Homeschool Discoveries

Sharing a few things I've discovered along the way…

Collage Friday: Math, Baking and More Snow March 8, 2013

Filed under: Weekly Highlights — kirstenjoyhill @ 11:19 pm

It was a busy week for us…even though we mostly stayed home!  We had a ton of fun and learning (and I took so many pictures that it took me four collages to share all the pictures I wanted to share!).

First, Congrats to Mr. E on finishing RightStart Math Level B!  We finished up the last few lessons this week, culminating in the “year end test” today…followed by a celebration at a new-to-us doughnut shop on the way home from Miss M’s guitar lesson:

End of Level B

Now, I do have to say that Mr. E’s understanding and level of proficiency as a not-quite-six year old Kindergartener is not as great as Miss M’s was when she finished level B as a seven-year-old 1st grader.   He doesn’t have the same maturity in writing skills, or the patience to practice the math skills.  But conceptually he gets bored easily.   :-).  Level C contains a fair amount of review at the beginning we can use to solidify some of these concepts, and I am going to try my best to not speed through this level with him (taking the time to play more games and maybe some tangents into more problem-solving oriented supplements).

Here are few more of our learning highlights from this week:

Learning Highlights 2013-03-08

1-2.  I took the plunge and started BFSU Vol 2. with my kids.  I picked lesson C-9 to start with on Center of Gravity.   The kids enjoyed these fun “tricks” we saw first in a YouTube video.

3.  We spent quite a while on afternoon curled up on the couch reading picture books.  I can’t remember the last time I did that with all the kids together (though J didn’t stick around for most of it.)  🙂

4-5.  Mr. E completed lessons 71-74 of Logic of English Foundations, and Miss M did lesson 28 in LoE Essentials.   Mr. E’s favorite part of the week was playing phonogram bingo.  Miss M is more excited than she was last week about the Phonogram app, and Mr. K seems to be “getting” the app a bit more.  Unlike last week, Mr. E wasn’t excited about the phonogram app at all!

6.  I got out a preschool art/activity book called Baby Lambs for Mr. K this week.  I bought it a year or two back for Mr. E but missed the right window of age/skill for him to use it.  It seems like a great book right at the moment for Mr. K to keep busy while I am working with his older siblings.  I am still struggling with finding time to do any LoE Foundations with him.

7. With Miss M for math this week, we continued to work on Division with Math Mammoth 3-B, and played a few RightStart multiplication and division games.

8-9. I worked with Miss M on baking this week.  She made these biscuits and bread nearly all by herself with just a bit of coaching from me.

Snow Fun…

The kids are thrilled that our winter is turning out to be so snowy.  We got another 8 or 9 inches of snow this week!  Even I got outside to play.  🙂

2013-03-082 Snow

And just for fun, here are a few more snapshots of our week…

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Row 1: J showing off his coloring, “Magnet People”, Snow Ice Cream

Row 2: Lego creations, puzzles, silly fun

Row 3:  Baby J isn’t much of a “baby” these days…his new nickname here is “CT” (which stands for either “Cute Toddler” or “Cute Trouble” depending on what he’s doing!

Have a happy weekend!  Don’t forget that next Thursday is Pi Day (it’s one of my favorite random holidays…read my post from last year if you are looking for celebration ideas!).

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and It’s a Wrap!

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Book Discoveries this Week: A Pioneer Sampler March 7, 2013

Filed under: Books,History — kirstenjoyhill @ 10:59 pm

When I made my spreadsheet of books for our US History studies this year,  I originally stuck A Pioneer Sampler by Barbara Greenwood in the “activities and crafts” category.  So when it arrived from the library a bit after we started our most recent history unit (focusing on the pioneers from 1815-1860), I just put it in the book basket and didn’t look at it very closely.

As our unit progressed I finally took the time to look at it.  I discovered that A Pioneer Sampler does have some crafts and activities in it, but it has quite a bit of other content besides that.

A Pioneer Sampler follows the life of a fictional pioneer family (The Robertsons) on a backwoods farm in 1840.  pioneer samplerEach of the nineteen chapters in this fairly lengthy book (240 pages) tells a short story – a vignette if you will — about the life of the Robertson family over the course of the year.   Following each story are one or more short informational sections discussing everything from weaving fabric to making fires to getting lost in the woods.   Intermixed with these factual sections are directions for trying some of these activities at home — like growing a potato plant, making butter or painting with stencils.

In some ways this book made a great read aloud for a unit on the pioneers.  Short chapters broken down into sections make it easy to read a portion each day.  Since we started this book late in our unit, we felt a bit rushed to try and finish it all.    By the time we were about three-fourths of the way through the book, Miss M and I mutually decided not to finish it as a read-aloud.  We had already moved on to our next history topic, and we have too many other interesting books beckoning to us from the book basket.  We’ll hang on to it for a bit in case Miss M wants to read a little bit more on her own.

As interesting and thorough as this book is about pioneer life, I did feel it was a bit redundant for us.  Between the many book basket fiction and non-fiction selections we had for our pioneers unit and our previous reading about pioneer families (including the Little House on the Prairie Series, the Little House on Rocky Ridge series, Caddie Woodlawn, and Bound for Oregon, a book we recently read) I think I had already picked up many of the tidbits of information this book was presenting.

I would probably recommend A Pioneer Sampler for readers less familiar with 19th century pioneer life who don’t plan on reading an extensive list of books on this topic.  You could read this book and call the general topic of pioneer living pretty well covered.   An independent reader who is highly interested in pioneer times might also find this an interesting read.  I’m sure it’s within Miss M’s ability to read on her own if she finds herself interested and motivated to do so.

I’m linking up with Read Aloud Thursday @ Hope is the Word!

 

Organizing the Logic of English Flash Cards and Game Cards March 6, 2013

Filed under: Getting Organized,Spelling — kirstenjoyhill @ 2:56 pm
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I finally got around to organizing all my Logic of English flash cards and game cards last night! This project has been a few months in the procrastinating making.  😉

Logic of English Cards

With only one student doing a Logic of English program, organizing the phonogram flash cards was pretty simple.  I kept a pile handy of the cards we were working on, and the rest were in a drawer in a baggie or held together with a rubber band.  Even adding a second student, Mr E, didn’t cause too many problems at first because I was going through the Essentials program very slowly with him and not using too many cards.   At this point I also wasn’t making very good use of the spelling rule cards, so those just sat mostly unused in another bag.

But chaos broke loose with my phonogram cards once I started Mr. K in the Foundations program and transitioned Mr. E to this program as well.  Now I had stacks for cards Mr. K was using, cards mastered by Mr. E but not by Mr K (but that Mr K will need in upcoming lessons), cards currently needed by Mr. E, cards needed by Miss M, cards Miss M had mastered but were not needed yet for Mr E and finally cards no one is using yet (but of course Miss M will need in the upcoming weeks).  Oh, and plus those spelling rule cards! Whew, that’s a lot of cards!

The Logic of English flash cards are a bit of a challenge to organize because they are bigger than typical 4×6 cards, and are also too wide to fit in many of the other random plastic boxes I had around the house or could easily find at Target.

After much searching online and asking for advice on forums, the best option I came up with at first is the box I purchased (see the picture above — or here on the Target website). I liked the fact that the game cards also fit in the box, but I was a bit disappointed not to have a storage box with a lid!  I’ve found what I think will be safe place to store the box so that it’s less likely to be tipped over by our curious toddler.

After I bought this box I did find a couple of options for 5×8 file card boxes that close with a lid (here and here).   I’m going to see how things go with the box I purchased, but I’ll be keeping this type of box in mind for the future if we have too many spills of the no-lid box.  😉

In order to avoid buying special large divider cards, I made some using cardstock — I just needed to trim a bit off the side of a standard letter-sized piece, and then cut each piece in half.  I then hand-cut the tabs (as I’m sure you can tell from their uneven sizing!).

As of right now the game cards aren’t very well organized.  They are just separated into three groups – cursive, bookface, and special cards.  A project for a future day would be to organize them better by who might use them for a game.

 

US History Unit 5 Recap: 1815-1860 – Pioneers March 5, 2013

Filed under: History — kirstenjoyhill @ 11:24 pm

We’ve pretty much finished up the 5th unit/topic in our US History studies for this year, looking at the years 1815-1860 with a focus on the pioneers.  Unlike previous units, I’m trying to get this written up before it gets too foggy in my mind.  😉 We still have one or two books to finish up that fit more into this topic, but since there is overlap timeline-wise between this unit and our next unit (focusing on slavery and the underground railroad during approximately the same time period), I feel like this unit is “done enough” to wrap up.

DSC00542

I had a hard time finding just the right “spine” or key text for this unit.  I really wish that the Maestros had continued their American Story series beyond the “New Nation” book, which ends with the War of 1812.  Those books give such a good overview of the time periods they cover, without giving too much detail.  Other books I considered were too detailed or lengthy for the ages of my kids.

I was hoping for something that would give a bit of a socio-political overview of the time period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War.  Westward migration and slavery are certainly two key topics, but other things were going on as well.

We tried out a few chapters of a vintage book, “This Country of Ours” by H. E. Marshall.  It was okay, but the kids weren’t “into” it enough for me to feel it was worth our time to continue.  I decided that since this is just 3rd grade/Kindergarten US History, I would just forgo finding that big picture “overview” and trust that our assortment of book basket books would be enough.  After all, up until recently I don’t think I really knew exactly what else was going on between 1815-1860 (other than the pioneers, the gold rush and the slavery issues) anyway!

One book I did discover toward the end of this unit was “A Pioneer Sampler.”  I had requested it from the library but didn’t look at it very closely until it had been in the basket for a while.  I had been under the impression it was mostly an activity book, but that’s not really the case.  Look for a post about it coming soon (maybe later this week).

Read-Alouds (linked to my blog posts about the book):

Birchbark House

The Game of Silence

The Porcupine Year

Bound for Oregon

Of the three Louise Erdrich books, only Birchbark House originally appeared on my read aloud list for this unit.  But we loved it so much that we went ahead to the next two books in the series.  Doing this meant we dropped a couple of more traditionally pioneer-oriented read alouds I had scheduled.  I am really okay with that, however, since I feel like our reading of the entire Little House on the Prairie series a year or two ago (even though it falls in a bit later time period) gave us a good background on the pioneer life in general.

A book I wanted to read aloud that belongs in this time period that we didn’t read yet is “By the Great Horn Spoon.”  We’ll reading that one sometime soon.  🙂

Longer Books Read Independently by Miss M (age 8, 3rd grade):

Carolina’s Courage by Elizabeth Yates — A story about a young girl traveling west in a covered wagon and a challenging sacrifice she is asked to make in giving up a cherished possession along the way.

Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan — I realized after including this book in this unit that it probably takes place later than the time period we were trying to study.  Miss M read it and enjoyed it anyway.  🙂

Skylark by Patricia MacLachlan — Sequel to Sarah, Plain and Tall

Three sets of the “American Girl” books are set during this time period — Kirsten, Josefina, and Mary Grace/Cecile.  Miss M has read the Kirsten books several times in the past (they’re her favorite of the American Girl books) and she did not re-read them at this time. She did read all the Josefina books for the first time and re-read 5 of the 6 Mary Grace and Cecile books.  She also read the “Welcome to Kirsten’s World” and “Welcome to Josefina’s World” non-fiction companion books that go along with those series.

Book Basket:

I filled our book basket with over two dozen books for this time period.  You can see a list of most them in my US History Year 1 spreadsheet. Miss M read many of them independently, with the boys only asking me to read a couple of them out loud.  The boys love the “You wouldn’t want to be…” series, and “You Wouldn’t Want to Be an American Pioneer” was no exception.

I read aloud to all the kids “Young Abe Lincoln: The Frontier Days” (We read this story about Lincoln’s early years on Abe’s birthday, no less!),  “Who Let Muddy Boots into the White House?” (a humorous book about Andrew Jackson), and parts of “Day that Changed America: The Alamo” (a very, long and detailed picture book that I tried to squeeze into far too few minutes before a trip to the library on the day the book was due and couldn’t be renewed!).

 

Collage Friday: Snow Forts, Fred and Writing March 1, 2013

Filed under: Weekly Highlights — kirstenjoyhill @ 10:02 pm

I couldn’t really think of one unifying theme for the week, so the title reflects the potpourri of things I’m thinking about as I write a post to wrap up our week.

Remember last week, when the neighbor kids helped our kids build a little fort in the snow? The next day, Tony helped our kids mound up a whole bunch of snow, which the kids dug out in to a really cool fort (or a “hut” as they insist upon calling it!).  The hut and surrounding paths and small forts were the site of much play this week (and neighbor friends joining in for the outside play again today):

Snow Fort Winter 2013

 

Here are a few of our learning highlights this week:

 

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1. Mr. E (Kindergarten) and I played a game of Subtraction Corners early in the week, then Miss M (3rd grade) joined Mr. E and I as well for a game of adding corners today.  We’ve never played corners with more than two players but it works just fine!

2.  Mr. E continued to practice subtraction with Right Start B, and wanted “more worksheets”, so here he is doing some subtraction in a Singapore 1-A workbook I keep on hand for just such occasions. :-).  We also did a bit of work in RS B on making change and reading thermometers and scales.  Mr. E is just about done with B…maybe another week and we’ll be on to Level C.   Miss M continued with division practice with Math Mammoth 3-B this week.  I didn’t really “push” too hard on the math front this week, so we’ll still be working on division next week for at least part of the week.

3.  All three of the older kids tried out the new Logic of English phonogram practice app that was released this week.  I think it hits Mr. E’s interests and abilities most closely.  Even though Miss M still needs practice on some of her phonograms, she thought the game play of the app was a bit boring.  Mr E really liked it and found it helpful, while it seemed a bit tricky for Mr. K (age 4, preschool), who is just starting to learn all his lower case letters and their phonogram sounds.

4.  It was a co-op week for us…I taught a lesson on magnets for my class of 1st and 2nd graders, so that meant my kids got a bit of a review on magnets as well.  Though I had great intentions of also starting a lesson from BFSU Volume 2 with my kids, preparing my lesson for co-op (plus helping Miss M put a few finishing touches on her Rocks and Minerals labpook) seemed to take all the science-related energy I had this week.

5.  We finished reading Life Of Fred: Apples today.  Life of Fred is like “math dessert”…everyone loves it so much!  We’ll start Butterflies, the second book, next week.  Miss M started expressing interest in doing a bit more writing so I bought Write On! and we got a start with two lessons from that book this week (I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once we’ve tried out a few more lessons).

6.  Mr. E drawing a comic strip (inspired by the “Your turn to play” questions in the last chapter of Life of Fred: Apples).

7. Sketch/Scribble art and a sentence by Miss M..The start of Write On! project #4.

Have a great weekend!

 
I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and It’s a Wrap!

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Book Discoveries This Week: Bound for Oregon February 28, 2013

Filed under: Books — kirstenjoyhill @ 11:10 pm
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When many of us parents hear the words “Oregon Trail” (especially those of us who were in elementary school in the mid to late 80s), we immediately think of the text-and-minimal-graphics computer game we played on the Apple IIe at school.  Remember buying your supplies, heading out on the trail, trying to shoot animals, and hoping no one would die? I’m not sure if I ever made it to Oregon in that game.  I think I typically either killed off my characters, got bored or ran out of time before I could “win” by making it to the end of the trail.

Since I somehow missed out on having any pre-Civil War American History in school, my knowledge of the Oregon Trail pretty much started and ended with that game.  🙂  For our current US History unit (1815-1860, with a focus on the pioneers), I knew I wanted a book that would take us in depth on the subject.  Miss M read a few non-fiction selections, and I chose Bound for Oregon by Jean Van Leeuwen as a bedtime read-aloud.

Bound for Oregon is a story told as a first-person narrative of Mary Ellen Todd, a 1o year bound for oregonold girl who makes the journey with her family along the Oregon Trail in 1852.   Mary Ellen and her family make new friends and part with them again, deal with sickness, difficult river crossings, trouble with their animals, unfriendly Indians, bad weather and difficult terrain — all the typical challenges and hardships that most pioneering families face as they journeyed thousands of miles across the plains and mountains on their way to Oregon and California.

Miss M and I definitely found this book interesting, though I didn’t think it had some of the same compelling qualities that some of our other read-alouds have had this year.   While hardship and even death (of friends the Todds meet along the way) are present in the story, there was little doubt in my mind of what was going to happen in the end.   I just “knew” that this story would end up happily with the Todd family arriving in Oregon (without having to read the last chapter first or at least early…something I’ve actually done with some books!).   In some ways I guess that makes this book more “educational” about what life was like on the trail for average pioneers who made the journey successfully.

As I read this book I would have guessed that Mary Ellen and her family were a neat conglomeration of average families on the Oregon Trail created for this book.  So I was a bit surprised to learn in reading the author’s note at the end of the book that Bound for Oregon is based on a true story — recollections that Mary Ellen shared with her children and grandchildren that were eventually written down and preserved.

In the end I would say that Bound for Oregon fit a nice spot in our historical fiction read-aloud list for the year,   but it’s not one that I would say is a must-read.

I’m linking up with…

 

Resources for a Unit on Rocks and Minerals (and a free printable minibook) February 27, 2013

Filed under: Science — kirstenjoyhill @ 1:16 pm
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We’ve just finished a science unit on rocks and minerals.  Most of this unit was focused on Miss M, my third grader.  The boys (K and Pre-K age) enjoyed the hands on part of the study, but were less interested in continuing the study beyond that point.

The hands-on element is pretty key to an interesting study on rocks and minerals.  You might be able to use samples you can find locally…or maybe you have a friend with a rock collection you can borrow.  But if not, buying rock and mineral sample kits is probably a good option.

After reading a bunch of reviews on Amazon and browsing the Home Science Tools website, I decided to go with the Rock Study Kit and Mineral Study Kit from Home Science Tools.   These kits were reasonably priced and I was very happy with what we received.  Since the kits looked similar to kits that got poor reviews on Amazon I wasn’t sure if we would end up with tiny specimens that would be hard to use.  But that wasn’t the case. Each specimen was reasonably sized and the kids had a great time examining them and doing the activities suggested in the instructions that came with the kits:

rock mineral study kits

I had originally planned on just doing a few library books and videos to go along with our hands on discussion and activities, but Miss M requested to make a lapbook for this unit.

As it happened, I already had purchased the Rocks and Minerals lapbook project pack from Hands of a Child last year — we just never made it to this science topic!

Miss M did a few lapbook pieces per week for the last couple weeks to complete this lapbook:

rocks minerals lapbook

Most of the minibooks in the lapbook came from the Hands of a Child lapbook kit, but we did use a few other items as well.   I found a neat birthstone foldable…and now I can’t seem to find the link to it.  (I’ll come back and add it if I do!)

One thing I had a hard time finding was good piece comparing the similarities and differences between minerals and rocks.  I thought it would be the perfect opportunity for a Venn Diagram.  I liked how this site used the analogy of flour vs. chocolate chip cookies to compare minerals and rocks.  So, I used that concept for a minibook cover and made the Venn Diagram inside.  If you would like a copy of this foldable minibook for personal/educational use, you may download it here.

Books we used for our Unit:

Magic School Bus chapter book “Rocky Road Trip“: I read this aloud to all the kids.  It was fun and informational.

National Geographic Everything Rocks and Minerals: An informative book with lots of pictures.  Miss M read most of this book on her own.

100 Things You Should Know About Rocks and Minerals: Another fact filled, informative book we found at the library.  I don’t think Miss M made it all the way through this one.  I also read portions out loud to the boys as they were interested.

A Rock is Lively by Dianna Hutts Aston, Illustrated by Silvia Long: This is a much more “literary” non-fiction book with beautiful illustrations and shorter passages of text.  This one makes a much more interesting read-aloud than most of your typical non-fiction section science books we find at the library.

Videos we Watched:

DK Eyewitness Rock and Mineral

Bill Nye The Science Guy Rocks and Soil

Rock and Mineral Videos at The Happy Scientist (subscription site).

Just for fun:

The kids had been asking to make rock candy for a while, so we did that…even though it is really only loosely connected to actual rocks.  🙂 You can read more in this post about our adventures with rock candy.

One other note:

Most, if not all, the resources we use come from an old-earth perspective.   As a family we believe in a young earth creation.  However, these type of resources are not as easy to come by (certainly not at the library!).  We’ve chosen to handle this by discussing that scientists are looking at rocks and minerals from the perspective of how things might have come to be without God in the picture.  Since we believe God is our Creator, we know it didn’t need to take millions or billions of years.  So far, this has worked for our family and the kids seem okay with understanding why people might think the earth is really, really old and yet we don’t necessarily need to agree with this perspective.

Linking up with:
Science Sunday

 

Top Ten Ways to Make Pinterest a Helpful Tool February 25, 2013

Filed under: Technology — kirstenjoyhill @ 10:25 pm

It seems like I read or hear criticisms of Pinterest all the time:  It’s a big time waster.  It’s full of people idolizing beautiful houses and clothes.   It makes people feel inadequate because they don’t have a “Pinterest Perfect” life.   It’s too “busy” and visually cluttered.

Well, that last criticism might be true.  If you don’t find looking at pictures to be helpful way to organize and retrieve information, Pinterest may not be for you.  But if you can see past pin after pin of someone’s idea of a dream house, you can turn Pinterest into a tool that works for you.  I’ve really enjoyed using Pinterest to organize recipes, homeschool ideas, and more.

pinterest post button

Here are a few tips for harnessing Pinterest as a tool for you…not just a time waster:

1. First and foremost, remember that Pinterest is really just bookmarking on steroids, with the ability to see what other people are bookmarking too.  No one (no one!) is doing, buying or using everything you see them pinning.  There’s no such thing as a “Pinterest Perfect life.”

2. Browsing aimlessly through what friends or random strangers pin is not the useful thing about Pinterest — that’s the time waster.  What’s useful is what you pin to your own boards.  So, make yourself some boards that make sense to you.  The board ideas Pinterest gives you when you join are kind of lame.  Make boards instead for your hobbies, holidays, types of food you like to cook, homeschool subjects or other responsibilities you have.

3. Grab a “pin it” button, and “Pin” things you want to find again — helpful blog posts, recipes you run across, products you want to remember for a future holiday, and so on.   You don’t just have to “repin” what other people have already pinned!

4.  When you are looking for a new recipe, are planning a homeschool unit study or need to plan a birthday party, search pinterest and google for what you’re looking for.  Sometimes the good “old fashioned” google search will turn up what you need (and then you can pin it for later reference).  But how many times have you searched google only to see the exact same plastic cake topper show up in nearly all of the first two pages of links?  Instead, if you search for, say, “cars birthday cake” on Pinterest, you’ll see the best-of-the-best of some really creative cake ideas that other people have found — and then you can repin them to your own board to decide later which one you want to make

5.  Don’t just follow all your facebook friends.  (And don’t follow the people Pinterest “suggests” when you sign up — they probably won’t be pinning things you are specifically interested in).  Really, you could not follow anyone at all on Pinterest, and just use it for your own personal bookmarking and organizational purposes.   You’ll get the most out of following people on Pinterest if you follow people who have similar interests to your own — so look to follow the bloggers you already read, real-life friends whom you actually share things in common with (not that random person you are friends with on Facebook that you really only met once at a neighborhood coffee shop).

6. Also, as you repin those pins you find from specific searches, look at the boards you are finding those pins on — when you find a great pin from an interesting board, follow that board or all of that pinners boards.  Don’t forget you can follow someone’s boards individually…or if you want to follow most, but not all of someone’s boards, you can click “follow” and then “unfollow” one or two boards if there are just a few you don’t find interesting.

7.  If you’re a homeschooler and you want to follow other homeschoolers to get ideas, check out the Homeschoolers on Pinterest linkup.  Over 600 homeschoolers have linked their Pinterest profiles on that page!

8.  Use Pinterest to collaborate.  Did you know that you can invite other Pinterest members to pin on a board and make it a “group” board?  Whether you want to collaborate with other users of a homeschool curriculum or other members of a committee you’re a member of, you can create boards that others can add their “finds” to as well.  Just remember that to add someone to your board, you need to be following at least one of their boards too.

9.  Don’t forget to write helpful descriptions for your pins.  Not only will this help you later as you are trying to find that recipe or lesson plan idea (in case you forgot what the picture looked like or the picture wasn’t very helpful), but it will make it easier for others who want to repin your pin.

10.  Come back to your boards when you need inspiration!  When it’s your turn to bring dessert for the potluck, you’ll thank yourself for those 50 desserts you pinned, so you can quickly find something you think looks tasty.  🙂

I’m linking up with Top Ten Tuesday @ Many Little Blessings!

Top Ten Tuesday at Many Little Blessings

 

Collage Saturday: Mostly a Break February 23, 2013

Filed under: Weekly Highlights — kirstenjoyhill @ 10:37 am

Last February I remember feeling like we really needed a bit of a break around President’s day.  We had a few special things going on so we ended up taking a bit of an “unplanned” break at this time last year.   With that experience in mind, though, I planned a “mini-break” for President’s Day weekend this year.  We had a fun day last Friday, and didn’t do any regular schoolwork Monday-Wednesday this week.  With a light day last Thursday, it essentially amounted to one week of work stretched over two weeks. 🙂

On Monday, Tony had off for President’s Day.  The kids were excited to finally take Daddy with us to The Works (a small science/engineering museum), followed by a special family dinner out to a Chinese buffet restaurant.

 

2013-02-23

 

Tuesday, the kids enjoyed a relaxed morning playing at home, followed by a long-requested trip to Homeschool Open Gym at the Gymnastics gym the kids had a class at in the fall.  Mr. K is finally old enough to participate, so I think we’ll be going more often the rest of this spring.  My mom came for a visit on Wednesday.  She is planning to take each of the kids out in turn on special outings. Miss M picked a shopping trip with Grandma a couple weeks ago.  This week was Mr. E’s turn, and he picked a trip to an indoor Archery range!

Then Thursday and Friday it was back to business as usual.  It went better than I expected for only having a two-day school week.

  • Miss M started the Division chapter in Math Mammoth 3B, and Mr. E did lessons from Right Start B on greater than/less than and Subtraction.  We also read aloud from Life of Fred Apples.  Only two chapters left!
  • Mr E did two lessons of Logic of English Foundations, and Miss M wrapped up List #26 in Logic of English Essentials.  Spreading a spelling lesson over two weeks was not good for Miss M however, and she did much more poorly than usual.
  • We continued readings for US History focusing on 1815-1860, especially the pioneers.  Miss M read “Sarah, Plain and Tall” and started the sequel, “Skylark“.  We also started “Bound for Oregon” as a bedtime read aloud and “A Pioneer Sampler” for daytime history reading.
  • We’re really wrapping up our science unit on Rocks and Minerals.  All we have left is for Miss M to make a cover for her lapbook and maybe add a few pictures in the extra space. 🙂

 

Here are a few more photo highlights from our week:

 

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Clockwise starting in upper left (whoops, forgot to number the pictures this week!):

  • Mr E proudly shows off his very first archery target
  • More snow! An additional almost six inches of snow brought the neighbor kids out to our backyard for snow fort building in the late afternoon on Friday.  Seven kids worked together to make a huge fort!
  • Having fun with legos during during our break
  • Mr. E in a basket…with a paper phone?!?  All the kids ran around with paper phones pretending to talk on them and “install apps.”  Who knew paper phones could be so much fun?
  • Miss M practicing her guitar.  She is continuing to enjoy lessons and improve steadily!
  • Nearly complete Rocks and Minerals lapbook

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday, The Weekly Wrap-Up, and It’s a Wrap!

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Book Discoveries this Week: The Game of Silence and The Porcupine Year February 21, 2013

Filed under: Books — kirstenjoyhill @ 10:45 pm

As we were finishing The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich a couple weeks ago, Miss M and I both agreed — we needed to continue on with its sequels without delay (so much so I ordered a copy of the second book in the series from Amazon so as not to have to wait for a copy to arrive at our library.  Such is the luxury of being a “Prime” member of Amazon).  🙂

The Game of Silence picks up Omakayas’ story about two years later.  A group of raggedy distant relatives of Omakayas’ people arrive on her island, having fled their homes after enemy attacks.  Besides the personal horrors these people have suffered, they bring bad news that the white men intend to drive the Ojibwe people from their island home.  A group of men are sent out in all directions to find out the truth and the cause of this situation.

This sense of imminent change hangs in the background of The Game of Silence, yet the rhythm of the story is still the seasons in one year of Omakayas’ life as she grows and matures.  Miss M could totally relate to Omakayas’ frequent annoyance with her younger brother Pinch (we know all about annoying younger brothers in this house!).   I could completely relate with Omakayas as she tries to impress her family by going out to start the rice harvesting early, yet having her plan go all wrong as she gets in trouble for starting too soon, and her already-prideful cousin Two Strike get glory and attention for her hunting success.

The title of the book comes from a game the grown ups ask the children to play when they must have an important discussion.  One of the elders sings a song, and all the children know they must be quiet, and prizes are given out to the children who can remain quiet the longest (isn’t that a good idea?).  As the book closes, a year of “silence” of another sort ends as few of the scouts sent out return, and those that do return, do so with bad news — there is to be no changing the minds of the government.  Omakayas and her people must leave their beloved island home.

The Game of Silence ends with Omakayas’ family leaving their home in search of a new place to call home, and the story picks up not much later in The Porcupine Year as they are still on their long journey that will take them to northern Minnesota.

While there were a few funny moments in the first two books of this series, we definitely found the most humor in this, the third book.  The story opens as Omakayas and Pinch barely survive being swept through river rapids while hunting at night.  While separated from their family, Pinch has an unfortunate run-in with a baby porcupine and ends up with Quills all over his head and body — earning a new name for himself (Quill) and a pet in the process.   This porcupine plays a surprisingly important role in this next year of the life of Omakayas’ family, which they will forever remember as the “porcupine year.”

The journey to what will hopefully become a new home near Lake of the Woods starts out well enough, but takes a turn toward adversity as their trust is betrayed and many of their possessions and food stores are stolen.  Omakays and her family have to endure a cold winter without the many things they had collected for their journey.

While I usually read to Miss M at bed time, our eagerness to continue the story found us reading on a Saturday afternoon last weekend.  Mr. E eagerly joined us and loved the funny little boy Quill with the pet porcupine that rides on his head.   While Mr. E didn’t end up listening to the whole book with us, he sat in on most of it (joining us after a quick picture book read with daddy).  Mr E told us that he’s liking longer books more now…especially ones with “lots of adventures”.  🙂  I think he’ll be joining us for more bedtime stories in the near future.

Especially when taken as a group, these two books along with The Birchbark House are my favorite read alouds so far this school year.  Erdrich has created such a wonderful, compelling character in Omakays and it is evidence of her great ability as a writer that she has had me both crying and laughing as I read them aloud.   The next book in the series, Chickadee, jumps much further forward to Omakayas as a mother of twin boys who are the focus of the fourth book.

I don’t think I’m quite ready for Omakayas to grow up in my mind.  I think I’ll linger on these pleasant thoughts of her as a maturing young girl a bit longer…but I’ll definitely have Chickadee on hand for the time when we are ready to continue her story.

I’m linking up with Read-Aloud Thursday @ Hope is the Word!