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Roosterhill

Weekly Wrap Up: Week 4

Week 4

In our homeschool this week…

The biggest focus of our homeschool this week was on both the Presidential Election and the Hymn Festival. The children all went with us to the polls to vote. The Hymn Festival is a competition in which the girls go to and play in front of a judge and they receive a score from unprepared to Superior. 

Sweetie: This Week she had a test in ACE Grammar and Math in both of these she did well. We, however, require our children to correct the errors they make on the tests. She is finally starting to get done with her work more quickly. Although she still needs to work faster and concentrate instead of play. 

Sugar Pie at Softball

Bullet: Bullet has been working hard on her math and she is still working through Math Mammoth decimals & fraction book. She is starting to gain a deeper understanding of fractions and decimals. She also had her first Spelling Test. I think she is most excited about her Greek as she announced that she was only a few weeks away from reading Greek words! 

Bullet in Center-field

Sugar Pie: She finally finished her last 1st grade level Math Book and started her 2nd grade book. In our Math Program there are 10 books to complete and the first book is a review of the previous years work, the review is for children that have the summer off.  So, she got to skip the first book (201) and go to the second book (202). She was super excited about skipping a whole book! 

Sweetie working on her hymns

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing… 
This week we went to the Poll Place, Hymn Festival and to our wonderful PE Co-op.  

Math

My favorite thing this week was… 
Definitely my favorite thing was the girls competing and doing well in Hymn Festival. I love to hear them play and to see their progress. It's been wonderful!

Sugar Pie Sorts Flash Cards

What’s working/not working for us…
So far I think everything is working for us but the girls are taking a long time to finish their work. I really think it may be my fault. But as far as our curriculum it's all working for us!

Shoo runs circles during PE

Questions/thoughts I have…
My main question is why are we taking so long to finish school. I'm thinking its because I am not giving them my first 4 hours of the day and I'm trying to multi-task. I'm also not getting up early enough I think. I'm still pondering this question, all I know for sure is we cannot continue to finish at 4 & 5 pm. That's just silly.

PE Co-op

Things I’m working on…
I'm currently writing a Nature Study Curriculum for the kiddos next semester for the K-4. We'll take Nature walk and participate in the Great Bird Count in February. A little more low key for the spring.  Additionally, I'm putting together Math Folders to help the kids increase their basic computation speed. 

PE Co-op

I’m cooking…
Low calorie foods and this week I made Lemon Thyme Tuna Burgers which were really tasty and the kiddos enjoyed them too! 

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}

Capturing the context of everyday contentment one photo at a time....

{Pretty}

Our two year old little heart stopper, she is such a sweet thing and looked adorable bundled up. (I live in Texas this is usually as bundled up as we get ;) )

{Happy}

After 5 years of living on land that needed a tractor we finally found and bought a tractor in our price range. As you can see it ain't exactly a brand new Kubota or John Deere. We pay cash and when you pay cash $14K+ for a tractor is a lot of money so you look for MUCH cheaper used ones like this one.  It's not new but it's new to us and I was so excited to get it I spent the next day shredding! Our property is so overgrown there are so may places the kids cannot use and we cannot go because we cannot get through the brush. This Ford 2000 made me HAPPY!!!!

{Funny}

In case you cannot tell that is our three youngest children and the two middle girls have set up a hair salon and everyone is getting their hair wet and done. They are speaking with fancy accents and having lots of fun. Don't worry no scissors were used in this reenactment.

{Real}

So, I've been organizing our home to make it more Mama friendly and this is our toy and book area. A big ole mess! There are several kinds of toys in that box and many toys  that need to go to the trash. I've been inspired by Leila to organize and clean up around here so we've been rather busy when school is not in session! 

For more contentment go to Like Mother, Like Daughters

Homeschool Weekly Wrap-Up

Week 3

In my life this week......This week had a few unplanned adventures on Monday I shredded (cut down small trees and brush ) on our new to us tractor that we purchased on Sunday. Then on Wednesday we had to go into town  which took about 3 hours of our time in the middle of the day. 

 In my homeschool this week....Thus we ended up not completing as much work as I would of liked.  Regardless, every morning our family does what we call the Family Gathering we are slowly adding all the elements of the FG right now the girls complete their State Study, IEW Linguistic Development, and now Mystery of History. 

We didn't formally do history last year. Instead I assigned Biographies to Bullet (and she read about 30 Childhood of Great Americans), but neither Sweetie or Sugar Pie had an official history. Although we did watch several documentaries and visited history based museum exhibits. Then we tried a couple of History programs that were not a good fit for us so they were abandoned. After months of research we have landed at Mystery of History. This week we started Mystery of History Volume 1 and we are enjoying a family time together digging into history. 

On Friday we had our presentations in our Co-OP. Bullet & Sugar Pie chose a state to learn more about , created a presentation board and then told the audience about their states Georgia and Pennsylvania respectively.  While Sweetie recited the poem "The Little Man that Wasn't There" from our IEW Linguistic Development. Bullet and Sugar are working on presentation skills, while Sweetie is working on annunciation and articulation.

Best picture of Sweetie  (who has mild autism) in a while...what a smile!

 Sweetie is adjusting well to using ACE. She enjoys knowing exactly how many pages she needs to do each day and which page is the last page she needs to finish so she can enjoy a work free weekend. She uses ACE for Math, English & Spelling.  Although she had tests scheduled because of our crazy week  they were postponed.

Piano Lessons preparing for Hymn Fest with our beloved Teacher Ms. Bethany

 Bullet only worked on an Essay for an Essay contest this week. A lesson learned by the teacher that I need to plan out her contest work better and MAKE SURE she completes the parts in little bites instead of big chunks. But we got the essay finished and submitted.

Bubba was under the weather but we didn't go to the hospital!

Sugar Pie our 2nd grader  Lost her Spelling Book this week. :( Other then that she had a pretty uneventful week completing her work and only escaping a few times. 

Bubba & Shoo School - Really involved teaching Bubba to sit on the couch by himself to get his asthma treatment. When he was successful I gave him candy as a reward! He did a pretty good job more then 75% of the time earning his candy!

Places we're going and people we're seeing...We had our weekly PEP Co-op as well as our Part of the Greater Multitude Choir, Piano Lessons & Theory. Bullet had her online classes on Thursday. 

I'm Reading .... ABC Herbal by Horne 

{Pretty, Happy, Funny,Real}

{Happy}

Chick-fil-a Pirates & Princess night, we don't celebrate Halloween so this was a good chance for the kiddos to get to dress up.

{Funny}

from my Facebook....

{Real}

Making Blood from our Apologia Anatomy Science Try This 

For more folks capturing the context of everyday contentment you can go to Like Mother, Like Daughter
New....

Vote in our Exit Poll: A homeschool Project

credit: www.watchusplaygames.com

Who did you vote for in the presidential election? Please answer our Exit Poll to the Right ----->

You can let us know why in the comments!

Thanks for voting!

The students of Roosterhill Academy

Barack Obama

  2 (5%)

 

Mitt Romney

  32 (86%)

 

Gary Johnson

  1 (2%)

 

Jill Stien

  0 (0%)

Virgil Goode

  1 (2%)

 

Rocky Anderson

  0 (0%)

Write In

  1 (2%)

 

Those are our results ...thanks for participating!

Softball

Bullet at Bat....base stealer extraordinaire 

 Sweet little Shoo Shoo peeks around the stroller...'Mama is it time to go yet or will I get to bat?'

Bubba has been engrossed in softball and can now throw and swing a bat! 

Sugar Pie...line drive hitter up to bat!

We've had lots of fun eating dinner and watching the girls play at the Ball park!

Completing Wisdom Book 2 and moving on ...

So here is how we tackled this Booklet and I'd love to hear what you think of the booklet and how you went about completing it...

As far as completing the Scripture Meditation, Character Quality, Theme Song you can click on them to see the adjusted forms I found for my smaller children around the web. 

Insights Through Investigations

We didn't do any projects because we do Hey Andrew Teach me Some Greek. I felt that was enough for our study of Konie Greek. The kiddos on their own sang and played the Greek song on the piano.
Since we have Netflix we watched St. John in Exile. It was a bad night for me I was super tired with the twins and we had a new foster kiddo and I ...well, I fell asleep. My children however watched every minute of it and my 9 year old wrote a two page long paper on John and then rattled off a bunch of facts she learned. St John in Exile is a One Man Production it is very well done and the actor was excellent. I think we'll rent it again when I am more well rested. My kids really enjoyed it and like I said they remembered a great deal and were able to tell me about it in great detail with much feeling!

Power Through Precision:
We simply discussed  the question about the concept of wholeheartedness. Of course we discussed the reading as we went along also.

We will add John Wesley & Susannah Wesley to our timeline.

History:

I got books from the library and used our World Book CD for the kiddos to complete their country reports. I had to search for each of the 16 countries that make up the Middle East individually.

• Blank Map of the Middle East
• flags of the middle east
• Notebooking page for any country from Notebooking Fairy
• Older Notebooking page for any country from notebook nook
• page 2 Older Notebooking page
• page 3 Older Notebooking page
• National Anthem Lyrics of other countries

So the kids chose a country in the middle east. Then they completed their notebooking page learning about this country. They also found it on a map and labeled it and the countries around it, as well as any bodies of water. After they complete their notebooking pages they will have an oral presentation at our co-op. Additionally, we will probably try to cook or buy Middle Eastern food. It's really just an excuse to go to our favorite Middle Eastern food place for some yummy lamb!

Science

credit: www.notebookingfairy.com

We decided to make a list of the names of God. I like to notebook so I found a notebooking "A to Z about" from the notebook Fairy. My kiddos for the most part are little except for Sweetie with mild autism so she doesn't mind worksheets like this one.

We are also going to do the Report discussing the differences between  creationism and  evolution.

ATA
We will identify places we depend on having just weight and balance. Then we will discuss why truthfulness is important.
Law
We will use History Through The Ages Historical Timeline figure collection to add Charlemagne  Alfred the Great, Justinian, Magna Carta, Sir William Blackstone & James Madison to our timeline.

We will use Uncle Josh's Outline Map Collection to locate the locations of the aforementioned historical figures in Europe.
From the Projects we plan to learn the Pledge of Allegiance and our National Anthem. I have handouts I used in American Heritage Girls that we will use for this assignment.

Medical Resource
We are going to do the experiment where you blow up a ballon and hold the mouth tightly closed....to see if you can feel your vocal cords vibrating. We will also complete further study on the respiratory system.

After reviewing the Wisdom Books this summer I decided to purchase Uncle Josh's Outline Map Collection and History Through the Ages Historical Timeline Collection. Because I could use repeatedly to help me present the material. These CD's can be found used on www.homeschoolclassifieds.com and other homeschool used curriculum sites or purchased new. I also did not want to waste hours searching the internet for this and that. So now onto book 3....

{Pretty,Funny,Happy,Real}: Family Camp

{Pretty}

Two kittens the kids found !

 {Funny}

While repelling Bullet got her hair stuck in the line and the Cadet had to get it out for her. He later (the next day) asked her if she was okay when her saw her the next day at the American Heritage Faire.

{Happy}

Sugar Pie learned to ride her Bike at Family Camp! 

{Real}

We stuffed our family and another family into this tube, Sweetie did not like the small space and to get out of the tube but the rest of us are all in there!

For more Pretty Happy Funny, Real check out "Like Mother Like Daughter"

Weekly Wrap Up Week 1: Off to a slow start

Week 1

We started school at the end of Sept. by taking the CAT-Survey test offered by Christian Liberty Press. We take this test every few years to see how we are doing. We are not required to test in the state of Texas.

Parker's testing for carbohydrates in food. (Apologia Anatomy)

During this week we had pretty good progress, although I still didn't and don't feel organized.

This year we studying US States by doing "State Study" which is notebooking through the US. I originally thought we'd be able to make it through rather quickly but now it looks like we'll be working on it for the next year+. The kids however love it and have really enjoyed filling in the Notebooks.

Math: Is rolling along just fine, however, after reviewing my objectives for this year I will have to put more emphasis on facts. More on that later.

Language Arts: All of the kids progressed well in math we did not have any tests this week. In Writing the older two kids wrote a paper comparing evolution and creation. This was a very interesting assignment from their Wisdom Book. We used a lot of facts we learned from Vision Forum's Jonathan Park and the Creation Response Team.  Additionally, Bullet is working on an essay for an essay contest using I.E.W. Lesson 7 to write it. Sweetie is still working on Lesson 5. I have decided to let them work at their own speed in I.E.W. instead of trying to keep them together, which was beginning to be challenging.

The kiddos are doing a conglomeration of grammar/Mechanics Sweetie is using ACE and she is learning the material very nicely. While Bullet & Sugar Pie are using Climbing to Good English, a program I really like. Bullet is also doing I.E.W.'s Fix-it which also teaches grammar through editing. Fix-it takes her less then 5 minutes to complete and is a nice compliment to CTGE.

Watch the presidential debate, apparently someone must of told a whooper !

We really have not yet started spelling and I am trying to get the hang of the McGuffey readers.

Extra Curricular (music, co-ops, art) So our final thing to report on are our extra curricular which are all going well. The kids are enjoying the video production from 'How Great Thou Art'. They LOVE the PEP Co-op that we are participating in which involves, PE, Field Trips & Presentations. In Piano the girls are working on their songs for Hymnfest which is a graded competition. They will be playing "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus", "Joy, Joy,Joy", "Jesus Paid it All", "I Must Tell Jesus", "All hail the power of Jesus' Name" and "Come Thou Almighty King" each kiddo is playing 2 of these songs.The middle two girls are really enjoying playing softball in the city league.

So although I do not feel very organized we've had a good "official" start to the school year.

To see what other folks are doing around the world you can check out Weekly Wrap Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Field Trip : Houston Museum of Natural Science

This year we are participating in a local Co-op that incorporates several things including Field Trips. Each Semester there are two big field trips and this was one of them to the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences.

The group in front of the museum. 

 This Co-op is enormous and this only represents about 5 of the about 35 families involved.  We absolutely love this museum. 

 Sweetie posing in the paleontology exhibit. Which I found very amusing as they had exhibits with names such as Armadillo-zilla and Sloth-zilla...I'm not kidding. 

 Pretending to be eaten by T-Rex

 The Jaw of a Megaleaon...we recently listened to Shark Tales in the series Gray the hero of the series is a Megaladon so this was especially interesting to the children.

 Playing a little bit during lunch involved chasing the birds and for ShooShoo yelling 'no bird'!

 The twins and Ms. Bethany (who by the way will soon be Mrs. Cook ;) ) looking at the hissing cockroaches. 

 For the first time we visited the Cockerall Butterfly Exhibit and it was amazing there were butterflies everywhere. They were landing on you flying within inches of you and just putting on a show everywhere!

 One of the curators in the butterfly exhibit was holding this little creature. The kiddos were able to pet it.

 Nothing like posing with some larva/caterpillar?

Eating some Sour Cream & Chives crickets 

Bubba ate the most and really seemed to enjoy them. However, everyone ate at least one!

Don't forget to check out Weekly Wrap Up & Homeschool Mom's Journal