Week Review Oct. 3 - Oct.7

This week we did some fun science! Learning about yeast and how it works. We watched a great little youtube clip about yeast being like a sleeping monster which we wake up with warm water. Then we feed him some sugar and he burps up CO2. Then we made pizza dough and had mini pizza's for lunch!

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After all the rain this week, the kids really enjoyed the new experience of playing 'dress up' with my old dress up clothes. They have been busy re-enacting various stories. We had a little store and Jem learnt a little about different types of coin. Lot's of imaginative fun!

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This week was pretty slack. Jem did lesson 4 in Math-U-See. He finished lesson 5 in Explode the Code. Did a few pages in A reason for Handwriting. And for Come sit by Me this week we just finished his unit book. I hope to really work on his alphabet sounds for the next few days, because he is really starting to struggle in Explode the Code. For Bible this week we did something special, as a family we looked up verses about helping the poor and then started the sponsorship of a little girl in China who has Downs Syndrome and heart conditions.  

Week Review ~ Sept. 26-30

Come Sit By Me

   Franklin's New Friend by Paulette Bourgeois

Language: Greetings, Vocabulary and appropriateness of greetings (Jem was very excited to learn how to spell HELLO, and has been happily practicing it on his own time)
Science: Meet Moose, Researching information about moose
Practical Living: How do you do? Proper etiquette

Journal
Picture following shows his journal entry for this week. He got new LEGO as a treat because he broke the habit of thumb sucking.

Explode the Code
Picture following of the last page of lesson 4. I was very impressed that Jem wrote the last few words entirely by himself, sounding out the order of the letters. He also has been practicing making his own sentences that he knows the words to and writing them out. I have attached a photo of his sentence which he thought up and wrote out himself;  'Matt sat on the mat.'

A Reason for Handwriting
We have been working on perfecting the shape of a 'G' and other letters that Jem is a little lazy with writing. I have just been using which ever page in this book that works on the letters we are having problems with.

Science Wiz Kits
We didn't do anything with this kit this week. But as Jem was looking though our books yesterday he found a section on the same things we have been learning about light and he 'told back' a little to me of what he learnt. I am happy to know he is grasping what he is learning.

Math-U-See
Jem is ready for the next lesson, but I am afraid we just haven't gotten around to it this week, although he has been doing a worksheet from the text book for practice every second day for sure.

And now for the pictures!!

   

Because of the beautiful weather this past week Jem has been spending loads of time outside exploring in the pasture and building a great fort by the pond. He has come home with lots of new bugs to keep as pets "until they die, then I will throw them out Mom!" He also made his own broom as you can see in the picture above :)

I have been very impressed with Jem's willingness to do school work alone, and I find that he does much better this way. I have taken to showing him the pages that I want done when I settle him down for afternoon quiet time and then I 'drop in' on him once or twice to see if he needs help or has a question. Of course this only works for phonics, math and writing. The rest we do together.

Week Review, Sept. 19-23

Come Sit By Me

   Book of the week; Pedrito's Day by Luis Garay

-Character Study: Encouraging those around us, memory verse (Philippians 4:13) Jem copied this verse into his 'I Can Do It' book.
-Language: Pedal and Spokes, Increasing vocabulary.
-Science: Examining how gears work, learning how the inner ear works
-Practical Living: Building awareness of bike safety

Math-U-See
   Working on lesson 3 still. Doing well.

Science Wiz
   This week Jem learnt that light always travels in a straight line, yet you can bounce it off of surfaces that reflect. The angle of the light going in always equals the angle going out. Jem was very amazed by this project as show in the dark bathroom mirror.

The Reading Lesson
   No progress, still focusing on Explode the Code instead, building confidence in his alphabet sounds.

Explode the Code
   Lesson 3 completed. The page work does require a fair amount of pushing from me. But I can over hear Jem at times sounding out words ect. so I know that things are starting to 'click' for him. This is exciting!

Journal
   Jem wrote about his bike this week as part of Come Sit By Me, together we labeled the parts of a bike.

Bible
   We are reading through the Psalms for family devotions right now.

Reason for Handwriting
   Completed week 3 with no problems.

Extras
   Jem has been enjoying over and over a stories in music CD from the library, 'Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel'. It has great music and the conductor and composer picks apart all the sounds of the orchestra and explains how and why he composed the music in this style. Jem is really soaking it all in and has expressed how much he enjoyed the music.

A Picnic in the Woods

I just realized I have no good pictures of Jem, but I guess that's because he was off exploring most of the time. We had a lovely picnic in the 'forest', it was a little windy and so beautiful. There are lots of little trails just child sized going through all the bush and the kids had fun 'hunting' with Jem's cap gun. :) It was a special time.

Week Review - Sept 12-16

Sadly our brick making project did not turn out. We learnt that although all may go well with mixing and baking, there is still the problem of little hands that like to ruin things. Twice Lydia snuck out to our sun baking brick and crumbled it. But it was a good experience, and Jem said he would like to try again some other time.

Jem is going to spend the weekend with his cousins in celebrating of his cousin/best friend Isaiah's Birthday! With that in mind we finished the school week this morning leaving nothing for Saturday school work.

The Reading Lesson
   We have put this aside for a while, and are focusing on learning the alphabet/letter sounds.

Explode the Code
   Jem completed lesson 2 this week.

Math
   After grasping the first concept in lesson one of Math-U-See earlier this week, Jem flew through lesson 2 which was counting to 20. I had taught him this a few months ago. We will be on to lesson 3 next week!

A Reason for Handwriting
   Jem did not finish this weeks work. The past year and a bit I have got Jem to copy letters and words so much in the way this book wants him to that I find this very repetitive and rather boring for him. I don't know if I should push him as he gets very tired of writing, and there have been some tears over homeschooling already. I decided to get him to do only half of the writing as pictured below rather then both lines. Please let me know if this is not good.

Come Sit By Me
This weeks book was Franklin is Messy. Here are the activities we did during the week;
   Sorting Things Out (Math, developing ability to sort and discriminate)
   Sir Franklin (Language, learning forms of address)
   Day by Day (Language, order of days)
   Sir Franklin's Shield (Social Studies, learning the functions of shields, creative expression. Also Bible as we talked again about the armor of God ect.)
   Tidy Time (Practical Living, being organized. As pictured I got Jem to clean and organize the fridge all by himself, he did a WONDERFUL job!)

 ^^ A Reason for Handwriting ^^

^^ 2 pages from Explode the Code ^^

The Tower of Babel

^^Our Bible reading this morning inspired me^^

^^Coloring a robot and having a chat with Oma^^

"WHAT is she saying!?"

Reading about the tower of Babel today I was trying to explain to the kids about different languages in the world. We talked about our friends Matt and Caitlin who are going to Northern Canada to help translate the Bible into the Cree dialect. I used Daddy as a example, if he was trying to frame a house and all his worker spoke a different language how would they understand each other? Then I got Oma to talk to Jem on the phone in Dutch. Now we are off to try our hand at making mud bricks like the ones they may have used for building the tower of Babel. If they turn out I will post a picture with my week review.

First Week Review

 ^ Two of Jem's journal entries ^

 ^ A few pages from the Reading Lesson, he is now on lesson 2 ^

 ^ a sample of Jem's Explode the Code work, he is on lesson 2 now ^

^ A Reason for Handwriting is going well ^

Come Sit by Me: 'I can do it' unit

   First week went well, we read Hurry Up, Franklin nearly every day and picked these 'projects' to do;  

       Lazurus (Character Study, God's timing is the best timing)

        Memory Verse (Character Study, Memory skills)

       Telling Time (Math)

       Speedy and Poky (Language, Synonyms)

       Fast and Slow (Science)

       Allegro and Andante (Music, terms and tempo)

      Blueberry Surprise (Practical Living, following a recipe)

Science:

   Jem is LOVING the science wiz kits. We are going through the LIGHT kit right now. We have enjoyed 'splitting light' to make rainbows and spinning colors to mix them ect. Jem is especially fond of the little motor that spins the color disks.

Math:

   Jem is still grasping the first lesson concept of Math-U-See. He is enjoying it quite well and we practice every day.

Extra Activities:

   Jem helped bake muffins and brought them to our neighbor. He learnt how to fold paper and cut into the folds to make different shapes and designs. On Sunday he had a long chat with Dad about farm equipment and how it all works, then watched some YouTube videos with Dad about what they were talking about. We walked to the mailbox and Jem received his first letter, I showed him how his name and address were in the center of the envelop and the sender's name and address were in the top cornor. As we were at the mailbox the mail lady came and we were able to watch her open the boxes and sort the mail. Jem was very interested and said he wanted to me a mailman when he grew up. We have gone hiking with Jem twice this week, and he has watched to Disney Nature movies 'Ocean' and 'Monkey Kingdom'. This weekend Jem has also enjoyed listening to 'Christiana' from John Bunyan on audio drama, as well as 'Bethoveen Lives Upstairs'.

Personal Thoughts:

   So far homeschooling is going as I expected. It does seem as though there is a awful lot of printing for Jem to do each day and he gets pretty tired of this. I am trying to split the phonics, handwriting, and reading lessons, as well as the unit study book he has to make, into different days mixed in with Science and Math, but it still seems a lot of writing each day. Also with Reading Lesson Jem is having trouble with sounding out the words, for example: reading the word CAT he will sound out each sound and then read the word AT, ignoring the first sound. And reading the word MAD he sounds out the A as AT instead of just A, so his word comes out M AT D. I must admit to feeling very frustrated about this. Is this a common problem?