First Week

We have officially completed our first week of school and it went very well. We started off the week by going to the Creation Museum. N. is studying Ancient History this year so I figured it would give my visual learner another peg to hang his knowledge on as we go through the year. He enjoyed all the exhibits, but the Noah's ark exhibit was his favorite.


N. was very excited to get back to a HOD program. He loves all the activities and books that are in the programs. I was concerned about the more advanced reading that would be required of him in CTC, but he seems to be doing ok with it at this point. I think it helps that the main spine "The History of the Ancient World" has a lot of biblical history in it at this point so it is stories he is familiar with. He loves listening to the Diana Waring "What in the World" CD. He thinks she is funny and that is always a good thing for him.

For Drawn into the Heart of Reading he started the book "Buffalo Bill". He likes adventure stories and decided he would like to spend a day with Bill hunting and canoeing. We picked up where we left off with our vocabulary and language arts books and he is doing well.

In Science he started reading the "Land Animals of the Sixth Day" book and of course my animal loving kid loves this. The experiment this week was on how camouflage helps the prey from being eaten by the predator. He filled up a laundry basket with crumpled sheets of paper the same colors as 3 of the colors in skittles. He then dumped the skittles in the basket and had 2 minutes to find them. They kept sinking to the bottom so his hypothesis wasn't quite correct, but he had so much fun doing it. His older sister S decided she couldn't miss out on the fun so she did her own version of searching. She decided to start throwing all the colored paper out of the basket. When I told her she couldn't do that she said "it's deforestation". That cracked me up. N. seems to really enjoy having her home with him this year even though they are often working in different rooms.


For Poetry this year he will be painting a different watercolor painting each week to go along with a Robert Frost Poem. This will be a challenge for him due to his hand coordination, but he loved doing it this week. He wanted to do the poem copywork in manuscript instead of typing it and found it was tougher than he thought to fit it all on the 3x5 card. Next week he may just type it. I found a really nice portfolio at Michaels that I plan to use to store all his paintings.


We started the book "Genesis Finding our Roots" that we do for Bible Study together. I think it will be a good book to give him a solid foundation for what he believes. We also started the book "A Child's Geography Vol II -The Holy Lands". We started learning about Turkey. He is having some trouble answering questions after we have read, but I think this will improve as he gets back in the habit of oral narration and listening for details.

For Storytime we are reading "The Dinosaurs of Eden" and he loves it. There are different types of oral narration exercises this year and he is still getting used to those, but again I know this is an area that we just need to keep working one.

This year his program, CTC, comes with beautiful notebooking pages. They have boxes he needs to write in and I was worried it would be too difficult for him, but he did great this week. We do a combination of him writing right in the box if what he is writing is short, dictation to me if the writing is really long, typing his written narration, and writing on a bigger piece of paper and folding it. He kept a good attitude through it all and can see that he will have a great notebook to look at it when the year is over.


All in all it was a great first week. It is a little tricky for me figuring out how to juggle time with N. and S. , but we are already starting to figure out a routine.

Summers almost over

Summer is almost over. Hard to believe how fast it has gone. We will officially start school on August 24th. We will have a "new student" in our school this year. S who is in 10th grade will be joining us. She felt that leaving ps to come home was exactly what God wanted her to do. It has been a challenge picking curriculum and doing lesson plans for her, but I think we are ready to go. You can see the curriculum we have chosen in the sidebar.

I never thought I would homeschool even one, much less 2, but I know it is what God has called us to do so I am excited to see what he does with it all.

Weekly update for the week of 4/26/10

We had another good week of school. Hard to believe the year is almost over. N continues to enjoy our days.

In history this week he learned about Napoleon and Simon Bolivar. He knew of Napoleon because one of his favorite movies is "Night of the Museum 2". His written narration this week was on Handel. We had studied him in our composer study so this was a pretty easy narration for him. In his independent history reading he is reading "Mozart the Wonder Boy" and is listening to a CD that goes along with this book. He touched his Momma's heart when we were listening to this and he asked me to dance with him. We danced a very clumsy waltz around the room.

His history project was making the French Revolution flag. He was proud of his work when he was done.


He continues to improve on his ability to research topics and needs less help with this now than he did before. He makes vocabulary cards each week and usually does very well with this. This week however he got a little lazy with his definitions and so all his sentences started with "Look there is a ...". We talked about putting forth his best effort and comparing those sentences to ones he had done earlier in the year and he agreed he could do better, so he redid them.


In science he finished up his book on Pasteur and microbes and is now reading "Albert Einstein". He did an experiment last week of putting plain bread, a piece of bread with plain water on it and a piece of bread with sugar water on it all in seperate bags and put them in a dark, warm place. We were supposed to then check them in a week. We pulled the bags out expecting to see mold and we saw nothing. Our best guess is the preservatives in the bread kept it from molding.

His poem this week was called "Historical Associations" and he was sad since it is the last new poem of the year. He wrote his own poem based on this poem and did a nice job with it.

In Math he was very excited to finish up the 400 level of CLE math and started the 500 level. We had done the 400 level this year since CLE was advanced compared to what he did in ps.
Math is definitely one of his strengths.

Co-op ended this week and then they had a homeschool expo. N was in a drama class so they performed some plays for the expo. He was Prince Charming in a short version of "Sleeping Beauty". I think he made a very handsome prince.

Weekly update for the week of 4/19/10

I told my dh this week that it was hard to believe that it is almost the end of April and we are still going strong and really not dealing with much burn out at all. I know that is due to how great this curriculum is.

In history this week he continued to read about Peter the Great. He enjoyed this book and making a notebook page that had some of the things that interested Peter the Great.


We also read about the 7 year war and how that war impacted the colonies. On Friday we read about King George III and the American Revolution. N wrote his written narration on this reading. We have watched all of "The Liberty Kids" DVD's in the past year so he enjoyed reading more about this. One of his favorite characters in those DVD's was Lafayette so he was happy that he was mentioned.

In Science he finished reading about Leonardo Da Vinci and started a book about Pasteur. His science experiment was to take 3 sealed bags, one with plain bread, one with bread with 20 drops of water and one with bread with 20 drops of sugar water and put them in a warm dark place and check them in a week. He wanted to know why it says to not open the bags. I told him he would find out why when he looks next week.

His researched etching this week and then did one of his own. I was very proud of both the sketch he drew to model the etching after, and the actual etching itself. It is our Greyhound Bailey.


His Poetry assignment this week was to write 4 paragraphs about his "Treasures". As always the highlight of the week was reading this for his dad.

Weekly update for the week of 4/12/10

After taking last week off we were rested and ready to dive back in. This week we continued our tour of history with the Elizabethan time period. N has been drawing pictures while I read of key points in the readings and it is amazing how that improves his oral narration. He is just such a visual kid. I think it helps him listen better also. His one comment though as we did CHOW and "The Wonderful Winter" was that there sure were a lot of people loosing their heads back then. Our storytime reading has been "The Wonderful Winter" and he has amazed me with how willing he is to sit and listen to this. Once day the reading was 25 pages long. I thought for sure he would loose interest, but he didn't. He was able or tell me all the important details. At the beginning of the year there is no way he could have done that.

My DH was home today and was around as we read Child's History of the World. He was amazed at the improvement in N's ability to answer the questions or find the answers if he couldn't remember. When N went in and did his written narration by himself, he was very impressed. He had helped with written narrations earlier in the year and couldn't believe he was at the point of doing a nice 5 sentence narration with assistance only for final editing.

In Science he has continued to study Leonardo Da Vinci. He was fascinated with the backwards writing that Da Vinci did in his notebooks. His experiment was looking at the difference between voluntary and involuntary muscles. He learned that voluntary muscles get very tired.

He does his Geography all by himself now unless he just can't find something on the globe.


The history project this week was making a Renaissance necklace. I think I had the wrong type of toothpaste for the fast drying clay. I ended up with a gooey mess, so we bought air dry clay.


He continues to do well with his math and language arts. He has decided he loves anything to do with symmetry and congruent shapes. He definitely takes after his dad in that.

Weekly update for the week of 3/29/10

Hard to believe we finished week 29 of Preparing this week. This year has gone so fast. This week in storytime we continued reading some stories from "Hero Tales". I think it has been good for N to read about those that made big sacrifices for Jesus. We haven't read many of this type of story before so after a few of them he has asked me if it was a true story. He loves seeing how God works things for His good, even things that seem bad at the time. At the end of the week started reading "The Wonderful Winter". He is already drawn in by the fact that Robert is running away to save the dog.

For Drawn Into the Heart of Reading he did a project based on "A Mouse called Wolf". He made a character puppet and then retold the book to my dh.


His Poetry assignment was reading "Keepsake Mill" by Robert Louis Stevenson and then he had to come up with something that also wouldn't change through the years. He came up with an outline about the creek by our house and orally told me a story about the things he has done with his dad at that creek at different times in his life and ended it with talking about how someday he will take his son to that same creek.

In History he learned about the Spice Route and made a chart of spices from India and mapped the route. He also learned about Michelangelo and the beginning of the Renaissance time period. He finished reading Pedro's Journal and started reading "William Shakespeare and the Globe". He knows his sister has read Shakespeare in high school, so he likes the fact he is studying something she also studied.

In Science he is reading "Who Was Leonardo Da Vinci?" He made a notebooking page about Da Vinci. Often for his notebook pages if he has written cursive I will let him type the other copy work that is needed for the page.


Next week we will take a spring break and hopefully enjoy some nice weather.

Weekly update for the week of 3/15/10

This has been a crazy week due to a family emergency, but thanks to how easy HOD is to implement school went off without a hitch. We finished up week 27 in Preparing Hearts for His Glory.
In storytime we finished reading "Door in the Wall". The language in this book was tough for him to understand at first, but he really grew in his listening skills and I am sure it helped his vocabulary skills. He loved this book. He could really relate to Robin and loved that even with Robin's crooked legs he was able to save the castle.
In Science he finished "One Small Square: Coral Reef" and started on "Columbus". He did an experiment with his dad where they looked at the density of salt water. It was tough to see the results at first because someone (me) had put the red food coloring away where no one could find it and they tried using green, yellow and blue. Once they found the red it worked great.


He researched stained glass windows and then made his own. I was really proud of him for the time he spent coloring his window. We have been talking about giving everything his best effort and he really did on this project.



He loved his written narration topic this week. He was to write about the invention of the compass. He is enjoying history more and more, but science and inventions are still his first love. He even said "this narration was fun!".

He also learned about Marco Polo and when we mentioned it in the car his big sister who is in Advanced Social Studies in ps said "Marco Polo was a real person?". He then told her all about him.

The one other thing that made our week crazy is our church started our performances of "Living Cross". It is something our entire family participates in. We start rehearsals in January and give 10 performances. N loves being in it. It is all about Jesus's ministry, his death and his resurrection. This year it means so much more to N because he understands so many things he didn't before. He knows why the Pharisees are so "mean" and why the people go from waving palm branches to yelling for his crucifixion. All year as we have done story time or other books and he has to make a connection he almost always connects it to Living Cross.

So once again I am thankful for such a wonderful year and a wonderful curriculum.