Phys. Ed.

Physical Education today was an hour of sledding! I am so thankful that we homeschool, and can set our own schedule.  We are not limited to 15 minutes of recess, but instead have the freedom to re-arrange our school schedule for what is most important-- enjoying time spent together in the midst of God's creation.

Did I mention how everyone is so tired and peaceful after a day of sledding, they will sit for 2 hours while I read to them? Gotta love that!

Group Shot!

The Princess and her cousin, Tank Jr. whizzing down the hill.  Hold on to your cat! We had to take turns catching them at the bottom, or they would shoot off into the woods.  J-Straco and The Princess outlasted everyone, trying out many different locations.  After recess, everyone reconvened inside and deforsted over a steamy mug of Hot Cocoa.  Click here for our favorite Hot Cocoa recipe.

Weekly Review

We had a very busy week here at Aspiring Oaks.  This week I added a couple new books into our schedule, and am trying to finish my schedule for a new 'morning meeting' I'd like to implement next week.   I envision our morning meeting to be a relaxing time in the morning where we can enjoy waking up and stretching our brains together in anticipation of our bookwork.  I'd like to cover Bible Study, Philosophy, current events- besides doing our History and Latin flash-cards and some of our supplemental Latin, Math, and History curriculum.  Oh, and our read-aloud.  Hopefully I can keep it under 45 minutes, but next week will be our trial so we'll know then.

New this week:

 

And:

We have also subscribed to God's World News magazine (a Christmas Present for the boys), and have been reading about current events.  I love how it tells what is going on in the world, but with a Christian bent. 

Here is what we accomplished this week:

Math: 

J-Straco- started Dolciana Pre-Algebra.  It starts out slow, but he skipped ahead and found a lesson he liked on Fibonacci Numbers and did that one day.  He also did some work on simplifiying numerical expressions, and solving for the unknown.

Farm Boy- worked on converting minutes to hours, days, weeks and years.  He really enjoyed finding out how many hours old he was.  He also started long division.

Grammar:  Diagramming and recognizing subject and object pronouns, and identifying whether the pronoun was a subject pronoun, direct object, object of the preposition, or predicate pronoun. 

Spelling:  Work in spelling books.  Here is Farm Boy's weekly spelling test:

He is such a natural speller- all I do is give him a spelling test at the end of the week to make sure he knows his words.  Believe it or not, he has really nice handwriting, however, unless I specifically say, "use LOWERCASE letters", he'll write all in caps.  <SIGH>

Latin:  Learned new vocabulary words and worked on the second declension-neuter endings, and the irregular form of 'to be'.

Philosophy:  Our new book, pictured above.  I love the format of this book! For example, we looked at Plato's definition of justice and talked about how we would react in the following situation:  You borrow a weapon from a friend, but while you have the weapon your friend becomes mentally unstable.  What is the just thing to do?  Give it back anyway, refuse to give it back, get professional help for your friends, etc.  We also talked about what a true friend is, using Aristotle's definition of friendship.  We had some really interesting discussions.

History:  Read about Elijah, The Phoenicians, and the Divided Kingdom of Israel.  One of the suggested activities for the week was to make a salt map of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Israel.

The boys talked me into making a brownie map instead, that way, we could eat it when they were done. 

The bottom 'map' shows the Mediterannean Sea in blue frosting, in the upper left corner.  The brown frosting is the Southern Kingdom of Israel (capitol-Jerusalem) and the green frosting is the Northern Kingdom. (capitol- Samaria)

We learned that Solomon's son, Rehoboam was not a good successor, and threatened his people- see 1 Kings 12:14 for what he said to them.  Ten of the twleve tribes of Israel rebelled and chose Jeroboam (Rehoboam's half brother) as their leader.  The tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained under the rule of Rehoboam, and 'Judah' is the name from which 'Jew' comes.  Interesting, huh?

Computer:  The boys tried out Alice programming.  They enjoyed customizing their own programs.  Farm Boy spent a lot of time making a virtual world with a figure skater that skated around and did tricks. 

Other:  J-Straco worked on his Greek more this week.  Both boys did keyboarding, and drawing as well. 

Music:  Piano, Guitar and Violin.  J-Straco is getting ready for an open-mic night at a coffee shop nearby.  He will play a song he composed on his guitar. 

Both boys are working on proper hand positioning and open string bowing.

Physical Education:  Our Homeschool gym class started back this week, after a Holiday break.  Both boys were very excited to get back at it.  They played basketball this week.

Also, this week saw a lot more snow play!

Four monkeys in a tree- my three plus an extra monkey cousin.

Beautiful winter weather- no winds and highs in the upper 30s.

Until next week.....

Learning Explosion

At the beginning of the school week, we have a clean work surface (a.k.a. the dining room table).  By Wednesday of this week, we find ourselves in the midst of a learning tornado.  Books, workbooks, dry-erase boards, pencils, markers, rubber stamps, educational games are EVERYWHERE.  It is one of those days I'm tempted to call school off on account of messiness!  However, they are having a wonderful time learning today.  There is an air of discovery and creativity that is not always present during our lessons.  Clean up time will have to wait, and in the meantime I'll focus on taking some deep, cleansing breaths. 

P.S.  The living room is MUCH worse. : )  We're going for a new record-- how many books can fit on the coffee table before it collapses under the weight of a large Amazon order and a trip to the library yesterday.

Weekly Review

This week saw an attempt to bring better organization and the encouragement of self-motivation into our weekly routine. 
Prior to our first day of school this week, I printed out a blank weekly schedule for each boy.  I then filled in the schedule with daily assignments and presented them with the instructions that they may do their work in whatever order they preferred, so long as it was all finished by 3:00.  J-Straco grabbed his list and darted to the school table and was quickly absorbed in his work.  Farm-Boy, on the other hand, had a melt down EVERY DAY this week when confronted with the schedule.  Initially he alternated between crying jags and demanding I tell him what to do, but then he fell into a pattern of doing whatever his brother was doing.  All in all, it went better than I expected.  I sweetened the deal a bit by placing a chocolate chip in each box of their schedule, and when they completed that subject they got to eat the chocolate chip. 
I really like how the schedule lays everything out in black and white, giving the boys a sense that they were doing their school work for the purpose of furthering their education, and not because "mom said so".  I tried to institute individual schedules for them last year, but they didn't have the maturity or self-motivation to make a go of it. 
Did I mention how much freedom it gives me?  Previously, if one of them completed something while I was out of the room, they quickly got off task and would end up in the playroom or living room.  Now, with J-Straco taking the lead, they move very quickly through their schedules.  I sometimes fail to notice how quickly J-Straco is growing up and maturing. 

Math:  Farm Boy has been working on multi-digit multiplication and J-Straco has been multiplying and dividing decimals.

Grammar:  Contractions and Subject Pronouns

Writing:  We started a new curriculum, 'Winning With Writing'.  It is starting off very slowly, but no complaints from the boys.  They worked on topic sentences and supporting sentences in a paragraph.

Spelling:  Work in their respective workbooks.

Latin:  They worked on second-declension endings.

History:  We learned about Samuel, King Saul, David and Solomon.

Science:  We're in between curricula so nothing formal this week.

Reading:  Hittite Warrior and The Lost Hero, Martin Luther King Jr. books, Pyramid by Macaulay

Music:  The boys started Violin lessons this week.  We met their new teacher and really like her.  Their first 45 min. lesson was on the parts of the bow and proper hand position on the bow.

We also had a lot of outside time, playing in the snow.  Everyone enjoyed making snow forts and tunnels.  The Princess decided to teach her chicken how to go through a tunnel. 

A Week in Review

Another full week at Aspiring Oaks Academy!  We had our first big snowfall of the season yesterday, about 5 inches.  We had to delay school so all three kiddos could go out and have a romp in the snow. 

Math:  J-Straco is still working with decimals, Farm Boy is working on multiplication.  We're still loving Math Mammoth. 

Grammar:  The boys worked on diagramming direct objects and predicate nouns.

Latin:  We have been doing a lot of review of our vocab words, including a fun game in which I hang our vocab flash-cards on the dry erase board, Latin side out.  When I call the English equivalent, the boys shoot the correct card with their nerf guns.  They get 1/2 point for hitting the correct word, and another 1/2 point for correct pronunciation.  They had so much fun doing this, I think we'll expand the game to our geography studies. 

History:  We slowed things down a little to go further in depth with Ramses II.  We watched a PBS special on Ramses II and watched our Great Courses DVD on Ramses II as well.  We read the poem 'Ozymandias' by Shelley since the poem was about the statue of Ramses the Great.
We are still reading Hittite Warrior which is tying everything together so nicely.

Music:  Both boys are working on transposing music.  J-Straco  on his guitar chords and Farm Boy on his piano music

We will start a new writing curriculum next week.  I love the ideas in BraveWriter, but really feel the need for a structured curriculum.  We will start Winning With Writing 5 next week.  I think this will be a good transition since they have finished WWE but are not quite ready for WWS.

We are reading 'The Lost Hero' by Rick Riordan as a family read-aloud in the evenings.  We all snuggle on the couch and take turns reading a page. 

We listened to 'Pericles' from our audiobook Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare.

We have also been enjoying one of the boys new Christmas Presents.  The board game 'Word on the Street'.  I thought I'd crush them since I'm the reigning scrabble champ of the household, but the boys' imaginations proved unbeatable.  For example, "A cause of death" was one question they picked.  Their answer???  'Intestinal Bleeding'!! 

The Princess spent a lot of time outside while we had such warm temps at the beginning of the week. She loves to putter around the chicken coop and play with the chickens.  She claims that she is going to be a farmer when she grows up, and that I am welcome to come over and help her milk the cows!
She was also very busy with her Activity Boxes from the library.  This week she chose the wild animal box. 
She has been very interested in the passage of time; days, weeks, and months.  I printed a calendar for her and we talked about days of the week and months of the year. 

Our Greatest Obstacle This Week:

Hangin' With My Peeps!

Weekly Review

We eased back into school this week, following a week long break over the Holidays.  We took Monday off, as Daddy was still off that day.  Everyone enjoyed our Holiday break, (especially the teacher!) but we knew we needed to get back into our routine. 
We all did a lot of reading this week.  J-Straco and Farm Boy have been enjoying Encyclopedia Brown and Choose Your Own Adventure  Books.  We are still reading Hittite Warrior for our read-aloud, and enjoyed many Greek Myths from the D'Aulaires Greek Myth book.  We will be starting Black Ships Before Troy in the next week or two and read the first chapter to wet our appetites. 
Also, we have been listening to the 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians' audiobooks.  The boys are excited to finish the last book because I bought them the first book of the next series, which is a spin-off of the Percy Jackson books. 

Due to the fact we were easing back in to our coursework, we stuck with the basics, or what I consider to be the core of our studies; Math, Latin, History/Literature, and Spelling.  Music practice and reading are, of course, daily events.

Here is what we did this week:
Math:  J-Straco has been getting down and dirty with decimals, and Farm Boy has been solving for the unknown. 
Latin:  The boys worked on Subject-Verb agreement through declining and conjugating. 
Spelling:  Work in their respective workbooks
History:   We studied Samson, Gideon, and Ruth and Naomi.  We also watched more of our Great Courses DVD: Great Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. I HIGHLY recommend this series, and although it is a college level course, Professor Bob Brier does a remarkable job sharing his passion for ancient Egypt.
Computer Programming:  The boys worked on a program which asks you to guess a number the computer has generated.  Also, The Principal is starting to show the boys how to create Power Point presentations for our church service.

The Princess is recovering from a para-influenza virus.  She was sick over Christmas but perked up towards New Years.  She has been enjoying her books from the library, and her Playmobil and Lego toys.