Weekly Report--8/25/08-8/29/08

Another week under our belt and I am so confident in the changes I have made for this year. I feel like I've found the right balance in our homeschool. It's been a bit more work for me, but when I look at her notebooks and see how much she recalls, I know that it's all worth it. Enough about that, here's our week in review...

LA: We began alphabetizing this week and learned the first two rules of spelling. I was surprised how well princess did, we have never formally discussed alphabetizing, but somewhere along the way it sunk in. Turns out that the fridge also doubles as a magnet board for AAS! We also learned about writing dialoge's from Sonlight's LA. At this point I think all that we will use from that is the writing assignment, which princess really enjoys.

Math: We are in the home stretch to finish Singapore's PM 1B. We started the last unit on money today and I expect that we will finish the remainder next week. I am so pleased with the progress princess has made. She really gets it and I think that she's ready to move on.

History: We finished up the Nile with a salt dough version of the river that we could flood, here's the before and after pictures. We then tried to drain away the water and take more pictures, but you can't really see how the water stayed behind, so nothing to share from that. However princess did enjoy it, we ended up flooding the Nile several more times this week. We also began talking about mummies and pyramids. We made some scented oil that we will use for our chicken mummy in a few week, can't believe that I'm going to do that one! All in all we are really enjoying Story of the World.

Read-Aloud: Wilbur just got dropped off at the fair and yes, princess is still enjoying it!

Science: We began to talk about mammals this week. I included a picture of her narrations sheet from this week. We also made habitat posters(see below) so that all our animals will now have a home to go to. We also did an experiment to show how cat's eyes differ from ours. It was great fun for princess. She is really getting into science this year.

Hope you had a great week too!

Mom, can we just do this...

Don't you love it when you child comes up with more to do! My princess decided yesterday that just putting animals in her habitat diorama wasn't enough. She wanted to make a diorama for each habitat. I (being the voice of reason) suggested that we make habitat posters instead. That way she can add each of the animals that we study. I drew the habitats and we used watercolors to paint them. We will add animals at the end of each week to the posters and her diorama, it should be fun! Here's what I was able to pull out of my hat (I'm not the best artist, so be kind.)

Wordless Wednesday

Education of Me Update

So maybe I took to much on and I'm going to have to be an ebook club drop out. The reality is that my time is finite and there are just things that are more important to me. Anyways, here is what I was able to accomplish this week...

1. I finished the Pharaoh's of Ancient Egypt and journaled everyday that I read it. I found this book to be a very easy read, but packed full of information. I'm glad that I read it as I know feel that I have a good basis of information on the major pharoahs.
2. Ok, so I'd really love to have a list full of all the great things that I read, but that's it folks!

What I plan to do next week...

1. Read the first 13 chapters of Mara, Daughter of the Nile. (I'm looking forward to this one!)

I'm trying to be less ambitious to allow for more time to pursue other reading and activities, plus I don't want to burn myself out so that I don't finish my education plan!

Weekly Report-8/18/08-8/22/08

Well we have our second full week under our belts and I am so pleased with how things are going! I really feel like we are hitting our stride this year. Anyways, here's our week in review...

LA: Princess practiced segmenting words into sounds this week with All About Spelling. I am very pleased with how she is doing and the program itself. We have also been reviewing what we previously learned with First Language Lessons and I'm looking forward to getting into something new next week. Princess's reading in progressing nicely, I even caught her reading a library book to the dog during rest time. I love those kind of moments!

Math: We wrapped up subtraction within 100 this week. Here's a sample of her work. Next week we will be reviewing the unit of numbers within 100 and beginning money.

History: We talked about the earliest people and made cave paintings. We also talked about the earliest writing and princess made her own cuneiform tablet. Here's the notebook pages we did for those, if you click on the picture you can see the projects better. We also began to study Egypt, next week we will build a salt dough model of the Nile which I'm beginning to think is going to be a bigger project than I orginially anticipated, we shall see.

Read-Aloud: Still in Charlotte's Web and still enjoying it!

Science: We spent the week talking about habitats and finished it up with making our own habitat diorama, as promised here is a picture. Princess chose a coniferous forest for her habitat. We painted the creek, the trees and the rocks and the assembled it. We had a great time doing this together. Now we will put the proper animals in there as we study them and hopefully I'll share another picture of that when we are done our animal study.

Hope you had a great week too!

Wordless Wednesday

Setting up the shot...

Here's the picture...

Education of Me

I meant to get to this yesterday, but then life happened!

What I did this past week..

1. Read all I planned in The Pharaoh's of Ancient Egypt and did my journaling. I am about halfway through the book and have found it interesting. I plan on using the first chapter to do a mini-unit on the Rosetta Stone, since the materials I have this year don't really cover it well. This book will be on my list as a reader for our next journey through ancient history!
2. I only read 60 pages of History of the Ancient World and I think that I'm going to have to put this aside for awhile. Although I love the way Susan writes, I need a break. I think that I will pick this back up around Christmas time when we break from school.
3. Read Ch. 1-5 of Surprised by Joy by CS Lewis. Yes, I know, it's too much, but I couldn't resist joining an e-book club. I have enjoyed learning about CS Lewis's life and what molded him into the writer he became. Even though I have kept up with the reading, I will probably skip the next book because I just feel too busy and I need some down time.

What I plan to do next week...

1. Read the rest of The Pharaoh's of Ancient Egypt and continue journaling
2. Read Ch. 6-10 of Surprised by Joy for the ebook club

I have also enjoyed doing princess's projects with her. I had fun doing a cave painting with her, but I think I may have to stop since she keeps comparing her projects to mine and thinking that she has not done a good job. I don't want that, so for now, my self-education will have to stick to books!

Weekly Report--8/11/08-8/15/08

What a great week! Princess was so happy to start full school again, she's having fun and so am I. Here's our week in review...

LA: We finished And I Mean it Stanley and started Dick and Jane: Away we go. Her reading is getting better, which was this years goal. All About Spelling and First Language Lessons are both going well. Princess is starting to realized that copywork is just like hanwriting practice and the novelty has worn off.

Math: We wrapped up addition within 100 and will begin subtraction next week.

History: We talked about archaeology and started talking about the first nomads. We are really enjoying SOTW, the style is so easy to read and understand. To the right is a picture of the first few pages of our history notebook that we completed this week.

Read-Aloud: Charlotte's Web is going well, Wilbur just found out his friend is a spider. I loved this book as a child so it has been alot of fun to share it with princess.

Science: We finished animal behavior and started animal habitats. Next week we will make a habitat diorama then we will to put the animals we study in there. I can't wait to share the pictures of that next week!

Extras: Here's a look at the art project we did this week. It was a still life that focused on looking at the lines of different objects. Princess's was a little more interpretive, but I'm very pleased with how the projects came out.

Hope you had a great week too, be sure to check on my Education of Me update below.

Wordless Wednesday

Education of me update

With our move the education of me project kinda fell by the wayside, but I am determined not to keep it that way! I am enjoying what I am learning, here's an update...

What I've done over the last two weeks...

1. Epic of Gigamesh--I finished the book and journaled everyday that I read. I really enjoyed reading this book. It was an interesting story, but I don't feel the version I read will be good for my daughter in first grade, maybe when we revisit ancient history during the logic stage. I have borrowed a much more gentle version from a friend and that's what we will use this year.
2. History of the Ancient World--I love the way Susan Wise Bauer presents history! I actually have enjoyed reading it and have learned so much. I'm hoping to be able to re-read this another time so I can glean even more from it.
3. Lugalbanda--I hadn't planned on reading this, but a friend told me about it being older than Gilgamesh, so I was intrigued. I read a very easy children's version and I found it to be a great story. We will be adding this to our reading this year.

What I'm planning on doing this week...

1. History of the Ancient World--pgs. 328-430
2. The Pharoah's of Ancient Egypt--pgs. 3-80

I am really enjoying this process. My brain is being fed new information and having to work at processing it which is always a good thing! Thanks for reading!

Weekly Report--1st half of Week 1 for Core 1

Well we started a little earlier than I planned originally. We were suppose to start back up on Aug. 11th but Princess was getting restless and I wanted to see how things were going to go, plus she has art class two days next week. I just figured it would be easier to do two days this week so that we only had three to do next week. The first two days were very successful! I think that we are going to have a wonderful year. Here what we did this week...




LA: We introduced all 26 phonograms this week and I was pleased with how many princess knew. I'm looking forward to doing this program. For grammar we reviewed what we have already learned in FLL (nouns-common and proper). Then I had her mark nouns, punctuation and capitalization on her copywork. I think that this is going to be a great way to reinforce what she is learning with grammar. She also read about half of And I Mean It Stanley.



Math: We continued math through the summer, so we are at addition within 100 and it's slow going. I want to make sure the concepts stick, so we are taking it slow, adding in Saxon 2 workbooks and Miquon for extra practice. She gets alittle scared of the big numbers, but once she starts to work through the problems she does well.



Core 1: We are using SOTW 1 and the Activity Guide along with Sonlight's Core 1. So far so good! We loved the My Life Timeline project, it was great to walk down memory lane with her. Princess is enjoying Charlotte's Web, although we are only 3 chapters into it, so we will see.



Science: Princess enjoyed acting out animal defenses and has now taken to hiding behind doors and jumping out to scare me. She screams, "I'm a predator, I'm going to eat you!". I love science!



That's all we started so far! One thing that I did do this year is gromet my markable map from Sonlight, so now I can hang it on the wall and easily flip between the world and US maps. This has been soooo helpful and I wish I had done it earlier. I'm looking forward to this year and sharing it with you!

Year at a Glance

I was inspired by Jennefer over at Smooth Stones Academy to write my own Year at a Glance Sheet. I always like to have the big picture in view and have and idea of what is next. In the past I have just flipped back and forth in my huge teacher's binder. This just seems sooooo much easier, why didn't I think of it earlier? Anyways, here what I put together...





I didn't put reading in it because it her pace frequently changes and it would be hard to plan out a whole year, rather I use the let's read the next book on the list process! Hope it inspires you too.

Wordless Wednesday