{ with eager hands }: Week in Review // July 16-20

This week has been busy! Our church had Vacation Bible School, and the two big girls left off Thursday morning for MeMe’s house for a weekend of GA’s and Mission Work Day fun! (GA’s stands for Girls in Action, a program within the Baptist church. So my girls are getting a Baptist AND Assemblies of God upbringing Smile )

Goofy-grin girl!

This was the beginning of Unit 3 in Preparing, our Heart of Dakota curriculum for MG. We moved forward from Noah and began to investigate more of early man and what life was like then.

As I said in a previous post (I think?) each day is laid out in a two-page spread. The left side of the spread is all the history work, and the right side is your 3 R’s & S work (the “S” being your science). At least for a while, I’ll try to keep it all grouped here that way. For now, anyway. :)

History

Reading About History

MG is moving through the Ice Age book, with Jabeth as a young boy.

Storytime

This week has been reading separate sections of the Ice Age book. This box focuses on the story as that – a story. We consider character, setting, plot and so forth. This box is generally just a chit-chat between us, or between MG and her dad.

History Project

Cave Art -- We didn’t do the History Project, cave art, at all. I’m a little bummed, but we just had so much going on this week that it never got there. On the up side, MG got into drawing, and drew more than was expected of her from her science book with intentions to add to the page. Pretty nifty!

Research/Vocabulary/Geography/Timeline

Research: This week was accessing cave art through reference books and online. We started with Wikipedia, but there’s some Anti-Wiki gene in me, and that’s how we found this site and was amazed at the drawings from Lascaux, France. THIS LINK is how we found it. Neat little place right there, too! We also had out the a couple Childcraft books from my childhood that are well-loved here (though there is nothing Young Earth about those books, the pictures are great.)

Vocabulary: MG takes certain words, looks them up, writes it down, puts it in a sentence and then comes up with an illustration on the back. Easy Peasy.

Poetry

This week is “Rain” by Robert Louis Stevenson. We read it several times together, with me lovingly exaggerating expression (ahem.) and then complete the assignment. It feels weird to call it that, as I am learning to be very laid back with it. We worked through William Wordsworth last year, and it was - A. Struggle. This year it’s all about Robert Louis Stevenson and I think he is going to be good for us. Indeed.

When she is engaged, the conversation is so good! It’s a simple 4-line poem, but for whatever reason, she seemed to respond to it well. The weekly innovation activity went well (that’s what I call it…anyone else have a different or better term than innovation?) She was to essentially change the poem into a poem about snow. As simple as it sounds, she had to consider rhyming words and meter. I realized in last week and this week’s innovation activities that as much as she reads, composition (and composition of poetry at that) isn’t something that we have worked on much. She’s warming up to it, for sure.

Language Arts

Grammar: We are taking Rod & Staff Grammar 3 slow and easy, but it really is super easy for her. Now me? I haven’t diagrammed a sentence in umpteen-twenty years!

Reading/Literature: DITHOR’s focus for the month-ish is Fantasy, and MG is actually re-reading The Borrowers. I decided to read only this book for the entire 15 days allotted, but I will definitely move at a quicker pace with the next genre study. So far, we have looked at setting, characters, some word work, a few Godly traits, and the like. Monday she had to describe a setting in the book in writing, and I had to draw it. HA! It drove her crazy how I did it!

Dictation: there are 5 points that I have MG check, and that I also check following a dictation exercise (3 times a week)

Capitalization
Punctuation
Spacing (special note on the spacing between sentences)
“floaters” (Papa can’t stand that I say that ::eyes roll:: but she tends to let words float above the line and that’s just how I began to explain the issue to her. that’s all)
Spelling (the exercises are SO EASY right now. I am thinking of ramping it up for her in a couple weeks, once I feel she has a great handle on it all)
General neatness (we are both learning the hard way that copywork and dictation from the start of her education would have likely nipped this little beast in the bud. Lessons learned my way, which is always the hard way)

Math

It’s Math-U-See Gamma, and we’re over half-way. I am ready to be done an move on!

Science Exploration

MG is reading through One Small Square: Arctic Tundra. The activities between oral narration, written narration, drawing and copywork from the text and the Bible, and a Day 4 experiment.

Bible

Bible Study was adding verse 4 to Psalms 1:1-3 (we added verse 3 last week). Monday’s time together was so nice – I hope this keeps up!

By Wednesday, I noticed that both MG and I were getting the hang of the expectations, set by my and the HOD book. This is making things flow a little quicker.

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Unit 3 Day 4 will be completed Monday when they come back from NC and we will move into Unit 4 right after that.

What about the other children?

Honestly? It’s been lots and lots of free play. For the most part, it’s been fine, as the Littles love to play with EK, and EK loves to mother them. :) They have joined in MG’s activities a little, but mostly, they’ve been left to their own devices. Don’t worry, it won’t be like that for long….

I am going to finish up some things for HR and he will begin his lessons in a couple weeks. My original plan was to start EK next week, but then that would send HR and SA into a play-buddy tailspin and Mama can’t deal with that. Neither can this structure we call a house. So the plan is amended and HR starts, then EK. SA will start LHTH Super Lite….sometime. :)

MG showing SA, HR and I how to play a simplified version of of Ogres & Elves (a great cooperative game!)

SA and Papa getting cozy after some playtime in the water. We are LOVING Papa staying home more! I need to do a post on all the canning he’s been doing!