Weekly Wrap Up Week 23

• In Language Lessons, Twizzler finished copying his poem from last week and started to learn about nouns. Skittles studied a painting and then wrote a story about it. 

He was a shepherd in the field. One day the king came to him and said, "God told me to send you to Greece." So he set off. The first night he was very happy but the next night a bear ripped up his tent. Now he was tired and cold. The next night he gets there so he takes a nap. He was carrying bibles to Greece.

• The boys worked more on their multiplication facts on the worksheets I made for them. 
• Skittles picture study this week was "An Attentive Friend" by John Edward Cobbett. I have started having him write his copywork onto regular lined paper to get used to not having the extra lines. Twizzler's picture study was "Les Prunes" by William Bouguereau. I taught him that "les prunes" is French for plums. 
• In history we read about Alexander the Great. I had Skittles write me a brief narration each day about what we read. I had Twizzler fill out a worksheet I made. There is one spot for a sentence and a picture for each day of the week. 
  
• Twizzlers spelling words were all practicing the 'ou' sound. Skittles words showed the many ways to make the 'or' soundat the end of a word; aur, ure, er, and or. 
• Skittles finished reading the books, Greek Legends and Stories by M.V. Seton-Williams. Twizzler read the story of The Three Wishes. 
• Skittles is learning about Space this month. This week he drew a scaled version of the solar system on a roll of paper. He measured out the distances of each planet from the sun. Twizzler's new science book arrived today. He is learning about his 5 senses this month. This week he focused on sight. 
• Hershey practiced cutting with his scissors a lot. Thankfully, thus far, he has only used them appropriately to cut paper.

 

I linked up with...

History Notebooking Pages

In case you have been wondering what happened to me the past couple of weeks, I have gone back to work. That is making it hard for me to keep up with the blog. We are still keeping up with school work though.

Last week in history they learned about Moses leading the people out of Egypt.
In science they learned about the different kinds of trees and their uses.
Skittles learned how to write a letter in Language Lessons and Twizzler learned how to find the subject in a sentence.

• This week we are taking a pause with our ALHOW history book and taking the opportunity to dive in and study a little bit more about Ancient Egypt from The Story of the World Vol 1.  I am not interested in using SOTW as my main history book because I prefer Queens story telling and journal. I just really love ancient history and since there are only 28 chapters in ALHOW and we are not going to be doing review weeks, I thought a brief layover in Egypt would not be a bad idea. To be clear, I have not changed curriculum, I am just reading something different THIS week. Today we read about how the Egyptians over threw the Nubian people and after taking their gold, they absorbed them into their culture. There was even a Nubian Queen, Queen Tiye. Since I do not have journal pages, I made my own page for them to write a quick narration about what we read. 

We do history 4 days per week but I made one for a 5 day week also in case anyone wants to use it. 

These are 100% free for you to use. Just right click on them and save them as an image to your picture folder. Then you can print them as an 8x11 sheet (full page).

• In language today, Twizzler learned how to find the predicate in a sentence. Skittles addressed an envelope to his great grandmother. 
• We read the final chapter in the story of Mother Oak and Oakie the acorn. He is now a sapling and his mother tree has been cut down to be re-purposed. After the reading the boys looked up a mocking bird in the field guide and drew a picture of it and wrote down some of the facts about them. 

Lazy Day

I had a lazy day. For those of you who are not moms, let me define that for you. When I say I did not do anything today what I really mean is that I...

• woke up at 6 am even though the kids were all sound asleep. 
• went through my email and played candy crush.
• made the kids breakfast. 
• cuddled up with Hershey and watched a movie. 
• took a nap. 
• made lunch. 
• pulled out all of last week's school work and put it all in each boy's file. 
• Oh and I added their math grades to each day. 
• pulled out this coming week's school work. 
• put Post-it notes on the pages they will be working on. 
• printed out the new planner page that I worked on this week and I am pretty happy with. 
  
• got into a fight with my printer because it refuses to print in black ink and is using up all of my color ink instead. grrrrr.... My planner pages came out PINK
• tried replacing the ink cartridge only to find out that my new ink cartridge is defective. 
• called Amazon to let them know my ink was defective. They are refunding my money but I still have to replace the ink tomorrow. 
• made out a list of things I have to buy at the store tomorrow on my way home from church. 
• filled out the boys planner pages for next week with all of their assignments. 
• found all the pages that I want Hershey to work on next week. I have them ready to print although, I obviously can't print them. (Sigh)
• made dinner. 
• washed 3 loads of laundry. 
• directed the boys' chores. Seriously, it would be easier if I did it myself but then they would not learn how to clean. 
• sat down and had a nice, peaceful hour of book time. Twizzler read to me. I read to Hershey. Skittles read to himself. He gobbled up an entire novel in the past 2 days. :D I think it is safe to say that dropping mandatory reading has been a success. 
• put the kids to bed. 
• washed the dishes
• cleaned out the guinea pig's cage. 
• AND BLOGGED.

Soooooo, nothing really. 

If you like my planner page but you want to personalize it to fit your homeschool, here is a free one. I THINK you can right click on it and save as a picture. Then print it out as a full page print. If anyone is actually interested in having it but can't seem to get it to print, write me a comment and I will see if I can figure out how to set up a file share with a PDF or something. 

Packing

1. We did not do any school work today. I have decided to call it summer. We are still going to do math lessons a couple times a week. 
2. All 3 boys helped me clean out the van today. It was full of beach sand, crushed Goldfish crackers, crayons which thankfully were not melted, lollipop sticks, and pencils.... We are always trying to find a pencil in the house. Apparently they were all out in the car. Who knew?
3. I started packing for our upcoming vacation. I made the boys a checklist of things that needed to be packed. Then I told them to check off the things on the list as they pack them. This is the first time that they actually did a good job. I had to go through and check and yes there were a few things I needed to correct, like Skittles packed a few dirty shirts to meet his shirt quota. Twizzler packed only pajama bottoms. It was easily fixed and OH, it is sooooo awesome to not have to pack for them.
   
4. At church the boys had a movie and game night. They decorated boxes to look like rally cars and were supposed to race them down a hill. I was told they did not get chance to race the box they worked on but they still had a lot of fun. 
5. Each of the boys got a balloon as we walked out of church. Hershey was so careful with his until he got in the car and then he somehow popped it. When we opened the van door, Skittles balloon flew out and took off into the sunset. Twizzler's balloon was the only one to make it home.                                           

Day 18 September 11

I can't believe it has been 12 years since terrorists attacked our country. I feel safer today than I did 12 years ago but I think I speak for us all when I say, I don't think I will ever feel as safe as I did on September 10th, 2001. I also don't think our country has ever been as great as it was on September the 12th, 2001. Remember how we came together? I will never forget.

Skittles and Twizzler have been learning about the seasons, months, and dates in math. They have been struggling a bit so I made a worksheet for us to practice on. I had to make one because all the ones I found online LIED! They teach that winter is December, January, and February. That is a LIE Winter does not begin until Dec. 21 and end March 20! Why do they teach kids incorrectly for the first 3 years of school and then change it? Suddenly in fourth grade, they need to know the dates. Grrr..... Any way it took me a few days and I still did not have time to finish it but here is my worksheet. Feel free to take it and use it with your own kids. 

1. Skittles wrote down the dates for the seasons and how many days were in each month. I had originally planned to have them write out the dates around the edge, 1-28/29, 30, or 31 but that would have been busy work. Ultimately they just need to know the number of days in each month. 
2. Twizzler drew pictures of the seasons. He discovered that each person in our family was born in a different season. Hershey is a winter baby, Twizzler was born in the spring, I was born in the summer (my poor mother), and Skittles birthday is in a few weeks. 
3. Skittles finished his biography today, a few days ahead of schedule. As a reward he does not have to do any reading for the rest of the week. :) 
4. Our guinea pig loves to knock over her food bowl. Today Hershey decided to help her out by picking up every tiny piece of food and putting it back in the bowl. He clapped after every piece of food was cleaned up. She thanked him by giving him some really sweet cuddles. 
5. We made it to the first night of Awana at our church tonight, just barely. I had forgotten about it completely. If it were not for a friend of mine posting about it on Facebook, we might have missed it altogether. That would have been a shame. We all look forward to Wednseday nights. 

Book Report CM Style

I have been having fun making worksheets. I decided to make some worksheets for my 8yo to use for his literature. Up until now, I have not asked him to do anything more than an oral narration for his literature. I think he is ready to show a little bit of what he is reading. I even included a page for him to draw a picture from the poem he read each week.

Science Narration Pages

I have been pretty pleased with my Vocabulary pages... The kids have been working hard on them. I decided to try and make some other notebooking pages that might help us run through our other subjects more efficiently. 

Until now, for History and Science, I have simply given my 8yo a blank sheet of notebook paper and let him write down one or two sentences about what he learned. I do this after his oral narration. It is easier for him to recall information after he has written it down. I just have him highlight something important. 

I made some worksheets for his Science. If you would like a copy just click on the image, then right click, save image as. Then choose a file. You can print it out as a "full page fax print". 

Vocabulary Worksheets

A friend of mine recently shared with me how she teaches vocabulary. She uses this really great worksheet that she got from The Notebooking Fairy.

Every week she gives her kids a word and they fill out the worksheet. I love the idea but the worksheet had some things that I don't think my kids are quite ready to search for, at least not yet anyway. 

I decided to make my own, more simple version. 

The changes I made are small but I am hoping they work for my 8yo. I want him to copy the word neatly. I also gave him a lot of lines because I think they encourage neatness. At first I just had the words, "synonym" and "antonym" but I realized I had to look them up to figure out which word meant the same and which word meant different. I decided to put that next to the words. I hope that if he reads that EVERY week, when he gets to be my age, he might still actually remember it. 

I need to go get a better dictionary. The one that I have now is only a pocket dictionary and I am not thrilled with it. the print is small, it is difficult to keep the pages open, and there are only definitions. I want more information about the word. 

Until now I have been using Dictionary.com. It is a great site. It shows everything I need. I would like my children to be able to look up a definition or spelling in a good old fashioned dictionary though. 

Although Charlotte Mason recommended delaying grammar lessons until grade 4. I like to think about all that my children will learn from a vocabulary study. Alphabetical order, parts of speech, spelling, and of course, vocabulary. 

I even made a vocabulary study page for my 5yo. It is obviously much more simple and will have more simple words like; keep, month, plenty, tame, etc... He has a Kingfisher, My First Dictionary that we can look up the word in together. I will write the meaning and he can copy the word and then draw a picture. 

I am proud of my pages. Feel free to use them. Maybe even link back here in a comment so I can see how they work for you. 

By the way, I LOVE Notebooking Fairy. If you have not gone to her page yet, GO NOW! She has everything you can possibly imagine for notebooking. We will be using her vocabulary study pages in maybe another year or 2.