Week Eighteen Wrap-Up

Do you feel a slump? These past few weeks we have been feeling a bit tired of the schedule, the routine feels a bit dry. I sense it in the boys and for myself I have had my mind elsewhere on other things and so have they. We did not take a break at Christmas for more than a few days and we talk a lot about our up coming trip in March, so it would seem we have early spring fever. It could be time to dig in and push or step back for a rest....after praying I sensed rest was what we needed. So, last week we took a few days off to work on projects, both for myself and for them. This helped a whole lot just to get out from under the mental pile of things that builds up.  It was rejuvenating to have some free time to just to get those undine things done. The boys played outside and were rosy with sunshine, drew pictures form Ed Emberley's Make a World book,  and then it we were better able to return to the schedule again. I was too!






















Bible: We are wrapping up our reading of the book of Revelations soon and the boys have chosen 1st and 2nd Peter to read next.

Stories of Faith: We completed our reading of Twice Freed and have begun Polycarp Crown of Fire (torch bears series).

Mathematics: Our new rota is working well! The boys are able to do the math pages five days out of the week, two pages a day, from Everyday Number Stories by themselves which is wonderful. Then on project day, they do the Matrix. TJ improved his time and accuracy on the Matrix as well. Yeah TJ!

Aesop Copy Work: Zak has been working furiously all this year to get this book DONE! Yes he is a finisher and most motivated to just get it done. And he has done it! So, he gets a break during this period of the day to play quietly while his brother work on their handwriting and coloring. We have talked about doing cursive next...I can't wait. We did a little cursive when they first learned to write to get the left to right order ingrained and now we will head back to it.

Ancient Greek History: We have read through all of the Heroes by Charles Kingsley and have begun to read and narrate through D'Auliers book of Greek Myths. This is a good one for the boys to narrate from as the excerpts are short and descriptive. I did not have them narrate the Heroes for the reason that the stories were long, full of difficult names and hard to know how to break it up into smaller meaningful chunks for them. Instead I had them narrate from another book we read right after lunch, Three Greek Children, and that worked out much better.

The Study of Birds: We are now reading The Adventures of Mr. Mocker by Thornton Burgess.

Nature Notebook:

What the boys found in the yard this week...

Geography: We have been reading Peeps at Many Lands Ancient Greece by James Baikie.

Language Arts: We are taking a short break from the lessons in Primary Language Lessons to do a unit study on a poetry book by Douglas Florian, it is called On the Wing. I am using a poetry guide from blackbird&company to guide us along. Thus far we have read laughed through all of the poems and paintings. Wonderful! and we have learned about some interesting descriptive words he uses: CRIMSON, HUDDLE, MIMIC, HUE, and HOVER. The boys have really picked up on the word crimson and shriek with excitement whenever they hear it. Fun!

We also drew one of the birds from the book and wrote a few sentences about it in our composition notebooks (bought at Walmart).The assignment was to write something about the bird they chose.  I find it helps them to require a certain number of sentences like four or three.

Max's Poem

 I hum, I glum, I do not scum.

I twirl, I whirl, I am a girl.

I eat nectar with my scepter.

I am not a woodpecker, I do not drum.

TJ wrote:

The hawk has sharp eyes.

He uses binoculars.

The hawk has sharp claws to tear his prey.

Rabbits are scared of him.

Douglas Florian has also written these books (the blackbird&company guide has lesson with all the books below. I hope to do them all):

In the Swim
Lizards, Frogs, and Polliwogs
Mammalabilia
Insectlopedia

Reading practice: Two pages each day out of Elson Reader Book three.

Bed Time Read Aloud: Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff.

Latin: Minimus Chapter 7 latin words for weapons, and we made small replicas of armor and weapons for our wooden man. (bought at IKEA)

Art: We have begun a 24 page mural from Artprojectsforkids.com. It is called the Ode to Matisse. The boys are very enthusiastic about it so I am confident we will finish. While they color we listen to Chopin. To begin the mural we first did a coloring page of the entire mural.

Music: We are wrapped up our look and listen to Fredrick Chopin this week. To finalize the study we added him to our composer lapbook, timeline and did a music appreciation page.

Max's music appreciation sheet and inside of the lapbook.

Hope you have a great week!

Week Sixteen/Seventeen Wrap-Up

This week and the last we have been ankle deep in Celtic soldiers and Famous Figures from Ancient Times action figures. The celtic figures above came from our Latin lesson of all places. Aren't they fierce looking? We were studying a dialogue about Britons are Best/ Romans are Best when this celtic warrior grabbed Zak's heart. He has colored, cut out and assembled a whole army of them. (25 or so) Coloring different ones different colors to signify rank etc. The celtic warriors above are the foot soldiers. No pun intended. :)

Bible: We have been reading through the book of revelations over breakfast these past few weeks. And because I had it on hand I put up this amazing painting made by Michael Pearl. It depicts the flow of the happenings with references to where in Revelations the images come from. I sticky tacked it to the wall about the head height of the boys so they can really get a good look at it.

Stories of Faith: This week we began to read Twice freed by Patricia St. John. It is a historical fiction novel written around the character Onesiumus from the Bible, a run away slave whom mets up with and is befriended by Apostle Paul while he is in Rome. To be honest, I am a glad to be finished with David Livingston and  H.M. Stanley as the many odd African names came up quite frequently in our book about him and made reading aloud a bit daunting for me. The boys were however not fazed by it one bit. Between this read and the greek myths and greek names in our geography books I am getting my fair share of education right along side the boys.

Arithmetic:  We have begun a new schedule with our math exercises this week. I made the change as I could see the boys were getting TOO familiar with the Matrix and the meaning and use of it were fading. This was apparent as no one was beating their old time or cared to work to achieve this. I had to freshen things up a bit. Making a change in schedule can often bring a fresh feel to things so we talked together and I gave the boys two choices of schedules I felt comfortable with and asked which one they would prefer. They chose to do Everyday Number Stories five days a week and on project day do the Multiplication Matrix. We will see how this goes. Personally I am happy with their choice as the work in the Everyday Number stories will give them great practice in understanding the ins and outs of the factors they are memorizing for the Matrix Table. I feel the understanding is more important than the time. The time simply reflects how easily it is for them to come up with the answers but understanding shows they know how to use the answers.

We continue to read about Albert Einstein in Kathleen Krull's delightful book about him.

Aesop's Copy work: 

Alexander the Great and a Hoplite Soldier action paper dolls from our Famous Figures of Ancient Times book.

Some of Max's finished action figures.

Ancient Greek History: We have been reading through The Heroes by Charles Kingsley.  Maybe you like us like to be careful how myths and 'gods' are introduced to your children, then you may enjoy the preface as much as I did. Reading it first, before I read the book to the boys gave me some good ideas for how to place the myths and the greek gods into our faith framework established on God and what we know is true from the Bible. Here is a quote form the final bit of the preface:

"But you shall hear how the Hellens said their heroes worked, three thousand years ago. The stories are not true, of course, nor half of them; you are not simple enough to fancy that; but the meaning of the is true, and true for ever, and that is- Do right, and God will help you." Charles Kingsley at Farley Court Advent 1855.

I am interested also to read another book by Kingsley entitled The Good News of God to see just where he is coming from.

This portrait of Medusa the Gorgon from our Mythology Pocket download went into our History notebook along with this pocket including a short version of the myth we read in Kingsley's book.

Max's Notebook pages.

Geography:  We have been reading through Three Greek Children by Alfred J. Church.

Science of Birds: Another lovely book by Arthur Scott Bailey has been on our reading list for science the past few weeks, The Tales of Solomon the Owl.

Nature notebooks: To catch up here are the last two entries the boys made in their nature notebooks.

Drawing by Zak.

Drawing by TJ

And we are not yet done with A Pocket Full Of Pinecones, perhaps in a few weeks.

What we found this week in the yard.

Language Arts: Seasons of the year writing assignment, and dictation, see, saw, seen writing assignment, Memorize The Brown Thrush by Lucy Larcum. all lessons from Primary Language Lessons by Emma Serl.

Reading Practice: Elson Reader Book Three. I have been assigning the boys two pages a day from this reader, they can chose to read more but not less. I set the bar a little low for I wanted to allow them the chance to challenge themselves or let the story pull them into reading more. For after all we read to know not to fulfill assignments. This past month I have seen it happening and it is fun! They all read passably well, but not yet do they have enough skill to find reading a pleasurable pass time. Now however they have all taken the lead and chosen to read more either to beat their brother or because the story beckons them on to find out more, not every day but often. This is what I have been waiting for.

Bedtime read aloud: Last week we read Outcast by Rosemary Sutcliff and have begun another by the same author this week The Silver Branch.

Latin: We are in Chapter 6 of Minimus: Starting out in Latin. A good place to be as we are about midway through the year and midway through the book. These past few weeks we have been looking at a dialogues about britons versus Romans and going to York to go shopping. The boys are catching much better to the way Latin reads and being more confident in their translations without my help.

I also did a little research on Minimus Secundus the next book in the series and found a helpful website with reviews of loads of classic literature and curriculums. Here is an excerpt about Minimus Secundus:

"Further evidence of the book's success is found in more than 1,000 letters Bell has received from children containing highly unexpected remarks such as "Latin is cool" and "Latin is the only thing I go to school for."

Art and Music: 

The enjoyment of Chopin's music and story goes on still.

Our drawing lessons have ceased for now and we have begun a study of Henri Matisse and continue our study of Chopin. The boys colored this painting/coloring page from The Artist Study Helper I made last year. One reviewer said this about it:

"What an enjoyable study this is. I'd never done an artist study before and honestly never really saw the benefits in it. This download has just about everything you need to complete a study on this particular artist: lesson plans, montessori cards, biography, full page picture study, notebooking pages, coloring pages and art lessons. It even says there is way more material included than you could ever fit into a 7 week study. Honestly, I think it'll take us 9 weeks to finish this but we're having fun. The guide outlines an 7 week study but of course you can make it last longer or cut it short if you need to. It nicely outlines what activities are included and how to complete them. A great feature for a mom very new to artist study. I recommend this for Kindergarten and up. I say "and up" because artist study can benefit all ages. A fun and neat study and it's affordable. The only drawback I see is that if you print out the works of the artist it takes up alot of ink. I would suggest possibly viewing it from the computer screen or checking out a library book that include his works. But that's not enough of a drawback to give it less than 5 stars."

 After they colored this we spent a few days watching this Youtube video about Matisse. However I had to do quite a lot of editing so be forewarned the nudity is prevalent and it is wise to preview before you show it to your kiddos. Other than that it is a wonderfully done documentary about his life and work.

Afternoon Audio: The rest of the Narnia stories, The Silver Chair, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the Last Battle.

And that sums up our last two weeks of lessons, Thanks for dropping in...Have a great week!

Week Twelve Wrap-Up

Bible: Last week we read through the end bit of Ephesians, started and finished Colossians, and this week we are at the beginning in Genesis which fits really well with our reading of Grandpa's Box.

Stories of Faith: Grandpa's Box is a delightful story written as an ongoing conversation between Grandpa and his grand kids, Marc and Amy. Everyday after school as the children help him in his junk to treasure shop He tells them the story of the Bible. Behind each story is the backdrop of the war between God and Satan and how we play a part in it. Marc is especially interested in battles so although he knows the bible stories he is fascinated by Grandpa's war analogies. The boys are loving this book and like Marc though they know the bible stories Grandpa's analogies and unique point of view brings up for them a new take on God and what He has done for us.

Last week we completed The Stories of the Pilgrims right on Thanksgiving day!

Math: We have completed our lessons which took us through the multiplication table, table by table and learning some patterns in each number table, and through out the table. We learned skip count songs for each of the numbers and we did all of the multiplication story problems in Ray's Primary Arithmetic several times over. So last week and this week we have been doing a new lesson rota. I began with introducing the boys to The Matrix, a tool I found over at Don Potter's website for getting the math table facts down quickly. Then we work a page or two in The Usborne Math Skills book called Multiplying and Dividing Puzzles.

The Matrix is a set up so the child works all of the math facts from 2X2 up to 12X12 as is done on the multiplication table however all the duplicate problems have been removed. So, 3X4 in the 3's table is not re introduced again as 4X3 in the 4's table. There are then 67 problems to complete. The table is filled in and timed. Once the boys have completed the table I mark down how long it took them to do it and how many out of 67 they did correctly. I post their best times and they try to beat themselves. Thus far the best time is 8.5 minutes with 2 mistakes (65/67). The goal is to do the problems until they come so easily that you simply are racing to write them down. This could get old day-in and day-out so in between doing the Matrix challenge I give them some fun math problems to play around with from the Usborne puzzle book.

Our rota is three days a week The Matrix, two day Usborne, then the next week it would change to three days a week Usborne two days a week The Matrix.

The mathematicians we read about on project day are Neils Henrik Abel and Ada Bryron Lovelace.

Ancient Greek History: We are still reading The Children's Plutarch by F. J. Gould and working on our paper mache' armor.

And we put a few things in or History notebook...

Armor of God pages. The one on the left was drawn by Nadene from Practical Pages.

Zak and TJ completing a map drill

Aesop's Copy work: I used to have to give out treats to get them to aim for making no cross outs or mistakes, however now that I have stopped doing that they still aim for it themselves and do their best in the coloring because it is good to do it even without the treat. TJ especially hates to make any mistakes and works very hard to get it right. Zak is wonderful at the handwriting but this year he has lost all interest in coloring or drawing etc. But my shinning example really is Max my oldest. Last year he was such a dawdler and I wondered just how I was going to deal with it and for how long because it really bugged me. However this year he is such a different student. It is plain he does not like some of the work I assign but he willingly makes himself get it done. In addition he has become my advocate as he encourages the other two to stop their whining and get with it. Those are his words not mine. :) "It takes less time if you just obey and do what she says," he tells Zak, "She'll make you do it later on your free time if you don't." They both shudder and get to work. I think their understanding and value of time has been the incentive to work it through. As they have grown older and have more ideas of their own they want to work on then their time is more valuable to them. Natural consequences have paid off no nagging needed!

Science/Birds: After reading all the way through The Tale of Jolly Robin by Arthur Scott Bailey we are reading Blacky the Crow by Thornton Burgess.

Nature Notebooks: 

After reading from A Pocket full of pinecones the boys headed outside to find something to draw. Max and TJ both found a lizard and TJ was so excited! "Mom it had yellow on its back see I drew that in!" I was so pleased. For the last few weeks when he looks for something to draw he comes back with the same leaf...but not this week.

On project day we made some bird feeders from old paper towel rolls, peanut butter and birdseed for the winter birds.

Language Arts: Our lesson in Primary Language Lessons was to memorize The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson. We took four days to do this. Day one, orally go through the poem reciting the first stanza then the first and second etc until we are saying the whole poem altogether. Day two, the boys copied 1/2 of the poem and drew a picture. Day three, they copied the second 1/2 of the poem and drew a picture. The fourth and last day the boys orally recited separately the entire poem, then they recited it al together. It is so amazing how they memorize these verses so easily. And how adorable they sound as they do it.

Max's copy work.

Last week they wrote about what they would do on vacation. Here is Zak's composition and drawing.

Read-aloud before bed: Gentle Ben, On the Banks of Plum Creek.

Latin: Minimus dialogue and verbs and adjectives.

Art/Music: Drawing Lessons # 3-#8 in I Can Do all Things

TJ's Wally the worm in the garden, a lesson on forshortening

Max's drawing.

Zak's drawing

We began reading Chopin the Early Years by Opal Wheeler last week. I read from the book one day and then on the other day we listened to his music ( 99 most essential Chopin Masterpieces) and began to color a page from Opal Wheeler's book.

TJ's work in progress

Week Three Wrap-Up

Max

What a fast, busy, productive wild week we have had! If it were not for God in us we would be truly warped. He paced our days, gave us patience with each other and blessed us with Himself daily. What made a big difference in the week was that I spent more time in the mornings sitting with Him and singing....I love to sing especially about Him. My Favorite this week:

This week I was tempted often to add more and more things to our schedule, to go faster, to be busier. But why? I wondered. As I began to rush I often rushed the boys. I could be quick, sharp tongued and irritable. Luckily I saw the signs and slowed down. I took time to lay upon my bed and wait. I waited upon God for perspective, for help with the tasks lying undone around me and for a tangible and concrete way to remember the glorious truth that after all I am dead and He does live in me. I have a new life, a powerful one right here with me ready to orchestrate and create goodness and care in my little world. I ought to let Him. As I waited, it was easier to let go and to begin again watching instead of driving, listening instead of speaking. My sons responded with a tremendous love for me. Hugs from little boys are sooo sweet. I am addicted.

Zak with my good friend Michele's dog Kahalie

Last week we completed Bruchko and now we are reading a book from the Trailblazer series called Risking the Forbidden Game. It is about a young Muslim boy in Morocco who plays a very simple but later dangerous game of stealing items from the French soldiers or any other infidels during the Muslim celebration of Ramadan. Along the way he discovers he likes hearing stories about Jesus and those who tell about him. But he finds that his game leads to real life and death consequences for his new infidel friend. So far a great read.

We have been having so much fun draaaawwlllling to the X4 skip count song with a country western tune and Rapping with the X5 song. This little album has been such a painless way to learn these math facts. And slowly the boys are catching onto the multiplication table. So nothing new this week here just onward ho! 

But here is something new. I noticed that during the first four lessons of the day there is a lot of extra time that could be utilized. I read aloud to them for most of the morning, and I realized that they can be busy working on something that is somewhat "brainless" while I read. So, as I read a Fable from Aesop and stories from The Story of the Greeks, and  a delightful tale from The Burgess Bird Book they color and copy. This turned out to be a good way to introduce Aesop to the the boys and to my lovely copywork book. 

Knowing they just "love" doing copywork (LOL) I thought this book would work well for them because many, if not most, of the morals they copy are short. Since the copy work is short and the boys are needing a new challenge,  I upped the ante to earn a treat. This summer if they could copy the selection from their readers with no mistakes the first time: that means they don't miss any words, or forget a misspelling etc. they got a treat. If there were mistakes they had to recopy it. This year no cross outs! No Grace! First time, beautiful writing, no mistakes. They are getting it down. I am amazed at what they can do.

We are on Lesson #3 in Primary Language Lessons and should finish memorizing the poem "If I Knew" this week. We went about learning the Poem this way...

DAY ONE:  the boys read the entire poem aloud, each one taking one line at a time. Next I had them close their eyes and I read the entire poem aloud to them with emphasis and a bit of drama. Then they copied the first four lines into their composition notebooks (There are 16 lines in all) and drew a picture to go with it. Then I knew if they were understanding the meaning of the lines in the poem. 

DAY TWO:  The boys read the poem aloud again each taking a turn to read one line. I read it to them, and they copied the next four lines of the poem into their composition notebook like they did on the first day and drew a picture. Same lesson with different lines and pictures to draw. 

DAY THREE: On this day the boys read the poem again line by line taking turns, and I read it to them as they sat quietly with closed eyes. Then we said the first four lines from memory each one. Then we said the first eight lines from memory. Then the boys went on to try twelve lines from memory. Then they attempted all sixteen lines. Amazing.

DAY FOUR: The boys read the poem aloud again each taking a turn to read one line. I read it to them, and they copied the next four lines of the poem into their composition notebook like they did on the first and second days and drew a picture of someone gathering frowns form the nursery, the schools and the streets and putting them into a box.

DAY FIVE: The boys read the poem aloud again each taking a turn to read one line. I read it to them, and they copied the last four lines of the poem into their composition notebook like they did on the first and second days and drew a picture. This time they got to draw a giant dropping a box of frowns into the depths of the deep deep sea. So much fun imagery.

DAY SIX: Repeat of day three. On this day the boys read the poem again for the last time line by line taking turns, and I read it to them as they sat quietly with closed eyes. Then we said the first four lines from memory each one. Then we said the first eight lines from memory. Then the boys went on to try twelve lines from memory. Then they attempted all sixteen lines. 

And they did it. They memorized their  FIRST poem. I am so proud of them!

TJ

We have begun a new dialogue in our Latin lessons called "Lepidina at the Party" We are using the Minimus Latin curriculum this year.  In our lesson we learned a lot of new vocabulary words for a birthday party. We sang happy birthday in Latin and made a birthday card for Minims the mouse.

At the end of the day we have been making Klee inspired fish paintings with black oil pastels and gauche. 

and...Klee inspired clay fish.

We used a homemade polymer clay with cornstarch, baby oil, lemon juice and white glue. The consistency of the dough was fantastic! Then we let the dough dry for a day or so and painted them.

For other art recipes I found a wonderful interest site with oodles of fun things to try. You might also find some good ideas for other Paul Klee art projects at these sites:

Art projects for kids: Mini mural
Arted-Paul Klee
Deep Space Sparkle: Modern Masters
Meet the Masters
Harmony Art Mom

Zak

And to top off our week we had a fun game/activity/scrapbook day. It all began with this video clip about the Olympics.

Max is working on a picture of Zeus the god the Ancient Greeks honored during the Olympic games. The unveiling of the scrap book pages is still to come...

We played a rousing game of Digging up Greece. This is a FREE game found online. It is another of Ellen's (creator of Prof. Pig's Magic Math) wonderful inventions. She says this about the game...

"The board is a large map of Greece (6 pages taped together!).  The die does not contain numbers, but rather modes of transportation.  The players pretend to be college students taking a semester abroad in Greece and they use boats, cars, or planes to hop around the country, visiting famous sites and collecting artifacts.   When POP QUIZ is rolled on the dice, they must answer a multiple choice question about ancient Greek history. "

We say it is a blast to play it. What a great way to learn the islands and cities why the whole map of
Greece! And a bit of Greek history to boot.

Lastly we spent time outside making an entry into our nature notebooks. This week noting something overhead.