The past few weeks I have fallen back into old habits of poor prioritizing and allowing myself to be at the mercy of my calendar, instead of being in charge of it. (I'm hoping to do a post on my other blog Planned Spontaneity soon to talk more about that and what we're doing to work on it...again!) Unfortunately, homeschooling has been one of any number of other things that have shuffled to the back burner as I struggle to keep up with all our commitments.
Still, we did do some things in the last few weeks. Here's what we've been up to...
Bible
We finished our discussion of why it is important to study the Bible by taking a look at the armor of God as discussed in Ephesians 6. While Ms. Spontaneity worked on filling out a notebooking page depicting the different items in the armor, I took the opportunity to summarize notes from this webpage regarding why each piece was important, and chimed in a few thoughts I had gleaned from my own study prep on the passage. While we didn't get around to doing it, I thought this was a great object lesson to illustrate the point.Next we launched into our "proper" Bible study, beginning with Genesis 1:1. Thus far we have read the account of creation and are finishing a notebooking page depicting what ocurred on each day.
We have continued to work on Psalm 119:10-12 for our memory work. I created a simple set of fill-in-the-blank pages, graduating from only a few missing words to nearly an empty page, as an aid for us to practice. We also tried alternating each word, such that I would say the first word, then she the second and so forth. We had fun trying to see how fast we could accurately say the verse that way. Finally, we started working on penmanship as well as we began copying the verse in cursive today. Ms. Spontaneity has not yet learned how to form all of her cursive letters, so we are learning and practicing each new letter she comes across. That may not be the official way to learn cursive, but it's working so far and she is enjoying it and picking it up quickly.
Reading
We have continued reading a chapter {almost} daily from Caddie Woodlawn, often with playdough work as I read aloud, and Ms. Spontaneity has officially declared that she likes the book!Math
We began to work on memorizing our two's multiplication tables and go over them each day, varying the style or focus a bit to keep it from becoming monotonous. We've also started alternating flash cards and speed drills - addition to start - to help her with her speed.
Meanwhile, we have continued placement testing to find the extent of her current math knowledge in each area. This week we discussed telling time, multi-digit addition (into the millions and with four or more addends), place value, and greater than/less than/equal to.
Last but not least, I picked up a copy of The Life of Fred book, Apples, for her to try out. The math itself is rather simplistic in this specific volume, but I thought the style might appeal to her since she enjoys math and brain teasers so we're just trying out the idea. She seems to enjoy it thus far, and it makes a fun "addition" (haha!) to our math time.
History
This week we began our history study, using Year 1 from the Good and Beautiful curriculum. I love that it includes biblical accounts in its history timeline, however I am mostly summarizing the first few chapters since the info overlaps with our study in Genesis. Shortly we will begin a study of ancient Egypt and we are both so excited.We did a simple but effective object lesson discussing the necessity for having a Creator of the universe and stated that history began at that point in time. We also started a Book of Centuries (at least, that's what we're calling it, though I'm not sure if it fits all the standard requirements and criteria), as well as a read-aloud based in ancient Egypt, titled The Golden Goblet.
Science
We also began our science study this week. Initially I couldn't find a curriculum I was wild about so I created my own. Naturally, the day I finished up the outline, I discovered the Elemental Science Classical series. I'm planning to check that out when we do our next unit, but for now, we are going to make use of all the hard work I put into planning!It was no surprise that Ms. Spontaneity wanted to start with a study of astronomy: she's wanted to be an astronaut for as long as I can remember! We're starting with an overview of the solar system and astronomy in general. We spent a great deal of time drawing the title page for our astronomy notebooks - very important! We also read Boy, Were We Wrong about the Solar System by .... selected mainly because that's what our library had available. It offered an entertaining and informative overview of both true and false beliefs about the solar system from ancient history to present. We also began work on a poster "map" of the solar system.
No comments:
Post a Comment