The last few days, that I have not blogged about our educational activities, we have had some wonderful moments…at least for me…I think for my dc as well. As far as our daily schedule it does not look at all the same as what I posted our schedule would be…although I do use it to make sure we get done all that I have planned for each day; although that changes slightly, too. Overall though we’ve been getting thru our core studies and doing some sort/form of history or science. On Wed. we started at 11:30 and did not finish until 7:00pm. That day I had to keep giving them breaks b/c of the things I needed to finish(like cooking, laundry etc.), so we did not go straight thru from 11-7…we took many breaks in between and when it was time to come back to our lessons we would(cheerfully I might add) and most nights right before bedtime dd completed her homework assignments. Most of the time her assignments include completing a math homework assignment, handwriting, reading a book(or 2 as she desires and most of the time she wants to read more…I think to keep from going to bed:) ), doing a page in her grammar book and on days we did history unit - literature(poetry) segment she would read poems out of the Home Book of Verse for Young Folks until she got sleepy.
As far as our lessons this week in Bible Study, they have really blessed me. We are following the lessons in NP Lessons Grade 1 and this week we talked about prophets and prophecy. I spoke very strongly and reiterated and emphasized how a prophet of God will speak ONLY those words that God tells him to speak. After about 2-3 days of lessons on this I let them watch Veggie Tales JONAH. They have asked for it again and are watching it for the 2nd time this week-this is in addition to their other studies and bible for today. They gave their grandmom and grandpa an earful(as my mom told me later) about Jonah and about prophets and also about their lessons. They seemingly talked at length about what we’ve been studying.
Arithmetic has been going well. She has memorized all +1, -1, +0, -0, and doubles without counting her fingers or otherwise. These I tried to teach by ‘principle’ and reasoning that any number plus one is always the next counting number, therefore no need to count on her fingers for those. We are working on 6+6, 7+7 up to 10+10 and she shocked me by blurting out the answer to 8+8 and 9+9. We had been writing it for about 2 days and I guess she remembered it. She kept forgetting 7+7 so any of those that she forgot I would let her use the abacus and write the problem and the answer so it would ’stick’. We are also spending much time counting by 2’s and getting an understanding of skip counting. We are doing much better in identifying even and odd numbers and skip counting by evens and odds. The next topics we’ll do is +2, -2 combinations(which is skip counting forward and backward by 2’s) and doubles +1( if 7+7=14, then 8+7=15….1 more than the double 7+7)…I don’t know how well this strategy will go over but I’ll give it a whirl.
Her cursive handwriting is coming along beautifully…I’m amazed. She really likes doing this and asks me for her handwriting homework if I ‘forget’.
Phonics/Spelling we have not done yet. I’ll probably work that in next week somehow. Dd is reading on a 3rd to 4th grade level so I have not been too sure as to where to start. She reads pretty fluently but has no idea why u pronounce the word NOT with the short O sound. I have the Abeka phonics and I also have WRR. I think I’ll start off dictating the word list from section I in WRR and covering the spelling/phonics rules. I like Abeka’s approach so I’ve been trying to combine both but I keep getting bogged down in my thinking when I try to do that…so I’ll have to play it by ear.
Reading is done everyday, sometimes several times a day. I eventually want to get to the point of writing some BAR lessons(from NP Reading Guide) to insure comprehension.
Art is covered is history or science lessons or bible study. As I read the science book dd drew a flower garden on the chalkboard. Last Friday ended up being art day. I let them take their huge art pads out in the garage and paint to their hearts content. We talked briefly about primary colors.
Another blessing of a book is their science book , Dr. Hooker’s A CHILD’S BOOK OF NATURE. I still have not come up with any ‘lesson’ , per se, for this book so we just do science in ‘read-aloud’ style. Our first 2 lessons were on Flowers and Our Love For Flowers. Today was so amazing. First off my ds(5) asked could I read to them about flowers today. That was not on my scheduled plan for today but I said yes. As we read, Dr. Hooker was talking about how mostly everyone likes flowers and how we can find prints/pictures of flowers on our clothes, carpets/rugs, sheets, furniture. I decided to point out to my children that we have flowers on a table ornament in ourl living room. Well, that science session turned into a flower hunt as I continued to read and with excitement my dc skipped and jumped around the house finding flowers on our picture frames, our clothes, our sheets, our carpets, framed artwork on the wall, etc., all over the place. I could feel the Spirit of the Lord in this and in this lesson…(this book is wonderful!!!). My children were so excited(you should have seen their smiles and their eyes get big as they began to recognize what God had given us in flowers). I talked and reasoned that flowers are beautiful and they come from God therefore God is beautiful…piggybacking on our history lesson this week about how God shows us HImself thru the things He has created…we can see His beauty and love for us as we look at/for His flowers. We talked about how flowers make us feel and inquired as to why we thought God would give us flowers. DD reasoned that God gave us flowers to make us feel good(b/c when we look at flowers we feel happy and not sad), to make us happy(as they were this afternoon)
How awesome it is to let the Lord lead in how to give/teach/minister His truth(s) to these precious children.
As I closed the book(b/c that lesson was over) both of my dc said very emphatically “MOM WE WANT YOU TO READ MORE”!!!
…so I did…I was soooo inspired that I decided to take the lesson outside so we could see real flowers as we read the next lesson on sap and how the sap runs thru the stem. I wanted them to touch and see a real stem while I read how the rose bud turns into a rose b/c of the sap running thru the stem. We then answered the questions at th end of the chapter and there concluded our science for the day.
It was absolutely wonderful. I thank God for being able to take and have the time to explore His wonderful world with my children by my side as we both learn to observe closely and appreciate God and all that He has done/provided for us.
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Dee,
my dd loved the botany too. She would ask me to read every day. And it is so easy to find lesson enrichment. I would find examples for all the plants in later lessons on the internet so we could see what they looked like. I can send you links if you’d like.
So glad to hear things are going well. Sounds like they are loving to learn, which is so important.
Anna-Marie
Comment by Anna-Marie — July 28, 2006 @ 10:13 am
Hi Anna,
Yes and thanks, those links would be wonderful to use…thanks for offering!! These past few days have been much more relaxed…more ‘fun’ learning…library days, home economics(room cleaning and organizing-seems to be an ongoing job, sigh), etc. We are gearing up for this weekend..I turn 40 tomorrow and my dh is throwing me a big bash on Sunday so we haven’t picked up many books other than Arithmetic. This was a nice little relaxation, though..back to it next week!
Comment by
lovinghim4ever — July 28, 2006 @ 10:23 am
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! What a great age! Have a great time and I will send you those links this weekend. Enjoy!
Anna-Marie
Comment by Anna-Marie — July 28, 2006 @ 3:59 pm