Nothing beats a first day of school which includes cuddling together on mom and dad's bed to read a good story -- and spending time with the whole family (dad took that day off of work!)
Overall, we had a GREAT "first week" of school! Learning is so much fun, and trust me, I am learning right along with the kids.
Here's a brief rundown of the past week:
History:We finished Old Yeller. I cried. We read Rip Van Winkle and talked about the author Washington Irving. The boys narrated the story back to me, which I typed up for them. We will do a notebook page on Irving for our History notebook next week.
We began reading
Johnny Texas, a fictional story that covers the Mexican War of the late 1800s. We need to speed up our History studies, to get to WWII as soon as possible, but this is incredibly hard to do -- it is delightful to immerse ourselves in a time period. Everyone loves history! Thank you,
Truthquest History!
Bible:We finished up our Proverbs study this week. The boys made pages for our Bible Notebook. We finished reading from Wisdom and the Millers. We are on to the next era of ancient biblical history next week.
We began a new memory verse this week, Psalm 52:5-6. I really feel that we have neglected the kids' memory practice, and hope to make this a priority this year. We found a neat Memory System
here, and are using these ideas with the
Fighter Verses suggested by Desiring God Ministries. In our memory box, along with bible verses, are/will be questions from a children's catechism, days of the week, months of the year, and poetry.
Literature:We read A Midsummer Night's Dream from
Beautiful Stories of Shakespeare for Children -- the kids listened attentively, better than I ever thought possible. We also read The Lion and the Mouse and The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf from Aesop's Fables, doing copywork from each of these. We also read Toads and Diamonds from the Blue Fairy book. The boys love reading a poem each day from our poetry anthology. (Did you know Robert Frost once said, "Poetry is organzined violence on the English language?" I learned that in the Classical Families meeting this week!)
Science:We read "A Very Special Moon" from the current issue of
Nature Friend magazine, Our Stars by Anne Rockwell, and Night Sky by Carole Stott. The older boys worked in their nature journals, recording facts and interesting thoughts about the moon and space, including a photo of our neighbor and explanation of how he invited us over for star-gazing. I plan to photocopy the boys' journal pages and give them as a thank you note to the neighbor.
We have decided to go through the
Considering God's Creation curriculum with another family. We won't go through it as quickly this way, but it will be loads of fun. At home, we will stick to interest-led science for now (learning about whatever the boys are interested in).
Math:The boys were faithful to work in their math workbooks every day last week. Both boys are working in Miquon right now, Micah in 1st grade books and CJ in 3rd grade. I am learning a lot from CJ's book --
Miquon is very hands-on and really asks you to think. I had no idea math was so clever -- it's like magic! Anyway, CJ's Singapore math is on its way via mail, and Singapore is much more drill-and-practice oriented.
This week CJ worked on Squaring, and Micah practiced Addition and Subtraction and made up addition and subtraction problems from pictures.
Other Basics:Micah continued phonics practice in
Alpha Phonics. CJ hasn't worked on
English from the Roots Up yet, as it got lost in the mail on the way to our home! He has worked on math or silent reading while Micah has done phonics practice. Daniel is working on Speech practice as we read baby books and memorize child-sized portions of scripture (he loves the little illustrations from the
Foundation Verses made for preschoolers).
We just didn't get to Music and Art this week. With Dad taking Monday off of work, and the kids and I taking Friday for a park day with friends, Music and Art got the squeeze. Oh well. There's always next week!
