Week # 3

September 8-14
This week was overwhelming. It was 3 weeks ago but I remember the feelings well. I went to bed crying more than one night that week.
Things at work were crazy. My three year old niece came to stay with us for an indefinite amount of time. DS was getting frustrated with Math. The only subject he still wanted to do was Bible. DD was doing fine and still eager to learn.

So it was a hard week. We were still trying to figure out what does and doesn't work.

Bible-

Missionary kids
Overview of the Bible
Dwight Moody

Language Arts/HandWriting/Spelling

DS Yellow Book
Watched a documentary on dwarfism- DS then wrote a paper on what he learned, DD drew a picture showing what she learned. (This wasn't something we had planned on doing, saw the show and didn't feel like fighting with DS about Math or anything else at the moment so we made a lesson out of it.)
DD- Phonix Workbooks Pg 10-19 with daily review of previously learned sight words.
Not So long lost Treasure Hunt- I asked DH for help with this assignment and was really excited to see what he had come up with! He made a neighborhood map to scale with a seperate set of directions- It was really impressive. We had some visiting friends that weekend so they joined in too! See http://4twinklingstars.blogspot.com/ for pictures of our FLAT FRIENDS! The kids really enjoyed the hunt and we hope to do another one in the near future!
MATH-
DS- Lessons 16-18
DD-Lessons 8-11
Drills-Workbooks

Geography-
DS began an advanced Geography packet- It is a little tough for him, designed for older students so we are working on it together and very slowly.
Pre Test- Kids were given a US Map, a World Map and maps of the other continents to see what they knew coming in to this assignment. DS could locate the US on the world map. Other than that they were left blank.
Intermediate World Atlas Pg 22-25, 39
Maps and Globes pg 38-42
US Puzzle, worked on it once a day.
Lots of review of the Globe and the States.

Science/ Nature Notebook-
Deserts- What lives in the desert, how the desert changes
We grew our "magic rocks" that they found on thier treasure hunt
The difference between natural and manmade
Identified spiders and insects we found out in the garden and the garage and entered them in our Nature Notebooks. We found a snake skin this week too. The kids thought this was sooo cool! I on the other hand, was not excited to find shed snake skin in the garage right next to where I get in the car!!

Music/Art
American Indian song- The crooked Path- (follow the leader, I was impressed at how fast the kids picked up the words. It was much more difficult for me to do so!) I really want to find a foreign language class for them.

Reading-

Journeys- A book about a dog sled race. The kids loved it and were wanting to learn all they could about snow dogs. They took a special interest since our Kona is a Samoyed and often refered to as a snow dog herself.
We watched a movie that weekend that went with the theme, For the life of me I can't remember the name of it, but it was really good and the kids enjoyed it. (It had John Cusak in it and was probobally near 10 years old. I could be wrong..) Afterwards we discussed it as a family and made comparrisions/ contrasts to the book that we had read all week and the movie.
DS continued to read Stuart Little on his own. Can't find his reading log at the moment so I don't know how far he got that week.

Cameron Townsend Chapters 3-6

Sports/ Extra Activities -
Cheer continues, We had our first official meeting with our newly established Homeschool group. There was a great turn out and I was excited to see two other families that we knew from school with children in each of my kids' grade levels. We came up with a group name, took a group photo, made frames for our photos, played at the playground and had an ice cream party. This meeting was really for everyone to get to know each other. DD had a great time, DS had an ok time, playing with his two buddies that he already knows from church and when those boys were off doing something else he would come hide behind me... He has never had an easy time in group settings. Hopefully this becomes easier for him soon. We attended Bible study as usual, which is a play date for the kids who spend the evening running around with all thier friends and eating goodies
We got a guitar for $20.00 from another family at homeschool group! We were really excited about this!

Week # 2

Trying to do a lot of this from memory.. Might be tough...

September 1-7

Bible- Animism, Buddhism, Hinduisn, Islam, Judaism

Handwriting-
Copied memory verse from last week. Wrote and revised letters to family.

Math-
DD- Saxxon- Lessons 1-7
DS- Saxxon- Essons 12-15
Drills- Addition, subtraction
DD- Workbook -Graphs

Spelling-
DD- Spelling DVD game
DS- Yellow Book- Spelling list- Test on Friday %100

Langauge Arts/ English-
DD- Workbooks
DS- Yellow Book

Nature Journal-
Played in the backyard and found habitats of the different animals and insects that live there. Drew pictures of these habitats in our journals.

Geography-
Lattitude and Longitude, activities and worksheets
elevation and depth
physical and political maps
Learning names of oceans and continents
Globe Puzzle
Local Map- identify where we are and how to get other places.
Made maps of our neighborhood, and maps of our house
Grid activity

Cooking/ Math / Geography-
Kids made cakes that resembled maps. They loved this!

Science-
Living World 12-17
Cycles in Nature
Plant Life
Celery experiment
Watched Oregon Field Guide- lamprey and Aquarium divers

Music/Art
Hello to All the Children of the World- Practiced and learned hello in different languages

History-

Added to our book of centuries

Reading-
DS- Lord of the Fleas + Review Questions
DD- Sight word Test
DD- Peter's Dream
DD- Teach your child to read in 100 Easy Lessons 1-2

Independent Reading Time-
DS- Stuart Little Chapter 1-4


Family Reading time-
Grandfathers Journey, Cameron Townsend Chapter 1-2

Foreign Language- Spanish DVD - Learning the basics of communication, hello, my name is.. ect.

SPORTS/Extra Activities-
Cheerleading and Girl Scouts Registered for fall soccer, playdates with other homeschoolers, Bible Study Group


This week went well. Trying to find a routine that works for us all. DD has shown interest in learning to play the guitar for over a year now, going to look in to getting an inexpensive one.

Summer Schedule

We had a really busy summer that included three trips to different parts of California, a trip to Nevada, and a trip to Washington. We didn't do much formal work during the summer. We visited a few water parks, Hot August Nights, saw Great Grandparents and Great Great Grandparents, among many other things.

We used our road trips as Geography lessons. Frequently using a map and showing the kids where we were and how we got there. While in Nevada we spent a lot of time just talking about the landscape there and how it differed from Oregon and other states they had been to. We started learning about deserts and what animals and plants can survive in them.

We also visited Willows, California where some of my relatives live. My Great Granparents home was just sold to the city. The city has plans to tear it down. So we went down to document the history of the house and of my family. We ended up learning so much about my family that I never knew. It was a very emotional, worth while trip. I began showing the kids how family trees work and they made thier own trees with what they knew about our family.



We also visited Ocean World in Crescent City, California. It was one of my favorite things we did the entire summer. We almost didn't go, as we have been to many aquariaums and this one was really small, and we didn't think the kids would see anything they hadn't seen a hundred times before. So glad we did!

They have a guided tour that goes through and we all learned lots of interesting facts that we hadn't known from all of our previous visits to other aquariums.
We got to pet a shark. We all loved that! We learned the difference between seals and sea lions, and they put on a fun show for us! We all walked away with so much new knowledge, it was exciting. We are still talking about the things we learned on that trip!




We ended the summer with a chartered fishing trip on the ocean. The boys went out on the boat while DD and I walked the beaches finding interesting shells, hermit crabs, animal bones, and other interesting sea finds. It was a very busy summer, but it was great fun.

We came home and had 2 days before public school was back in session. We had previously decided we were going to try to stick to the public school's calendar as best we could to keep on scehdule.


video of the seal/sea lion show at Ocean World.