Last week Mark took his first official Math test. I haven't been giving him any tests because I know if he's mastered the material or not and he's just in Kindergarten. He wants to be just like the "big kids" and that means doing school like they do (on his own as much as possible) and taking tests like they do. So last week he finished his Pace and took his test on Friday. He was soooooo excited. He ran to tell Bethany, "Bethany, I get to take a test tomorrow. I finished my pace and I get to take a test tomorrow. I love this school. I love this school. I love this school" He was jumping up and down shouting how much he loves "this school", which translates to this curriculum. It's funny because he has completed several other books but they were all thicker and didn't bring nearly as much excitement. Something about these small paces and finishing one and starting another really bring him joy.
Here he is with his completed test:
He was very happy to begin his new pace today and was sure to ask me "Mommy, do you have a lot of these for me? I am going to be needing more very soon."
It's such a joy to see Mark growing and learning more and more each day. Yesterday morning while getting ready for church he had some "issues". He wasn't happy about the pants he needed to wear. He ended up getting them on but still had a bit of an attitude about it. We went on to church and planned to deal with it when we returned home. As church began, he still had an attitude and would pull away if I touched his shoulder. I instructed him that he was being rude and he needed to get his heart right. The service went on and we listened to the teaching etc.... It came time for communion. During our quiet time to prepare our hearts for communion, Mark came to me and asked me to forgive him for being rude and not showing love. He then went to Brooks and asked Brooks to forgive him for having the attitude about the pants (Brooks was the one dealing with that) I thanked the Lord for working in the life of Mark and for Mark hearing and responding to the Lord working in his life. God is so good to give us these glimpses along the way. It is an encouragement to continue on this hard work that is before us.
I receive many e-mails for me to add a "week in review" section to my blog. I have resisted for a long time because the older children simply don't do much school that is "blog worthy". It's not very exciting to read "completed pages x-x in Math" etc.... The requests continue to come so I have added this section to my blog and I'm going to give it a trial run. We'll see how it goes. :-)
We do bible and history all together so I'll cover those two first.
Bible -- We are currently in the Book of Job. This week we covered Job 4-11. Things we covered were:
Eliphaz First Speech and the body's response to stress
Other speeches of Job's Friends and human limitations. From Job 5:7 we discussed gases, fires and flames. From Job 8:14 we discussed spiders and their webs.
Job's second speech and the misery of man. From Job 7:5 we discussed types of worms, the classification and parasitic worms.
Job's Third Speech and God's Wisdom & Purpose in space and the human body. From here we discussed ecology, biological community, ecological niche, plants, sources of oxygen and carbon dioxide, layers of the skin, muscles and capillaries.
We also read the Proverb for each day so this week we read Proverbs 3-7. The children were reminded of many of the songs they have learned from Judy Rogers and her wonderful music. Mark's favorite is "Awful Things". You can hear a clip of it here. I was reminded of what we put in is what comes out. It was nice to hear these songs that we've been putting in, come back out and be related to the scripture as we read through these Proverbs.
History:
We finished up studying Marco Polo and added him to our time line. We began studying Christopher Columbus as we also worked on maps of Portugal, Italy and Spain. We also listened to the Christopher Columbus from Your Story Hour.
Science:
Bekah learned more about the plant and animal kingdom. Some things she learned are about chlorophyll, cellulose, plant cells, plants with conducting systems, simple and complex plants.
Sam learned about Iron, Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen.
Bethany learned about matter and living and nonliving things. She also learned about organs.
That's about all that is "blog-worthy" from our week. Of course, the children work in math, do lots of reading and Sam and Bethany do spelling.
