes, I think of this as Christmas, not sure why..)

we also listened to a lot of wonderful Christmas Music. This year I am loving Casting Crowns : Peace on earth

The highlight of my week was when I got my printer cartridges refilled. I came home and spent 2 hours printing stuff. It was awesome. As a result we were able to build our skeleton models this week...

MATH: This week Quinn started doing double-digit times double-digit. I was worried about the multi-steps (multiplying, aligning, adding) but he picked it up quickly and dubbed it "long multiplication". Evelyn is doing very easy stuff right now. I think she'll be done with 1B very soon.


DICTATION: Did 3 out of 5 days worth of dictation. I am planning to spend another week on the same list since we have had a lot of new and difficult words these past few weeks. Thus I didn't mind not getting it all done this week. I have been finding that using multiple colors when introducing new words has been helpful for Quinn.

HISTORY: Did we do history?? hmm... don't remember. I guess it wasn't anything significant if we did...

Reading: Quinn read Trapped in Death's Cave and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane Evelyn read: Chocolate Fever, Hello, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. They each read various smaller books as well.

Quinn finished several Geography lessons.

Evelyn and I baked cookies for the Co-op Presentation
Evelyn drew many Christmas related pictures in her spare time