Weekly Report 7/13/08-7/19/08

Hello, everyone! I am back to blogging again. I was on hiatus for a few weeks to prepare for this school year and now we have begun. July 15th was our first day of school. This year, Octe and I are making a joint effort to teach all 3 of the children who are still in school: MelloYello, Jester, and Princess. I am doing all the planning and Octe and I are each doing two days a week of teaching. I must say that Octe has been a real trooper so far. Due to scheduling considerations, we ended up having to start school sooner than I had planned, which left me with a lot less preparation time. I got most of the planning for the first week done in time for the start of school, but there was still a lot of work to do if I was going to get very far ahead of the kids in my lesson planning. I was majorly stressing, but my sweet hubby did the teaching all four days this week! He was a bit overwhelmed and had a lot of questions, but still he hung right in there. I am working hard to get caught up on the planning so that I can do more of the teaching soon, but I am so glad I can count on him to help. Considering that I work full-time outside the home and therefore my time is really tight, that is a great blessing.
As for the weekly report, I am hoping in the future to be able to include some pictures of us as we go about our various activitues of the school day, but I still need to ge a USB cable for my digital camera right now, so that may be a while in coming about. In the mean time, I will attempt to give a brief narrative of some of the highlights of our studies in the many subjects we are learning about. And without further adieu, here is this week's report:
Memory Work - We will be learning a series of Bible verses and poems this year. Our goal is to learn at least one Bible verse and one stanza of a poem every 2 weeks. We are doing this subject as a group. Our selections for this week are: Bible verse - Genesis 1:1
Poem - "Ooey Gooey" (Author Unknown)
Bible Study - This year, we are using an online Bible study called Love the Lord Bible Studies, which is an extensive study of every chapter of every book of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. We won't even come close to finishing the study this year, so the plan right now is to study selected books while Octe and I decide what would be the best course for Bible Study for next year and all the subsequent years of the children's homeschooling career. This week we covered the first four lessons of the Genesis study (there are 60 lessons total in the Genesis study, so this should keep us busy for a while). We are doing this subject as a group also.
Math - We have started a new math program this year that is highly manipulative-based and concept-focused because I really want the children to understand math - not just the mechanics of how to do math, but the why behind what they are doing. So as to ensure, as much as possible, a strong foundation without any gaps, I have gone back to the basics with the boys. As you can guess, we are moving fairly quickly, and we have covered six lessons this week in their math. Princess is really just starting out in her math studies, so we are moving more slowly with her; she has covered three lessons in her math book this week.
Thinking Skills - This is a subject we are covering with Princess this year, using the Developing the Early Learner series of workbooks. She has covered the first five pages in the first workbook for the series this week.
Phonics - So far, this is also a Princess-only subject. This week we have read the first four books of Set 1 of the Family Readers, Lessons 27-29 in the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading (her phonics primer), and Lesson 1 in the Explode the Code level 1 workbook.
Science - For at least the first half of the year, we will be studying insects, and we will be reading living books and doing experiments related to insects. We are doing this subject mostly as a group as well. We read pages 10-26 in The Bug Book, which is a fantastic old Childcraft book we got at a yard sale a while back. We read pages 6-7 of DK: Insect, which is also a great book with very interesting and detailed pictures (what else would you expect from DK?). We are using the book Creepy Crawlies and the Scientific Method for the lab component of this class. For the first several weeks, we will be observing and experimenting on crickets. This week, the kids all set up their terraria for a proper habitat for the crickets and went on a field hunt to catch some crickets. Each of the kids has about 9-15 crickets in his/her terrarium and they are enjoying taking care of them and watching their behaviors.
Handwriting - For the first quarter, Princess will be using a really neat program called Play and Write, which teaches all the upper and lower case letters with lots of hands-on activities and only a bit of physical writing at this point. As she also gets some handwriting practice in her Explode the Code workbooks, I felt like this would be a good, gentle start for her.
Literature - MelloYello and Jester are reading William Bradford: Pilgrim Boy as part of our Tapestry of Grace studies this week. MelloYello has gotten to the end of chapter 6 and Jester has reached the end of chapter 5. Jester and Princess have enjoyed a read-aloud of Ingri D'Aulaire's Pocahontas this week. Princess will also be listening to many fairy tales and classical poems this year. We will be reading fairy tales from Andrew Lang's Fairy Books throughout the year and our poetry will come from various sources. For the first couple of months or so, we will be reading from Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. This week we read "Rumplestiltzkin", "Why the Sea is Salt", and "Toads and Diamonds" from the Fairy Books, and we read the poems "To Alison Cunningham", "Bed in Summer", and "The Whole Duty of Children". Octe and I are loving the poems from A Child's Garden of Verses. They are so sweet and tender.
History - This week we are studying the founding of the Jamestown colony, and the lives of many famous people who were a part of those events. We learned that Pocahontas and John Smith actually didn't have a romantic relationship as myth would have us to believe; they were actually just friends. Pocahontas was only about 11 or 12 during the time when John Smith was in the Jamestown colony, and he was 28. Several years later, she did marry a colonist named John Rolfe, however. Here are the books covered this week by one or the other of the kids:

Read in their entirety -



Sections read -



Writing/Grammar - MelloYello and Jester wrote out the poem we are memorizing for copywork.
Spelling - MelloYello and Jester finished the first three lessons of Sequential Spelling, our spelling text for the year.
Picture Study - Princess studied "Self Portrait" and "The Mona Lisa", both by Leonardo da Vinci, this week using postcard-sized reproductions of the works.
Art - As a group, the kids painted an American flag and a Christian flag onto art canvas for us to use for pledges this year.
Famous Kentuckians - We are studying one famous Kentuckian each quarter for Kentucky history. My goal for each person we study is to read a biography about them, watch a movie about their life (or an event in their life), and go on a field trip related to that person. This quarter we are studying Daniel Boone. We are reading Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness by John Bakeless and this week we read chapter 1.
Movies - I am planning for us to watch at least one movie each week related to the period of history we are studying. We have a subscription to Netflix, which has a WIDE selection. This week we watched episodes 3&4 of 500 Nations, which is about the Native Americans' clashes with the Europeans as they settled in this country. We got a whole new perspective of Christopher Columbus through this video, and I'll have to say it is not a good one. He was actually a very greedy, brutal, ruthless and wicked man. Watch the video and you'll see what I mean.

That's all for this week's (well, actually, last week's) report. Hopefully, I'll be able to get the next report up by the end of the week. Thanks to everyone for your interest in our journey. It's nice to be back on the blog again.