First Week of School

It was a great first week back to school.  I'm enjoying our new schedule and so far feel that it is a good balance between work and play.  In the mornings the kids complete grammar, piano practice, chores and we read through the Bible and Miller stories.  The rest of the morning is spent playing outside, running errands, doing activities, etc.  The afternoons start with our Bible reading time and then the kids have "independent stations."  There are three stations and they are Spanish, Language Arts (writing practice, spelling, critical thinking activities), and Math.  The kids can choose which order they wish to complete their stations.  The timer gets set for 25min. and if the kids work efficiently during this time, they can move to the next station when the timer goes off.  If they have not worked hard or fooled around, the plan will be for them to move to the next station, but at the end of school time, they will have to complete the work they did not complete and miss out on TV time.  After independent station work, we move on to group studies that include Five in a Row, Science, Socials, History, etc.


Bible  Reading the Jesus Story book Bible.
Psalm 119:      Discussing and brainstorming how we can take care of our bodies, eg. drinking water, eating healthy, exercising, brushing teeth.
Each afternoon before we start school, the kids and I are sitting down to read our bibles.  We decide which passage we will read and then we independently read.  At the end we discuss the verses we read and then pray for our school day.  This week we read through Philippians chapter 4, Proverbs chapter 3 and chapter 4 and we read Wisdom and the Miller's stories that went along with the verses.


We finished up reading School and the Millers and have started on Missionary and the Millers.  The kids constantly beg for me to read more of this series!

Math
Aiden- Singapore 3A Completed Unit 1 on numbers up to 10, 000.  Finding place value, rounding to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000, finding patterns.
He started on Unit 2 adding 2-4 digit numbers.
Caileigh-Singapore 1B-Worked with addition and subtraction of numbers up to 40.  Caileigh can work well with to complete these questions with the use of the abacus.

Language Arts 

Reading, "The Finest Horse in Town", and doing Five in a Row.  We discussed how the story style is reminicing.
Reviewed a poem memorized last year, "The Goops".  Reviewed nouns, both proper and common, pronouns.  We have started memorizing the definition of a verb and looked at verbs as action words and verbs as a state of being.
Worked through a spelling unit.  Aiden got 100% on the preview!

(Click on picture to make it larger)
{My name is Aiden, I am 7, I like Star Wars}

{My name is Caileigh, I am 5, I like to play.}




















Science  Reviewed some basic facts about horses and added a horse, under mammals, to our animal chart.  Read a Magic School Bus chapter book on Polar Bears.  We're working on adding the animals from the story to our animal chart.


Social Studies  Read about the Diaspora through The Story of the World.

Health and Career  Read Prudence and the Millers about prejudice and people who are different.  We discussed what it means to be mentally challenged and when I was describing a child they know that has Down Syndrome, Aiden says, "so, is it like there is a change in their genetic code?"  I told him that he was exactly correct and it is a change in their DNA.  We discussed how God has made us all the same inside, although we may look and act very different on the outside.  Aiden says, "Yea, because we're all sinners on the inside."
We read through a booklet called, "The elementary safety book for children" and discussed topics like home, outdoor, road and car, animals and farm, fire, electricity, water, personal and emergency safety.

For chores, each day both kids clean their bedroom, get dressed, and make breakfast one morning.  Aiden also washes down the bathroom and Caileigh washes the windows.

Caileigh enjoys spending time with, and reading to her little brothers.

We hosted a "Back to Homeschool Party" with 3 other families.  We enjoyed the time spent together.

Art  We learned how to draw a flag that looks like it is moving in the wind.
 Talked about perspective and practiced drawing fruit to look as though it was stacked in a bowl.
We used Draw Write Now to draw horses.
We painted watercolor paintings.



PE  Each day we walked/bike rode to the neighborhood horses to feed them carrots from our garden.