Loving Learning at Home: Week in Review 3/7-3/11

We had a great week last week. Here are the highlights of what we have been working on.

The kids both amaze me at the math abilities. They sure didn’t get it from me. Bella is doing great at multiplication. She is learning the concept right now and now really concentrating on memorization yet.

David and I have been talking and we are going to switch Bella to Saxon next year. She doesn’t need the pictures and things that Horizons offers so we are going to have them both in Saxon.

Griffin is doing great in his math, also. He is learning geometry right now and is continuing to do division and multiplication practice. We usually do every other problem or every third problem. If he misses one, then we go back and do more of that kind. We do this because Charlotte Mason style learning believes that short lessons work best. We keep math to about 25 minutes for Griffin. This works really well for him. Bella’s math right now takes about 15-20 minutes. They also both work on math facts later in the day which is not included in these times.

We are still learning about sound. We have learned about an orchestra this past week. We listened to all kinds of classical music, learned the instruments in an orchestra, why they are arranged how they are and this week we are going to make our own instruments.

We did an experiment with a watch and the kids took turn being blindfolded and trying to listen closely to hear where the watch was. They are beginning to realize how our senses work together.

Griffin wrote a paragraph on deafness and learned about the two different types of deafness. We also are learning sign language. This is really fun. What is great is that this can count as a foreign language.

I have found such great books using our library system. Our favorite this week on sign language was called Little Lost Sally. This book is in signed English. That means all of the words in the book are show in sign language. We all had fun signing the book while reading it.

Things like this really make learning fun.

Another thing we have been working on is growing seeds. You can see where we planted them here. It is amazing to us how fast they have grown. We really didn’t think they would even grow at all. Boy, were we shocked.

The tallest ones are the peas. The next best thing is the tomatoes. The only problem we have is that we put the seed packets down the side so we would know what we were growing. The water from the soil leaked into the packets and now we have seeds growing out of the packets. LOL We were going to try to save the rest to start outside in the garden, but they are ruined now. At least now we know what “not” to do. The kids can’t wait for a sunny day to be able to sit them outside for awhile to get some good sunlight.

Art Appreciation: We study one artist’s painting or work each month. This is our painting for this month.

Do you know what this is? Water Lilies by Monet. We usually use calendar pictures but this is an actual print I got from a friend at the library. The light is from my camera flash, not really the picture. We are going to do our own recreation of this in the coming week.

HISTORY: We finished up Alexander Bell Friday. We are moving to greek mythology this week to learn about Echo.

BIBLE: We are still working in Who is God. The kids are learning about how to have a foundation in your life that is grounded in Christ. I will be doing a review on this great book by Apologia this week so be sure to check back and read that.

Griffin is still doing guitar and loving it. This week he was asked to write his own little song. He has been working hard on this and I love it (of course I’m a little biased).

This is one of the pictures that Robby Ballmeyer took for our homeschool group last year. I’ve been bad and not ordered any yet but I can’t wait to. We LOVE them. You can check out his website here.

Bella has two more months of ballet for this year. She would be getting ready for her recital, but she decided not to do it this year.

We went to a Dr. Seuss part last week in honor of his birthday. The kids had a great time. They had a “cake walk”, made hats (even though my kids didn’t look anything like Dr. Suess hats), played with and made “Oobleck”, and had green cupcakes. Thanks to Sunshine for having this for the kids. Griffin won a Dr. Seuss Hat to add to our hat collection.

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Finally, we had a homeschool event that was awesome. We did “Minute to Win it”. The kids had so much fun (so did the adults). They learned that what looks easy on TV is really not so easy.

Johnny Applestack