Our Family's Journey...: Another great week!

We finished up our second week of school with our new books and it was just as great as the first! The kids are learning a lot and not just stuck in front of a workbook for all of school. In Preparing Hearts for His Glory big guy read about the Great Ice Age. He loved reading the story of Jabeth and says that's how he wants to live...hunting for food, trying to kill a bear, he is such a boy and would love to live out in the country somewhere...maybe someday. His narrating was better this week and he got all of his dictations correct the first time. I also gave both of the older two a little reading level assesment out of curiousity. They both scored well above grade level...I'm continuing to see signs in the oldest that it was more of lack of interest and motivation to focus instead of truly having a hard time with reading. That's been encouraging and I think the great books used in HOD will really help him to enjoy reading even more!

Preparing Unit 2

working on his background for a rainbow (got to get some paint, only had watercolors!)

they enjoyed the storytime reading together, it was so neat that it was on cd

trying different ways to get an ice cube to melt

(learning about the arctic tundra and reading about the great ice age this week)

filling out his lab sheet after the experiment (love these!)

I looked out to see big bro teaching little sis how to ride without training wheels...so sweet!

the making of Facing the Giants part 2

This week in Beyond Little Hearts little gal continued learning about pioneers and she is fascinated with their way of living. That is one of my favorite time periods too. We weren't able to make it on our field trip to the printhouse due to the birthday celebration and won't be able to next week because we just found out hubby has 3 days off so we are going home for a couple days!! I'm sure we'll go soon though. She finished up Helen Keller and we picked up some extra books at the library...it will be so good for her when we start DITHOR (reading program) in the fall.

Beyond Unit 2

testing out a crumpled paper and flat paper to learn why squirrels flatten out their body and tail so they can glide through the air

made a map after our history reading

finished up the week with our history reading from the bible about Ruth.

here is a field and she is sprinkling on the pieces of grain to be gleaned.

here is her notebook that we made to hold her work

Little guy had a great week to doing what he does! We worked on the short u sound this week. He is doing very well but I am certainly unsure about my teaching skills when it comes to phonics and reading. I am so afraid I won't do it correctly and slow him down or worse. That's one of the reasons I started early! He is ready I believe or I wouldn't have but with his carefree little spirit it can be so hard to tell what he knows and what he doesn't. He is just a little ball of fun! One of our biggest challenges is writing...those fine motor skills just have not developed. I am beginning to wonder if he has inherited the little tremors that his daddy and grandpa have with their hands. I need to read up on developing writing skills and find some other practices for him. We have done so many of the pre-writing mazes and without much improvement. Below you'll see how we worked on his cutting practice. I had given him shapes to cut out and instructed him to use them to make a picture on the paper plate. I gave him two circles, a triangle, and a semi-circle. In my boring mind, I was picturing that he would make a face with them on the plate-two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. However, you'll see he had a very different idea!

cutting away...