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....

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 

Geogrpahy United States...frugal & fun homeschooling

I love frugal and reusable Homeschool curriculum. Accordingly, we are going to use one to study the states and capitals and we will be notebooking our way through the country. *smile*

Working on their notebooking pages

Notebooking

We are using these notebook pages for our State Study from elemental Blogging found here. Here is an example of the free notebooking pages that she is offering:

Photo from elementalblogging.com

Instead of printing out pictures I am having the kids draw the birds, state flower etc... I did find some cheap state stamps which we will use for some of the states and my 7 year old may use with quite a few of the states. But I think their own little rendition of the important parts of the state will be wonderful.

I will also be using Uncle Josh's Outline Maps on CD (purchased for  1/2 price off of www.homeschoolclassifieds.com)  to supplement the study for some individual sates and all the pricipalities.

Books

We will be using the following books a lot:

We are also going to be using these books as we can lay our hands on them from the library a complete list can be found here. 

Audio

Bullet using a World Book Encyclopedia CD to look up facts on Delaware.

Thank the Lord we have lots of audio learners and they all love music. So we will listen to the following CDs in the car:

I've tried to incorporate them into the regular school day with little success but since we live 30 minutes away from town. We constantly listen to CD's in the van. We've had this CD for years and used it sporadically, but recently it's been collecting dust. I bought it off of eBay for about 1/3 the price several years ago.

Presentations

The kiddos will also present what they learn about the states at our PE Co-op during our presentation time.

Blogs to Check for more ideas:

I also found great ideas from Forever, For Always, No Matter What! and from Shower of Roses.

Things that I have picked up over they years that we are now finally using!

During our morning gathering the kiddos will work on the state or states for that week. We will complete the Notebooking page using Our 50 States and the Discover America Alphabet books. They will also have time at the end of the day to work a little bit on this project each day. After we've done a couple of states I think the kiddos will be able to work on the state pages independently.

If you have any ideas for us please let us know,if you find this useful please let me know that too!

Check out Weekly Wrap-Ups or Homeschool Mother's Journal to find out what other homeschoolers are up to around the country and the world!

A New School Year Part 3: Things I forgot

Since I wrote the first two posts without looking at my notes I failed to mention some things that we are doing. I thought I'd go ahead and let you in on them....

Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization by IEW 

"Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization provides a system to reintroduce you and your children to a vital but often neglected source of powerful and sophisticated linguistic patterning available to children: memorized language, especially memorized poetry."

So the idea behind this is to improve writing by improving what the children hear and memorize. We have put this to practice in our preschool years and we have seen our little ones develop an amazing vocabulary by reading them the Ambleside Online K books from about age 2 on to 1st grade. I won this product at our local homeschool  convention and we will use it in the morning during our morning gathering. I plan to spend no more then 15 minutes a day on this program. 

Presentations & Field Trips

There are two additional activities we will participate in with our PE Co-op. First, we will be doing monthly presentations in our PE Co-op. Each month we will pick something from our homeschool and the kiddos will do a 'speech' to some of the other members of the co-op. I am really excited about this because it meets our homeschool distinctive of raising competent communicators for Christ. Additionally, we will also attend their monthly field trips! 

Contests:

Bullet will participate in two Essay contests and one art contest. These contests are another way to improve their written and artistic communication skills. 

Pictures from Proverbs

The last thing I didn't mention is our Pictures from Proverbs.

"The answers to the questions are on the back of each card for the parent or teacher.   In addition, there is an explanation of the analogy, a Bible illustration of the proverb and questions to ask.  For the younger children, you may purchase a matching coloring book of these proverbs." 

We really enjoy studying a proverb in depth each week. After our study I like to post them on the fridge as a little reminder of the proverb. You'd be amazed at how many times God provides examples of that proverb during the week you study it. 

Homeschool Distinctives

I learned about the idea for Homeschool Distinctives from the blog Raising Olives here. At the time I ran across the post I was struggling with being overwhelmed with homeschool, homemaking and homesteading. The idea of homeschool distinctives seem to hold the  possible solution to my dilemma of balancing 0-1 year old twins (at the time) with 3 school age children.

One big issue we were having was bouncing around from curriculum to curriculum. I loved Charlotte Mason but it was too labor intensive for our growing family. Homeschool Distinctives gave me an opportunity to give our homeschool the focus it lacked.

So here are our distinctives:

1. Christ focused curriculum.
• Proverbs 2:6 For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
2. Emphasis on independent study by the student with Mama in the role of tutor. Thus we adopted much of the methodology of the Robinson Curriculum. Which allows me to insert Charlotte Mason type elements into our homeschool without usurping the role of teacher. (again see Proverbs 2:6)
3. Frugality - I am adding an emphasis on both reusable and free curriculum's from this point forward. I am trying to save money in our homeschool and stick to a budget.

•  A prudent man seeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished. Proverbs 22:13 Darby Translation

4.   Building Relationships within our family is a top priority and we will use our homeschool to strengthen relationships. For example older children have 15-30 minute time blocks in which they play with their 3 younger siblings.

• "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."John 13:35

5. We are trying to create competent communicators for Christ. Accordingly, we have an emphasis on speaking and writing well. So participation in things like speech & debate, essay contests etc... are a part of our school.

• "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Matthew 28:1

• • 6. Volunteering  simply stated our time is the Lords and if he needs us we will be there regardless of what the schedule says.

• "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

I have done a lot of bouncing around between curriculum in our homeschool career. I must say that this list of distinctives has kept me more focused on the task at hand. I have been able to ignore curriculum like 'All About Spelling' (which I hear is wonderful) but it conflicts with distinctives 2 & 3.  Recognizing I am not looking for the perfect curriculum to perfectly educate my children but instead I am looking for a curriculum to teach them to educate themselves while I guide them toward the Great I AM.

A New School Year: Part 2 Guided Studies & Extra Curriculars

This is the second part of the New School Year Post. In the first  part we discussed our methodology and our independent studies in this part I will discuss our 1 Teacher Directed course Writing and our Guided Studies.

Teacher Directed:

Writing: We are continuing with IEW  (with both the TWWS & SWI) and I plan to use for all of our Elementary level writers. Right now I think we will transistion into a different writing for Middle School & High School Writing. IEW has  a teaching DVD for the students. However, I still need to guide them through their first lesson in each Unit. Then they are able to write on their own for the next couple of lessons (about 2 weeks), until we get to the next unit.

Guided Studies:
During guided studies there is either a live or recorded teacher. I am still able to maintain my role as tutor while the children receive expert instruction.
 

Online Classes:

 

Science: This fall the middle two kiddos will participate in an online class covering Apologia Anatomy they will use the Anatomy Notebook Journal & the Jr Journal for Sugar  Pie. The kiddos will be taking online class from Currclick. Their class is an 11/2 once a week. They will have homework and participate in the class with a headset. This is a new thing for our homeschool we have never had a computer that was good enough to even try an online class. In order to maintain my role as tutor I purchased the Audio MP3 of the book Exploring Creation through Human Anatomy from Apologia. So Sugar Pie will be able to listen to the assigned reading on MP3. We will probably listen to the M P3 quite a bit in the car as we travel. The girls are very excited about their science class and have already begun to mummify an apple.

Fine Arts:
 

Art: Last year we took art lessons because we had an additional income stream that is set to terminate anytime now. Additionally, I am trying to lower the overall cash outgo of our homeschool.  Since I wanted to continue Art education but cannot afford the expense and I  am bearly able to draw stick figures we are switching to DVDs. We will be using Feed My Sheeep this is a DVD course with a workbook for each student. This is a multi year course and I believe we will be able to use it for at least 3 years.

Music: We believe it is important to be able to make a joyful noise for the Lord accordingly our children will participate in the PGM Choir.The PGM Choir is a free award winning homeschool choir in our area. The three oldest will both do bell choir and singing. We will also joyfully continue Piano lessons with Ms. Bethany. In Piano we are planning on participating in a couple of competitions as well as taking the theory tests.

Co-op This year we will participate in a PE Co-op that meets on Fridays right before PGM Choir practice. Once a month this co-op goes on a field trip. We are really excited about this opportunity to take field trips, exercise & fellowship with other homeschoolers on a regular basis.

This may seem like a pretty full schedule and it is but keep in mind we do not do every subject everyday. I hope your homeschool is both fun and challenging (for the kiddos not Mama)  this year!
 

A New School Year.: Part 1 Morning Gathering & Independent Studies

This year we have a few new curriculum that we will be doing & a  new homeschool medium that we will be trying. however, most of things we are doing this year are a continuation of the things we did last year. Last year we began utilizing the Robinson Curriculum methodology in our homeschool and we will continue this into this year and we are influenced by both the Charlotte Mason &  Leadership methodologies which are both very teacher intensive and must be used judiciously so they do not conflict with our homeschool distinctives. We began using ACE with Sweetie last year and will continue using more their curriculum for her because it's a nice fit!

 

Morning Gathering:

 

Our Day begins with the Morning Gathering which  I think is the most important work of the day,  the Bible. We do TAG (Truth & Grace) which has hymns, scripture & Baptist catechism. My husgand handles devotionals and I work with the kids on the knowing what the Bible says  & reading through their Bibles. We also do Proverb Cards at this time and our Wisdom Book Unit Study (which contains history, science, vocabulary, some Greek, Bible)  is completed during this time. After this time in the morning the remainder of their work is independent except for parts of IEW. The Twins sit at the table with us for the Morning Gathering and participate or complete their own silent activities.

Independent Studies:

Math:  Bullet & Sugar Pie will continue with Christian Light Math while Sweetie will be move to ACE Math.   

       Reading:McGuffey Readers these are recommended by the Robinson Curriculum. In RC the students are learning through independent reading (and writing). Accordingly, there is an emphasis on strong reading skills.  So all three children will work on a McGuffey Reader. Pearson, however, will  begin the year in the Phonetic Reader by Deane (a free Google book) and then begin McGuffey's second reader.

Spelling: We are simply continuing our spelling programs from last year. Peyton will continue to work on ACE's Word Building.  Parker will continue working in Simply Charlotte Mason's Spelling Wisdom. It's a pretty simple curriculum which just requires the children to copy quote each week and then on Friday I dictate the quote to them and they write it out. Book 1 covers 6,000 of the most commonly used words in English.
 

Grammar: Peyton will continue with ACE English. Peyton & Parker will both do IEW's Fix-it Grammar. Pearson will work on Primary Language Lessons in workbook format. This format will allow most of the work to be completed independently.

 

 

Handwriting/Cop ywork: We will complete Handwriting using the handwriting I downloaded from Currclick. During a sale I downloaded a package of a couple of thousand handwriting pages (for $3) that include Bible, history and more.  I plan to use this with all of the children.

Greek: We will continue Hey Andrew Teach Me Some Greek. We made it about 1/2 way through the curriculum before we were derailed by Bubba's numerous trips to the hospital.

 

 

Extra Curricular: We will  participate in Bright Lights which meets biweekly in the evenings. Additionally, the girls want to play Softball and maybe even soccer.

You may note our emphasis on independent study & reusable curriculums are two of our homeschool distinctives, I'll have to write a post on our homeschool distinctness and how they influence our curriculum choices for the better!

Weekly Wrap-up: Car Problems +

 This week despite some challenges we did get some school done. April and May have traditionally been tough months for us as far as schooling goes. We always seem to wind down "unvoluntarialy". Thus we have decided to school all year around with a lighter schedule in the summer.

Sweetie & Ms. Brianne her Speech Therapists

We have changed our morning schedule and I really need to get up earlier to make it work well. The first thing we do are 'Biblical Studies' which includes catechism, proverb study and reading either a Missionary book or Leading Your Little Ones to Christ. Then we do chores and spend 15 minutes -- 1 hour in the garden. This has made us less productive in school because our transitions are taking too long and an hour was too long we were all to tired.

American Heritage Girls Flag Ceremony

On Monday morning I had a root canal. At the end of the root canal the dentist informed me he needed to re-do it because he needed to go 2cm's deeper. Then we had our fire inspection and a visit from ECI. After this we spent over an hour in the garden and we were all to tired to do much of anything. So we did not do school on Monday.

On Tuesday we were suppose to go to speech we did a little math in the morning and then tried to head to speech and the Suburban broke down at Lowe's. Wayne dianosised it went to Autozone and fixed it. But don't worry there was a Chik-fil-a & What-a-burger in the parking lot...lols. Wayne got it fixed by replacing a fuel filter and I drove to the Doctor's office and when I backed up it stopped running. I waited a few minutes and it started running again. Then on the way from my friend Taryn's house the car broke down again on the way to get Wayne. We got it Autozone and then Wayne bought some kind of sensor and fixed it again and not its running great!


Sweetie doing extra theory with Shoo sitting on Ms. Bethany

On Wednesday we have piano lessons and we did a pretty full day of school. Then McDaddy got home and he had a terrible toothache, we even missed our small group.

Then on Thursday we had a pretty full day of school too and then we did American Heritage Girls.

SugarPie working in her Math Counting book

On Friday we only did a bit of school as we prepared for some friends from church to help us fix our driveway, and do some work around our house. We are dreadfully behind since the twins got here.

So, hopefully next week I'll really be able to concentrate on moving the kids forward in their school work and we will get out of the doldrums!

Happy Schooling!

The Spring Piano Recital

So a couple of weeks ago while Bubba was in the hospital we had the Spring Piano Recital. Even though I always want to be with the sick one I just hated missing your Recital. But I did get to enjoy all of your practicing! Mama and Bubba did not make it but the rest of the family including little Providence were there to cheer you bigs &middles on!

 Sugar Pie playing Indian Doll.

 Bullet played "Spring". Bullet also received a Bronze medal in theory at the Recital.

 Sweetie played "Minuet" and "Trio"

Here are all three of you girls with our good friend and Piano Teacher...Ms. Bethany! Daddy took all the pictures of our little pianists!  

          

Ideas for Teaching Small Children to Sit in Quietly in Service: Part 2

Although this post is entitled teaching small children to sit quietly in church these are just 'my ideas' on how to teach them to sit in church ( homeschool & quiet outings like the Music Theory Test at a local church). Out of our 5 children we've used the nursery for one, and taught 2 small ones to sit and we are working on teaching 2 more to sit quietly during church. So we are by no means experts but I thought I might share a few things that have worked for us this go around.

practicing sitting for & during homeschool for the big kids

As you may know we've been blessed with twins, who are now almost 2. We have been pretty lax on teaching them to sit during service. It's really been overwhelming to have the two one year olds as you can imagine. In addition, to having them chattering, talking & occassionally screaming to each other throughout the service. I finally decided to just sit in the hallway with them. But this was just teaching them that if they chatter they get to play when we go to church.

Then we started a family book club and we became very serious about teaching them to sit quietly it and service. The biggest thing we've done to help them to sit quietly is that during family devotions & book club (and soon we will start at Lifegroup) is having them sit still & quiet in our lap. If they are fidgety or noisy they are gently warned and if they continue, then they receive a punishment and we quickly return to what we were doing.

more practicing sitting for & during homeschool

We are no longer alowing them long periods of time removed from the activity but instead we go right back to what we were doing. We have enjoyed several services sitting in the service for the most part with quiet and obedient toddlers. By the way one of the twins is a boy and he is the fidgetiest thing I have ever seen!

For our family when we made it a priority that they sit quietly with us then it began ot happen. If you are having trouble training kiddos here are a few questions that we had to consider that may help you ....

1. Is it a priority for your family?
2. Have you identified good training times?
3. Have you been consistent in both the training times and the  discipline?
4. Do you provide proper encouragement while they are sitting and after they have done a good job sitting quietly? ("Oh, you sat just like a big boy/girl...)
5. Are both parents really & practically (as in hands on/will stop whatever they are doing to disciple their children) on board? If Dad espeacially is busy teaching/talking then training may take much longer. If Dad doesn't think this is something he wants to do, then we need to joyfully be on board with Dad's plan.
6. Have you discussed your game plan so you are both on the same page.

Quiet blanket time at the Music Theory Test

That said I know this is difficult, I live the difficulty times 2.  I know at GFBC the pastors (who are elders) share in the preaching responsiblibty and I can't help but think what a blessing this must be to their wives. I choose to discuss this church because they are Family Integrated Church with an emphasis on husbands shepharding their children. This is not meant to say if  your church doesn't do it like this your church is wrong, it's just an option. I attend New Life Baptist church and we have Elders who occasionally switch duties too. I know for single Mama's & Mama's attending church without Dad they too would face special challeges in child rearing and my prayer would be that families would come along side of them and help them in what they think is right for their families.

Not suprisingly I have also found is that it has been a huge help to me in homeschool also. The little ones play happily on their "blanketed area" or sit happily in my lap. We have less random crying and fits and our life has become a little more orderly because the twins are learning self control through this training.

Linked to two wonderful bloggers at :