52 books in 52 weeks challenge

I have decided I am going to participate in the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.
I am not sure how this will go, but I am going to give it a shot. I will try and blog about the books I read. I will give you fair warning though, I tend to like an eclectic mix of books. I like books by Christian Fiction authors, biographies, children's books and classics, with the occasional non-fiction book about animals thrown in for good measure.

Weekly update for the week of 12/13/2010

This was our last week before taking a 2 week break and what a fantastic week it was. I was amazed at all the fun things we did this week in CTC.

In Science N. is absolutely loving "Birds of the Air". In fact he gets a little distracted during school looking out the window and identifying different birds. He decided this week to start painting and drawing some birds on his own after school was done. This is huge for him. Here is a Cardinal he painted and I just love it.


He also did a great job on his notebooking page this week.

He finished his last weeks science experiment this week. He put eggs in Vinegar 3 days and it dissolved the shells. He knew this would happen since he had done it before. We talked about the fact that the egg also became swollen due to water passing through the membrane. Then he put the eggs in corn starch for 3 days. He then saw how the water passed back out through the membrane.

For his science experiment this week he and his sister tried catching "flys" (cheerios) with different types of beaks. It was pretty funny to watch.

In History he finished his picture of the Hanging gardens of Babylon. He took 2 days to color it and I was proud of the effort he put into it.


History project was a cookie replica of the statue in Nebuchadnezzars dream. This project was a hit with the entire family. He then used the cookie to talk about the different kingdoms each color represented and how God gave this dream way before some of the kingdoms ever existed.

We finished reading Jonah in storytime and are now reading Esther. Also moved from learning about the Assyrians to reading about Babylon and the Medes and Persians.

Their poetry painting this week was a snowy scene, which was appropriate since we had 2 snow storms this week.



N. said on Friday-what a fun week! He was right. Perfect week to end on before Christmas.

Weekly update for the week of 12/6/2010

This week seemed to fly by. N. continued in CTC and started some new books so that is always fun. In Science he started "Birds of the Air". He really, really likes this book. I wasn't sure what he would think since it doesn't have a lot of colorful pictures. He reads his pages and then does a good job orally narrating or answering questions about the reading. We have several bird feeders that he can see from our dining room/school room window and he is having a great time identifying the birds he sees. We found an app for his Ipod that has various birds and bird sounds on it. They are realistic enough to get the cats excited when he turns it on. We have a dear friend who loves birds and just moved to Kansas so he is going through and finding birds that she has that we don't.
In Geography of the Bible lands he just started learning about Egypt. He learned about the Sinai peninsula this week.
In storytime we finished God King and are now reading through the book of Jonah. He loves this book of the bible. In his independent history reading he continues to read about the Assyrians. For his history project we made a prayer box. I say we because he just couldn't figure out how to fold it and honestly either could I. This is the first history project that I almost gave up on, but finally we figured it out. Once it was made he did enjoy learning about A.C.T.S. prayer and spending some quiet time praying using the A.C.T.S. pattern. Also for history this week he started the Draw and Write through history. He did one of these last year and he enjoyed it, but there was no way with his shaky hands that he could draw the pictures, instead he would trace them. This weeks assignment was to draw the Hanging gardens of Babylon. He determined that with his mechanical pencil he could follow the directions and do it. I know beyond a shadow of a fact that God honored his determination, because he drew something that is far beyond anything he has ever been able to draw before. I had to walk out of the room and shed some tears.


One other fun thing we did this week that tied in with our studies was to go to a "Night in Bethlehem" that a local church was doing. They have their entire church decorated as a Jewish marketplace. You put on biblical clothing when you enter and then the market place had things like the pottery shop, the stone mason, the metal shop, hebrew school etc where they had activities for the kids. Of course the Roman guards and the tax collectors are there also. The shepherds then came into the city to tell what the angels told them and we followed them out to hear the angel choir and then to the nativity scene with live animals. N. loved all of this because it brought all his history from this year to life. I couldn't have planned a better activity for him.

Weekly update for the week of 11/29/2010

After taking a week off for Thanksgiving we were back at it this week. Overall we had a really good week. We did find out that N. had had a broken arm for a week that the doctors somehow missed on the x-ray. He is still able to do school with it though since it is in a sling and he is able to take it off for school.
The kids didn't complain at all about getting back to work. N. finished week 14 of CTC. In Poetry he read my favorite poem by Robert Frost "A Road Not Taken". He and S. painted their watercolors to go with it. He also performed the poem for his dad.







In Geography he finished studying about Israel, so today we ate Bagels and Cream Cheese and prayed for the Israeli people.



In Science he finished Land Animals of the Sixth Day. He really enjoyed this book, well all but this last chapter. It was on parasites and different types of worms like hookworm and trichinosis etc. He was very grossed out by it all. For our Science experiment we didn't have any live worms so we watched a lab online that showed what a mealworm does when cold water hits it.

In Drawn Into the Heart of Reading he is doing the Humorous Genre and finished Tales of Dust River Gulch today. Next week he will read More Tales from Dust River Gulch.

In History he is studying the Assyrians. It was great how our Storytime reading ties in so well with his history reading and his bible reading. From reading "The God King" he understands how cruel the Assyrians were. So now when he found out that Ninevah was the capitol of Assyria he realized why Jonah didn't want to go to Ninevah. We also talked about how amazing it was that God wanted to show mercy to the Assyrians after all they had done and what that means for how God wants to show mercy to us, even if we mess up.

One big discovery this week was something that is dramatically helping his writing. Normally he uses an adapted pencil that he calls his rocket pencil. This week he decided to use one of his sisters mechanical pencils. He came to me all excited to show me the difference in his writing. I must say it is amazing. The place it is helping the most is in math. He has a terrible time lining his numbers up and reading his writing so he makes calculation mistakes. Well now he doesn't do that.
The first picture is his best writing with his rocket pencil and the second picture is with the mechanical.





His cursive also looks so much better, even though he is writing with a broken arm.



His history project this week was a mosaic. Coloring and drawing will never be his strength, but he enjoyed this project anyway.

Weekly update for the week of 11/15/2010

This is actually an update for the past 2 weeks. Once again I didn't quite get my update done before the next week was half way over, so I decided to combine them. We have just finished week 13 in CTC. I asked N. this week if he was still enjoying it and he said yes!

In Poetry last week they painted paintings of a night scene that I really like and this week they painted a meadow with flowers and a spider web. Although it is tough to see the spider web.




In R & S English he worked on identifying comma splices and run on sentences. He also learned about using a variety of sentences in a paragraph. He wrote a paragraph about an incident this week where he was at the top of a slide on the platform and was dropping leaves on the boy below. He lost his balance and flipped over the railing and landed on the ground on his arm. His arm isn't broken, but he is still having pain and trouble lifting it above his head. We are thankful it wasn't worse. It did make a great story to write a paragraph about.

In Science he learned about spiders and mites and lots of creepy crawly stuff. For his Science experiment he made a web complete with sticky and non sticky yarn and then crawled his fingers across to eye drop his venom (water) on a bug (cap with sugar) to watch the sugar liquefy, and then he sucked it up with the eye dropper like a spider would. Wish I had a picture of his sisters face during this one. As you see from the pictures school is often done in pajamas around here. They start school early so usually clothes don't come on until lunch time.



In Geography we are about done studying Israel. N. and I have learned so much. In Math there continue to be good days and not so good days, but that is mostly due to N. getting tired of writing long problems out. Sometimes he does them on the white board and sometimes I let him dictate the steps to me, but often he just has to work them out on his own and takes breaks when his hands are tired. On Fridays we do Life of Fred fractions and he loves this book.

In history this week he made a map of Israel and the surrounding area. He worked very hard on it. He then quizzed himself by removing the labels and then putting them back in the proper spots.


He read the story of Elijah and the chariot of fire. He didn't have any trouble doing the written narration on this story. We continue to read "The God King" in storytime. This book has been a little tougher for him to follow, so I went back to letting him sketch pictures as I read and this definitely helps him keep track of the events and characters. He gives a much better detailed narration when he does this.

All in all we have had a good 2 weeks and next week we take the whole week off for a Thanksgiving break.

Weekly update for the week of 11/1/2010

N. had a good week this week. He decided that he was going to switch his entire schedule around and see if that helped his attitude about Math. He has always done the right side of his guide in the morning and then the left side after lunch. Well he decided to do the left side and part of the right in the morning and save Math for after lunch. He thinks it helped his attitude and it probably did. He started learning how to solve and balance equations in Math and about Parallelograms. He loves anything to do with Geometry and did ok with the equations once he understood it. Long division is his nemesis, mostly because with his dysgraphia, writing all that out wears him out.

In Poetry he and S. painted 2 different sky pictures. The second didn't seem to work out, so not sure what we did wrong. In Write with the Best he started a new unit on describing a character. It will be interesting to see how he does with this because it is more abstract than writing he has done before.

In Science he read more about reptiles and amphibians and in his science experiment he learned how frogs are able to breathe through their skin when in mud or under water.

His history project this week was making an ancient Phoenician game called twenty squares. He and S. both made game boards and pieces. The pieces were made out of glue and bread. They were very funny trying to roll up this "dough" because neither one liked the texture.

The fun part came when the game was completed and N. was able to challenge his Dad to a game.


In his Bible time he continues to work on memorizing Philippians 2. He is doing pretty well with this. He definitely knows the songs and then can usually transfer that to saying it.

In everything thing he did this week he tried to use his best handwriting. In school he had used wrist weights to steady his hands. He remembered this and put one on and his cursive did look better, but the weight is heavy so his shoulder got tired. I am looking at ordering a weighted glove for him. It is amazing to watch him mature and try and problem solve for himself how to make things work for him.

We finished reading Jashub's journal so next week we start The God King. I am looking forward to reading this since I have heard good things about it.

Weekly update for the week of 10/25/2010

We did lots of cool stuff this week. In Poetry they were back to painting watercolor paintings to go along with Robert Frost poems. This week they painted one that had a cool background with a feathered outline of a leaf.


In Science N. read about snakes and lizards. For his experiment this week he colored squares of paper towel different colors and then layered them like a chameleon's skin and dropped water on them to see how it all became one color. He learned that they don't really change color because of the background they are on but that it has to do with amount of light, heat and if they are trying to attract a mate.


In history N. learned about King Saul and David and the Philistines. N. and S. made a sling like David's. It was pretty funny watching them try and hit a target.


We finished reading about Israel in Geography. I learned as much as he did. In storytime we continued reading Jashub's journal.

N. continues to struggle some with reading comprehension when he reads more difficult books like the Story of the Ancient World. I have gotten some ideas from people on the HOD board to try with him and will try those next week. It is a book that uses a lot of older language so I think that is part of the challenge. In DITHOR he is reading Dragons of the Deep and he does a pretty good job with his activities in his workbook that have centered around finding the theme and the Main idea of a passage.

He finished his description of a place for Write with the Best and did a nice job with it. He also wrote a paragraph for Rod and Staff about the responsibilities of dog ownership which he did a nice thorough job on. I continue to see nice improvements in his creative writing.

Weekly update for the week of 10/18/2010

This week just seemed to fly by. It is hard to believe that October is almost done. In Poetry Noah finished memorizing "Fireflies in the Garden" by Robert Frost and presented it to his dad. He did a great job. Both kids are excited to get back to painting next week. In Language Arts Rod and Staff continues to go well. He continues to work through the dictation passages and I am noticing that it is helping his spelling. Now if he spells something wrong he often will catch it by looking at it.

In Math he moved into multiplying fractions by canceling out numerators and denominators and also how to multiply decimals and make sure that he has the correct placement for the decimal sign. He still seems to like the CLE math and lessons I think are going to be tough for him he does well on. He still says his favorite lessons are the ones that are geometry based. He likes angles and quadrilaterals. Must be like his daddy.

In Science he continued to read about various hoofed animals. He did a science experiment to see why Giraffes have to have high blood pressure. I didn't take pictures because I was being a pair of extra hands, but he sure enjoyed squirting water all over the kitchen as he demonstrated the high blood pressure with a water bottle with a tiny hole in it and a balloon. He was already trying to figure out how he could apply that and build his own water gun.

In Geography we continue to read about Israel. He also looked at a map to see where the 12 tribes of Israel were located. He loved reading about Samson this week in his Bible Quiet time and in History. His history project this week was to make a Philistine helmet. His sister couldn't let that go without making one of her own. She decided that since she is studying American History that hers was a Native American headdress. I loved hearing them laugh and giggle together as they worked. That is something that never happened when she was in school and he was home.



In Storytime we are reading Jashub's journal. Noah is enjoying this book and likes to see how Jashub will interpet the law to make rulings for the people.

I have to admit that I wasn't super excited about studying Ancient History, but with CTC and all the living books and projects it is very interesting and enjoyable.

Weekly update for the week of 10/11/2010

We had another good week this week. N. has really gotten where he can get his work done fairly quickly. In poetry he is choosing to memorize the poem "Fireflies in the Garden" by Robert Frost. He has been practicing the first half of it this week. The cats love that he uses a flashlight as a prop.
We officially switched to Rod and Staff English 5 this week. I wanted to see how he did with his writing assignment and it was the best writing I think he has ever done. Rod and Staff presented things in a gentle way and he wasn't overwhelmed at all. I also think it was easier because Write with the Best is giving him some confidence in his writing.

We are learning about Israel in Geography. I am learning things I never knew. N. still sometimes tends to "space out" when I am reading out loud the lesson, but if I stop here and there and make comments like "wow that is really cool" then he tends to get drawn back in. He enjoys doing the mapping activities. In "Genesis Finding our Roots" he learned all about the Tree of Life and how it is depicted in art in many cultures.

In Science he learned about horses and had fun with the science experiment where he tapped out the horses gaits with his fingers. He has heard the terms gallop, canter and trot since he was young, but never really knew what those were.

For Storytime we read the book of Ruth. That was a story we did last year and he remembered the characters in it, but not all the details so it was fun to see him anxiously wanting to know if Ruth married Boaz. One of the narration activities was doing an advertisement for the book. He was hesitant at first and then he really got into it and it was hysterical. I wish I would have videotaped it.

In history he learned about Deborah, Gideon and Joshua. He loved that his dad didn't remember anything about Deborah and he was able to tell him about her. His written narration was about Gideon and the Middianites. He still struggles right after he reads to answer the questions without looking. I don't know if it is still the difficulty of the text or what. Once he looks up the answers he seems to understand the story much better. He really liked this story and did a fantastic narration independently. This is huge for him.

His history project was making a model of the Jordan river and re-enacting how the river parted to let the Israelites through when the priests held the ark of the covenant in the water, and then how they took 12 stones and made a memorial. He had fun telling his dad this story.


This week I have once again been reminded of how easy HOD makes it to homeschool, especially since S. and I have decided we don't like her English and are having to totally revamp things. That is very stressful, but I don't have to worry about that with N. at all.

Weekly update for the week of 10/4/2010

It was a good week this week. We had a fun time with school and I noticed some improvements in some areas. In History N. continued to study Egypt and biblical history that ties in with Egypt. Noah amazed me with some of his insight. Usually he reads and doesn't say much after he reads, but this week he was really starting to makes some connections which is huge for him. He read about Moses and the golden calf and he says "Mom don't you find it kind of amazing that while Moses was up receiving the 10 commandments, the people were down already breaking the first 2 of them." I also have seen growth in this area when we do the Friday activity during storytime where we both find verses from Proverbs that connects to the story we are reading. At first this was hard for him, but now he is really doing a great job with it. He also showed increased independance with his written narration this week. He did it 95 % on his own and I saw him taking things he is using in his writing curriculum and carrying these over. He was careful about his wording and he made sure that everything flowed and stuck to the topic.

His history project this week was Aaron's Breastplate and the 12 stones that symbolized the 12 tribes of Israel. It was pretty cool because S. helped him figure out how to mix the colors of paint to most accurately resemble the stones in his notebook. He worked very hard on his Hebrew writing.


For Science he was learning about various animals in the Rodentia family. His Science experiment was about Anteaters. He and his sister tried to pick up Chocolate Chips with their tongues. S. was actually very good at it and N. and I decided she would make a good Anteater.


He started a new book for DITHOR reading this week. It is for the non-fiction genre and it is called Dragons from the Deep. He is enjoying, but needs to work a little bit on remembering what he read.

Both kids once again really enjoyed doing the watercolor paintings. In fact S. is very upset that for the next 2 weeks there isn't a painting since N. will be memorizing a Robert Frost poem.



We finished reading "The Boy of the Pyramids" for storytime. Noah really enjoyed that book and again I saw him making predictions and connections that he doesn't usually make.
He continues to enjoy his Bible Quiet time and is working on memorizing Philippians 2.

In Grammar we continued our trial of Rod and Staff 5 and it is going very well. I want to see how he handles a writing lesson in there before I decide to completely switch over, but so far I am impressed with his retention and how much he seems to enjoy it.

Weekly update for weeks of 9/20 and 9/27

I didn't have my act together to post last week so I am posting a review of 2 weeks. It has been a good 2 weeks. Things are flowing smoothly now and I am starting to see some growth in some areas. In Science N. continues to read from the Exploring Creation with Land Animals of the 6th day. He loves this book. Last week he made air dry clay and put our 2 cats foot prints in it and then also one of the dogs. They weren't sure what they thought of it, but N. liked to see the difference in the 2 cats footprints since one is a big boy and one a dainty girl.


He continues to do well with CLE math, but I haven't been completely sold on CLE Language Arts. The looks of Rod and Staff had always intimidated him, but I asked him to give it a trial and see what he thought of it. We have done 2 lessons so far and he says he really likes it. We do most of it orally and I like that since I can make sure he is getting the concepts. I keep the writing down so his hands don't fatigue and I let him do things like write on the white board which seems easier for him. We are going to continue another week and see what we think. I have a feeling we will stick with it.

Last week he finished his first paragraph for Write with the Best. It was supposed to be a descriptive paragraph about an object and he chose our big cat Rudi. He still gets a lot of mental blocks when it comes to writing, but I thought he did a pretty good job with this one.
"My cat Rudi thinks he is king of the world. He sits on the cat post like a panther looking over his kingdom. He gets mad when everyone ignores him. He then randomly chomps the first person he sees. However, if you pet the furry beast he will purr loudly. My large tuxedo king can make you do almost anything."

Both kids continue to enjoy the painting. In fact I know it is S's favorite part of the week. Here is N's paintings from last week and this week.


Here is S's painting from this week.


In History we continue to learn about Egypt along with stories about Moses. For storytime we are reading "Boy of the Pyramids". Noah loves this book and is probably giving his best narrations ever. His narrations about his readings in History of the Ancient World are improving. I have taken Carrie, the curriculum authors suggestions and before he starts to read I write just the main people and places and tell him which is a person and which is a place and that seems to help him not get bogged down when he reads. He also is highlighting and that seems to help him.
He enjoyed working on his history project this week.



He continues to work hard on his notebooking pages. He likes to write in pen because it is darker and his hands don't get as tired, the down side is that his tremor shows up more in his writing. I continue to let him dictate some, type some and write some depending on how much space is available for him to write.


The highlight of this week was working on his Drawn Into the Heart of Reading Project for his book "Buffalo Bill". He dressed up and answered questions his dad would ask him about Buffalo Bill. We don't exactly have cowboy outfits around here so he had to improvise with an Indiana Jones hat and a marshmallow gun. It was pretty funny.



The other big news of the week is he started trombone lessons. He wanted to practice at 6am, thankfully his daddy stopped him.

Weekly update for the week of 9/13/2010 for N.

This was our 4th week of CTC and things really started to come together. N. became much more comfortable with the routine of CTC and started doing most of the independent boxes on his own. He still needs some help with the Science experiment. This week's science experiment was the one minor glitch in our week. He has been learning about the relationship between prey and predator. The experiment was a simple one, but for some reason it took much longer to do than usual. Our deer kept multiplying and I kept having to cut out more until we had over 60 deer. Not sure if we did something wrong or not, but eventually he was able to see that as the deer increased the cougars increased and then as the cougars increased the deer decreased.

The rest of the week was wonderful. Both kids enjoyed doing the watercolor painting this week and I think they turned out great.


The big highlight was the History Project. First Noah made a headband for his shepherd head covering and then we had our Hebrew meal for lunch. It was so much fun.





Noah is doing a good job in his history notebook. Sometimes his writing is neater than others, depending on how tired he is, but I feel like he is putting forth his best effort.
He loves the Bible Quiet time. He likes to do it last thing to close out his day on a good note. He is having a good time with the CD that has Philippians 2 set to music.

I was worried about Write with the Best and that it might overwhelm him, but I really like the way it breaks things into small chunks. He wrote his first paragraph this week describing an object. He chose to describe Rudi our cat. He needed some encouragement and some guidance to fit all his descriptive adjectives and adverbs into good sentences, but I can tell this will be something he will grow in this year.

We have been using CLE language arts and he likes it, but I am still not sure he is retaining. We are going to try a week trial of Rod and Staff 5 once it gets here and see how it goes. We will do most of it orally and I am not sure how his retention will be that way, but I want to try it.

We continue reading The Golden Bull and this has been an enjoyable book for both of us. I think it gives a very good view of the Pagan religion in Ur in the time of Abraham.