Week 7- French Pioneers

 So, this week we have moved to an official 4 day school week. With the little boys back at the church school now, the girls have been able to get a lot done in a focused period, because they want to hit the park after pre-school pick up. Monday when both boys are home with us all day we are now just doing independent reading, devotions, our night read aloud, and burning energy. This week they all played for 4 hours at our local gymnastics center.  So here's a subject by subject run down of this week:

Bible: Discussed "the bread of life". Memorized John 6:35 using this daily exercise hand out.  http://www.thecraftyclassroom.com/HomeschoolPrintableBibleVerse.html 
It's provided a nice structure and handwriting practice at the same time. 
History: This was just not our history week. We read our assignment. used it in a language arts lesson, and moved on. We didn't do any of the hands on history activities this week. We made bread last week with the butter and  well the napkin holders just didn't happen. But they did make rootbeer from scratch with Grandma & Grandpa ;)

Math: Continues on with Teaching textbooks Math 3. The girls are really enjoying it, and seem to be doing well.
Spelling: Lesson 7. We are completing Parts A & B on Tuesday, The using Stop and Smell the Spelling method I found for studying our words Wed and Thurs.
Handwriting: We completed 2 lessons in Cursive Handwriting without tears (we are more than 1/2 through to book), then worked on making sure we used our best printing for our copywork and spelling sentences.
Reading: We have moved away from trying to match up the girl independent reading to our historical time period, and are focusing more on what interests them. Ying has started Frindle by Andrew Clements, and Yang is challenging herself with Lemony Snicket's The Bad Beginning. I was able to find activities for both both book very easily on line.  Ying needs very direct questions to help her recognize the details she's reading. She is still very much in the recall phase of comprehension. She'll stare at you like a brick wall if you ask her to "Just tell me about the story." Yang is just more verbally oriented and will tell you EVERYTHING about what she reading. After the first tell me session with her, I went online and found a chapter summary to verify some details. Chick nailed it on the head. Very proud of her. 
Language Arts: We used our History lesson to identify nouns. Ying is working on forming sentences. She has a block when it comes to getting her thoughts down on paper. So we have been using her reading comprehension questions as the basis for forming written sentences. Taking the pieces of the question and reflecting them into an answer. Its been helping with her anxiety regarding writing assignments. Yang Finished The Bad Beginning and chose to make Popsicle stick puppets of the characters and then summarize the story for Ying and I.
Science: Once again Science was more impromptu for us then planned. The kids found and very cool caterpillar at my folks house. We went online to identify it and find out what it would look like when it turned into a butterfly. To the best of our limited skill, we identified it as a Pipevine swallowtail through the website http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?guide=Caterpillars . The girls drew the caterpillar in their journals and we printed out a picture of what it would become and identified where they were commonly found. 

Music & Public Speaking: The girls are preparing for auditions in our children's choir's Christmas production. The girls are going for solos and speaking parts, so we have pretty much be listening to the musical non stop and running lines. Its very funny how hard it is for a child raised in the south who has very little accent to try and put on a fake southern accent. Thank you you tube for some great example videos!..lol. With monitoring technology can be awesome!

Ps.  Our ship has come full circle and docked back in the port of Savannah on Thursday. Well keep watching to see if it makes the same circle another time.
If you're interested in how we have been tracking our ship, check out Marinetraffic.com.

Pray for us!

Week 6- Going Colonial

    This week we spent more time in Colonial America. We learned about New Amsterdam and the Dutch colonist that settle in modern day New York. Yesterday, the girls got a work out making butter. Today, we made maple wheaten read from a colonial recipe in a very good book I found at our library called  Hasty Pudding ,Johnnycakes, and Other Good Stuff: Cooking in Colonial America by Loretta Frances Ichord. Written in simple language with fun facts, my girls have enjoyed it, and I think we'll try some other recipes next week, too.

Butter in a jar :The girls were amazed that this really worked!

Yang kneading our maple wheat bread.

I had to attended a class for work on Wednesday, so Daddy handled school on Wednesday and tackled both science experiments in one day. The pack really got a kick out of it. Hands on stuff has been much easier this week thanks to Hulk and Taz starting school. Both boys love going and are tired when they come home leading to decent naps times. ;)

 I have decided to list our favorite book basket books each week to give some ideas of book my girls truly enjoyed perusing and reading. Our Colonial Selections so far:
Going to School in Colonial America by Shelly Sateren
The Dreadful,Smelly,Colonies: The Disgusting Details About Life in Colonial America by Elizabeth Raum ( This has been a huge hit. Who knew they used corn cobs as toilet..umm outhouse paper?)
A Day in the Life of a Colonial Doctor & A Day in the Life of a Colonial Sailmaker by Laurie Krebs

Again we've got other books in the basket, but these three have really caught their attention and held it enough that they've chosen to read on.

Independent reading this week:
Ying finished I Survived The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 by Lauren Tarnish, and started I Survived The Battle Gettysburg 1863 by the same author. This is a newer series,  featuring boys and some of the more catastrophic  events in US History... Shark attacks, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, etc.... They have really caught her attention. reading level is on par with Magic Tree House. We are just glad to get her reading again after our problems last year. 
Yang finished I Survived the Bombing of Pearl Harbor 1941 again by Lauren Tarnish and has moved on the The Bad Beginning in the Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. She seems to be doing well with it. I have found lots of good online reading guides for all the  books enabling me to have discussions with the girls even though I am not reading parallel right now.

    Primary Language Lessons and I are just not jiving. I have tried for 2 weeks now to get going with it, but its just not happening. The dictation and memorization pieces are just not for us. My girls are in the audition phase for our winter musical at church and have plenty to memorize and speak. Doing the musical in front of 1000 people is going to count for our public speaking. Dictation is going to wait another year. Just not what I want to work on. So, I have started to piece together some basic language arts stuff on my own. At the end of this week we started talking about nouns and identifying them. I plan to continue nouns next week, then move to verbs, and then show how you need both for a complete sentence. They have been informally taught this over the past 2 years but I figure for our writing to improve we need a better knowledge of structure.  We'll see if I am off my rocker or not... As always pray for me because Lord I know not what I do....

Thank you Lord for the boys enjoying school and the peaceful atmosphere its provided for the girls to focus. Be with us Lord and guide us along the path you have laid out for us. Do not let us turn left or right but boldly step forward on the narrow road. In Jesus' name. Amen.

P.S. Our Ship has made the long journey from St. John's and ironically is moored off shore waiting to enter the port of New York.

Week 5- Oh You Silly Pilgrims....

     We have moved on from James Town to Plymouth. I have to admit this is the time in US history that I just find boring. Sorry, I know how important it is to our nation  but true. Maybe  because all kids ever get taught about the pilgrims is their desire for a new order and Thanksgiving. The books of happy puritans prancing around with very happy natives dressed in ceremonial garb just kills me.  But I digress.... We have been studying the saints and strangers and life in Plymouth. The girls enjoyed making the oiled paper as we expanded it to making stained glass by coloring a design prior to oiling the paper. Cheap way to make those expensive "stained glass" coloring books.
     They've enjoyed talking about the stars though we haven't gotten to see many lately with the sky being overcast @ night. We also live well within suburbia with its generous light pollution making viewing limited in the early evening hours. But, they did love seeing how much bigger Betelgeuse was then the sun in our sidewalk art science class.  I know many people have have commented that MFW is light on Science. I agree but honestly its working for us. Science for us is taking on more of a unschooling approach this year. The kids are so naturally curious that we've just been making inquires as we go about things that we run across.
   We also have deviated again from the prescribed read alouds. We finished Blood on the River: James Town 1607. The girls give it an enthusiastic 2 thumbs up. We've moved on the Sign of the Beaver as a bridge between now and our copy of The Courage of Sarah Noble coming in at the library.
     I have gotten to know our local library very well in the past 6 weeks and have a true appreciation for what is available and at our finger tips. In our system, I am requesting books online about 2 weeks before they are needed. It takes approx 1 week to collect my entire need from the collection spread across our 13 county branches. I am also working  in 1-2 week block, depending on how busy I know a certain week is going to be. Our library allows for 3 week check out with up to 2 renewals available on line so long as no one else has requested they book you are renewing.  Because, I am not stuck on the specific titles listed in the teacher's manual, I am having no problem finding anything I need non-fiction wise. Fiction wise some of the older titles in the curriculum are not available and frankly not appealing to my kids. Flexibility is a virtue ;)
   We have also added a 4th member to the pack starting this week. My 3 year old  nephew, the Tazmanin Devil (Taz) is now with us from 0-dark-thirty to 4:30 M-F as his mom has started school for the year. It's all kinds a crazy and loud in this house right now, but the boys start half day preschool next week which should give us so semi-calm time..lol...
THANK YOU LORD FOR YOUR PROVISION AND PUT IN ME A HEART OF PATIENCE. GIVE ME A CHRIST LIKE ATTITUDE AS WE ADJUST TO OUR NEW CIRCUMSTANCES.


PS: We are still following one of the Container ships we saw leaving the port of Savannah last week. Its currently in port @ Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Week 4- Native Americans

We've had a lot of fun this week learning about the Native Americans. The kids were especially interested in the the homes they lived in. Paper wigwam worked but only a full size Ti-pi would do... So whats a good Dad to do? Build one. We tried to follow some internet plans, but I guess we just didn't get it right, so we had to improvise. It's now a fixture in Grandma and Grandpa's back yard for playtime since their yard is much flatter than ours. We are hoping when the bugs die down some this fall we can have a little fire in the firepit and "camp out".