Monday, September 21, 2009

Day #17/175 Days

We may be limping along but at least I'm consistently limping. This is good for me. "Afternoon school" is going well which is also a new and good thing. We're still working on attitudes and poor Happy is being sadly neglected but it's starting to slowly come together and for that I am happy.

Today we covered the following:

Circle Time
  • Popcorn prayer - it's still a struggle for some but they are getting it. I'm sure the more we do it, the easier it will become.
  • We sang the Star Spangled Banner. (side note: Miss H stood right up with us & put her correct hand over her heart - proud Teach moment there.)
  • We then recited The Pledge of Allegiance
  • We sang the first verse of "Amazing Grace" (and will probably continue to do this as a reminder to the song).
  • Starting learning our new hymn "Blessed Assurance" and listened to it on YouTube
  • Continued with learning our poem "A Thought"
  • Working on our signing of John 3:16
  • Began working on Family Way #2 from our 24 Family Ways while everyone colored the page from the coloring book
  • Read a chapter from Farmer Boy
  • Read Yellow and Pink by William Steig (goes along with our science)
Science

Completed Lesson 3 from 106 Days. This lesson discussed evolution vs. creation. Loved the book Yellow and Pink it helped show the boys the difference between the two. Then we completed pages from Considering God's Creation which I felt were fun. They cut out ten boxes that represented the steps to creation. They had to mix them up & pick one at a time & record the order. They did this three times to show the randomness of evolution and how it really couldn't work that way. Then they glued them on the page in the correct order. I'm liking these hands-on activities & it helps break up the talking I do. ;-)

Language Arts

I saw this idea over on my friend Suzanne's blog & knew my boys would love it - Mad Libs. Here is what they came up with today (their words are in bold):

Once again, it is the time of year when parents can get rid of their
big kids by sending them to a gooey
summer camp. Today they are mostly "theme camps." There are football
camps, computer camps, boy camps, blowing camps,
and special camps for children who like to make ceramic
boxes with their eyes. These camps
have classes in playing and in remedial machine.
But all summer, camps feed the kids skittles and
make them sleep in dogs or rickety girls. Every
kid has a counselor who is a big 1 million-year-old scooter
who doesn't know his funny bone from his basketball.
But kids crazily put up with these indignities because
they love camp and hate to go back to their own bike.

This is something we'll definitely continue doing. They loved it.

Lunch Break
(what can I say - we got a late start today)

During our morning school time, I received a call from a new homeschooler who needed some help getting started. I'm a county rep for our state association so this happens from time to time. I didn't want to loose momentum so I called her back after our lunch time. I set the boys to do some independent work while I fielded this call.

Handwriting

I bought each of the boys handwriting books at the convention this past spring. Conductor & Lego-Man both needed to do a page today.

Math

They all worked in their MUS books today. Happy did about four pages I think while the older boys did two.


Writing

They boys also worked in their writing journals. We then began Level 2 of Understanding Writing. This is really a fantastic curriculum & I do highly recommend it. It's one volume that covers K-12 so don't let the price scare you. There are usually copies to be found on eBay for around $30 which is less than half the cost of it new.

Today we worked on "The Naming Game" which is all done orally. It's to help teach nous. I gave a category (farm) & the boys spent about five minutes working to name all the words they could think of that would fit in this category.

Bible

We worked in our Grapevine books today. The boys really like this study as do I. I've started using Sumo Paint to do up the lessons right on the computer which eliminates the need for a chalkboard. It's fun. Think of the Paint program on your computer but with more options. And it's free.

TOS Crew/Science

We continued working on the reptile lapbook we started a few weeks ago. This got to be a bit crazy as Mr. H didn't want to nap this afternoon. We have a few more booklets to make but I expect to be done by the weekend - hopefully.

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