CHRISTEPHI

It has been cold enough to freeze parts of the pond at the park. Today was warmer, though, and drizzley. Perfect for a brisk walk with the fam! Here the kids are amusing themselves with sliding rocks across the ice and of the edge into the unfrozen water. Rocks bouncing on ice make such a unique plink-plink sound!

Last weekend I was busy getting all ready for Kids Clothes Week and didn't get my week-in-review post up!  I figure I better get it posted before I get any further behind. Little Guy has been "doing school" with Ooka Island (review coming soon!) and is learning to read!  He has collected five books in the game and is so proud of his achievements! This is the Path to Reading that documents Little Guy's progress on Ooka Island. I think Little Guy feels a little left out since he doesn't know how to read yet (he's only 3!).  He sees how much fun his big sister has reading and he wants to join in the fun! Reading about the seasons upside-down. Most days, book basket time goes something like this with Miss M getting lost in a book for at least 15 minutes. Tuesday my mom came, so we made Tuesday our Friday and just did math, reading, and our nature walk.  Nana brought her rigid heddle table loom and showed us all how to weave a placema...

While it wasn't a bad week in our homeschool, it was a slightly disorganized and disjointed week.  We got everything done and had pretty good attitudes, but it just didn't feel like things ran smoothly.  Here are a few snippets of our week. Monday was a dreary, gloomy day.  In order to get some good light for reading, Miss M dragged her bean bag chair and giant teddy bear to the back door.  She sat there cozily reading a second Happy Hollisters book! Miss M's favorite way to learn a new memory verse is to write it on the white board and then erase a word at a time, reading it between each erasure and filling in the missing word. She gets so tickled when she gets towards the end and there are only a few words left. "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock" (Matthew 7:24). We learned about what it means that Jesus is our Rock and how we can build our lives on ...

This week we did several activities related to Jesus as the Bread of Life.  We baked bread using the recipe in the teacher's manual (a simple recipe that has you raise the dough in a warm oven).  Miss M did most of the work herself! Ingredients for baking bread: warm water, yeast, honey, flour, salt, and oil. Miss M carefully measuring out whole wheat flour. She also made a napkin holder with bread-shaped ends declaring Jesus is the Bread of Life !  Unfortunately, we haven't used it yet since I don't have any napkins right now. In history we've been reading about the French pioneers who paddled up rivers in birch bark canoes. Miss M made a canoe out of construction paper. Although Miss M has been reading at a late-2nd or early-3rd grade level for a while now, she hasn't been particularly interested in reading chapter books until this week! She picked up a copy of The Happy Hollisters by Jerry West that had been my dad's when he was a...

We had another fun week of adventures!  We learned about Jamestown, came up with a chant to help us memorize Matthew 1:21, and learned more about air! Jesus means the Lord saves We learned last week that the name Jesus means the Lord saves, and this week we learned that if we say we belong to Jesus we should live like Jesus would.  I gave Miss M a bracelet from when I was a little girl with the letters WWJD? on it.  Little Guy wanted to know: "Why is there a mystery on it?" which is what he calls question marks. On Tuesday we did an experiment with a cup of water and a piece of cardboard. We were afraid it wouldn't work, but it did !  I queried on Facebook whether it is really air pressure that keeps the cardboard in place and my uncle responded: "In order for the water to come out of the cup, air has to get in. A hole anywhere into the cup would allow air in, which would then cause the system to collapse. But as long as it's sealed, the air p...

For our second week of second grade, we added in math, foreign language, and some read-alouds to our lessons.  This gradual start to the school year has been so nice!  It allows to get our feet wet with our new schedule and become familiar with our books without jumping straight into deep water! Making a chart with paper circles. Singapore Math 1B. After completing Calvert First Grade Math, Miss M was ready to jump into Singapore Math 1B.  The first few lessons are a simple review of some things she already knows, but I've looked ahead and she is going to be introduced to new material pretty soon. Reading charts workbook page. Singapore Math 1B. She was a little disappointed by the lessons so far: "Mo-om, I already know how to do this!" But I'm confident this is the right level for her. So far she wanted to do more math each day, but I had to stop her so we could accomplish the rest of our lessons in a timely manner.  (Sorry, child, but Mama just can...