Friday, December 13, 2013

Home School Week 2

We had another great week!  We settled into more of a routine this week, although, our "routine" is very flexible!  The amount of reading that he does with the Sonlight Core curriculum is crazy, but I have already seen an improvement in his reading and comprehension.  Last week while reading the book "Walk the Worlds Rim", Luke was getting a big overwhelmed.  It's a 'wordy' book, with longer chapters and the story is somewhat hard to follow for him.  This week he did more of the reading from that book and was not as overwhelmed and bogged down by it.  It has turned into one of his favorites!

We had one day this week that had us both struggling.  At first I couldn't figure out what was going on and was chalking it up to the "honeymoon" period being over.  Luke was frustrated and having a hard time paying attention and I was impatient with his lack of focus.  It was about half way through the day when I realized that I hadn't started the day out in prayer!  Every morning up to that point, I had been diligent with prayer during my morning devotion/scripture reading time.  I would read and pray.  This particular morning, I had read...but for some reason forgot the prayer part!  There was an easy solution to that, and the next half of the day went much better!  It sure is proof that I can NOT do this on my own!

I am finding that we are still not getting everything done until 1:30 at the earliest.  He starts at around 8:15 and takes minimal breaks and we still aren't able to get through everything any sooner.  I'm not sure if we are doing too much, or spending too much time on certain things.  It turns out to be 5 hours of pretty intense work.

With all of that said, I still feel like we are doing exactly what we should be and I can't wait to add Owen to the mix!  (I have NO idea how I would be able to teach two of them, but I'm not going to let that stop me:)

This is the breakdown of what our week looked like.

Bible:
~He read several chapters from Genesis (1 each morning) from his Adventure Bible.  These chapters included the Tower of Bable, God leading Abram to Egypt, God's promise to Abraham, Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham and Isaac.  A couple days he drew a picture relating to what he read.

~I read to him from Luke (NSV)...chapter 2:21-4:44.

~He read five days of the American Indian Prayer Guide...this week learning about the Taino's and Arawaks. Each day praying that these tribes would find Jesus.

~He has done really well memorizing Psalm 8.  He has 5 of the 9 verses down...but verse 9 is a repeat of the first verse so he only has 3 more to learn.  He enjoys this process.

History/Geography:

~He finished up Pedro's Journal.  He really loved this book and it was a great way to learn about Columbus' journey to America.

~He started a book called "A light and the Glory".  This week was reinforcement of Columbus journey.

Luke has learned a pretty accurate version of the story of Columbus.  He realizes why it is significant that Columbus lead this journey, but also realizes that Columbus became greedy and hungry for fame and did terrible things to the natives.  The readings that he has done has painted a real picture from the perspective of the Indians.

He has been following these journey's on the map and marking significant events on the timeline.

Reading:

He has been reading the book "Walk the Worlds Rim"...more about American Indians and also "Lawn Boy", a great story about economics!  He finished up the book "A Lion To Guard Us" today..and he was bummed because that was his favorite of all the current books.  I liked that one too!

Handwriting:

Luke has worked through a new letter each day in Cursive.  This still proves to be his least favorite, but he gets it done.

Spelling:

He worked with a new list of 20 words and at the today aced the spelling test, no problem.

Language Arts:

He worked on a few different exercises that included more noun and adjectives but this week added verbs and adverbs.  He had a few different writing projects that utilized these concepts.

He also worked on another letter that he completed today and put in the mailbox.  This week's letter was sent to his best buddy Andrew.  He likes writing letters!

He also worked on the dictation passage.

Science:

We did science on Tuesday and Thursday and it was a continuation of lesson 1 from last week.  He had some worksheets in his Science Journal that reinforced the concepts he had learned from last week.  I realized that the project with the balloons that we did last week was actually supposed to happen this week:)  It just meant that we didn't have a project to do today.

This is the condensed version of what went on here this week.  Just a few minutes ago he was looking at the book he will start next week (that will take the place of  "A Lion to Guard Us"..it's about Pocahontas.  He realized that tomorrow is Saturday and was bummed because he's eager to start it!

Here are a few pics (from Instagram) from this week...

We have been using different techniques for memorizing.  This is one of his favorite.  I wrote the verses on the foam type paper and cut them apart.  This is been the most useful tool for him and he enjoys doing it.  Today he put together the first 4 verses of Psalm 8!


He also writes it on the chalkboard when he has it mastered.  I will try to take a pic of every one!  

We do most of our reading at the dining room table, but we save his favorite for the the last thing we do in the day which happens as Truett naps.  It's usually a nice relaxing time of the day.  


We have to get Truett's bath and bathroom cleaning in at some point, so Luke read to me while we got these things done.  Multitasking.  


Truett is enjoying Cars, popcorn and a blanket..a very specific request from him this morning!  

This was one of the language arts writing assignments.  Last week he had to choose an object and use adjectives (according to his 5 senses) to describe it.  This week he had to write a crazy story about the object he chose last week.  He had fun being creative here and I look forward to more of this type of writing!  








1 comments:

Melody said...

I love his story about the Christmas tree. I will go through some of my craft bucket and see if there is anything you be able to use.