Week of February 20

We decided we could use a late winter break from our normal curriculum, so we worked on some individual research projects. Farm Boy chose to study Maui, and J-Straco chose Nepal.  We visited the library and the boys found books on their topics.  They typed up mini essays on various aspects of their subject complete with maps and pictures.  They mounted everything on a large poster board and gave presentations to their grandparents.  Farm-Boy's report was more of a 'vacation' presentation, detailing things to do while on Maui.  He is hoping that will convince his mom and dad to take him there for a vacation in the near future!  J-Straco's was more serious, and covered the history, government and economic situation in Nepal.  He also studied Mt. Everest, as it is one of his goals to climb it someday.  We started an amazing book, "Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal" by Conor Grennan.  I read the first two chapters to the boys and they LOVED it.  We currently have 2 read-alouds going, and one audio book, so I think we'll have to wait a few weeks to fit this one into the schedule. 


The boys also finished their lapbooks on Ancient Greece.  I'm happy to say they were a success!  When we tried lapbooking last year, the boys were far from enthusiastic.  Hopefully we'll be able to throw in some more now that they almost enjoy them. 
We also completed another lesson in our Anatomy book which was about cells.  We love this book from Jeannie Fulbright!  It is full of fascinating facts about the human body, and give all the glory to God.

Weekly Review- Feb. 13-17

This week we had a lot of hands-on activities and a Valentine's Day Party in addition to our 'normal' routine.  We did an in-depth study of ancient Greece, since the boys are into everything Greek at the moment.  They started lapbooks which look like they will be amazing when completed-hopefully by the end of next week.  We watched a really neat movie on our big screen complete with popcorn:


I meant to show the boys our Greek episode of Drive-Thru History, but we just couldn't fit that in this week. Hopefully next week! 

The boys also made the Greek Islands of ancient times out of Clay.

As usual, attire is optional

The four islands surround Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, (in the middle of a hurricane- no less!),  and Zeus is looking over his domain as the Greek god of thunder and sky.

We started our new science unit on the human body, using 'Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology'.  We read about the history of anatomy and talked about the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews and Greeks and their ideas about the human body.  We also learned about Hippocrates and his four humors.   The boys performed an experiment and mummified an apple after reviewing how the ancient Egyptians mummified their dead. 

Before

The apple on the right still has the remains of the baking powder/salt mixture it sat in for a week.  The apple on the left was the 'control' apple, and was clearly rotten.  The mummified apple on the right was much better preserved and had a 'spongey' feel to it.

We had a Valentine's Day Party on Tuesday with our home school co-op.  The kids all enjoyed a valentine exchange, crafts, cookie decorating, snacks and games.  All three won a prize during the cakewalk. 

You can see J-Straco in the blue shirt on the left, and the Princess wearing her tutu in the middle.  Farm Boy was behind everyone picking out his prize cupcake. The boys were 2 out of only 4 boys at the party.  At this age, they didn't like those odds, although in a few years I think that may change.

We made a home-made heart shaped pizza for lunch- Yummy!

Then, Grandma surprised us by bringing over the supplies to decorate our own cupcakes.  Everyone enjoyed that!

The Princess kept very busy this week as well.  She has a wide assortment of pre-school curriculum, none of which I require.  Once in a while she will join us at the table and work on a page from her Rod & Staff preschool curriculum, or Handwriting Without Tears manipulatives.  However, this week she found some fun activities to fill her mornings. 

One day she made a zoo out of blocks and filled it with her little animals.

She insisted I make a sign for the alligator pen which read, "No eating the little animals!"

They must have been very smart, literate alligators, because we didn't have any trouble with them.

Another day, she found a dead fly and built a little house for him complete with  bookshelves filled with books (small pieces of paper).  Apparently, her 'pet' enjoyed being read to before he was tucked into bed. 

Toward the end of the week we enjoyed identifying and counting birds for the Backyard Bird Count.

Daddy took the kids to buy a couple new bird feeders, as our old ones had broken, and we thought we needed something more official than a plastic bowl filled with bird food. 

Two of our visitors- a Cardinal and Downy Woodpecker

Here is a list of birds we saw, according to Farm Boy:

Downy Woodpeckers, male and female

Red-Bellied Woodpeckers, male

Cardinals, male and female

American Tree Sparrows

Dark Eyed Juncos, male and female

Black-Capped Chickadees

Blue Jay, male

Homeschool on Steroids

We have been so busy the last two weeks- busy with our school work, and busy with life.

J-Straco had his first musical performance at an open-mic night at a local cafe.  He played a contemporary Christian song, 'Free To Be Me' by Francesca Battistelli. 
The majority of the performers were also students of J-Straco's guitar teacher, and between the ages of 7 and 16.  It was a very non-threatening environment for him to try out an audience. He had a huge cheering section consisting of both grandmas,  an aunt, two uncles, and many cousins.  He did GREAT!

The Princess with her cousin and Ima

The Princess with another cousin, and favorite babysitter.

Farm Boy with his best cousin-buddy

We also took a field-trip to the local children's museum.  All three kiddos (and mom and dad!) had fun exploring the exhibits. 

Daddy and Farm Boy try the human-powered hamster wheel

Both Boys spend a lot of time making 'spag-marsh' creations.

The Princess like the ice rink on the roof.  She practiced ice-skating.

J-Straco loved looking at pine cones, feathers and rocks under a microscope in the roof-top club house.  Everyone enjoyed a special presentation on 'Amphibians of Wisconsin', complete with an opportunity to see and touch different amphibians.  The Princess now wants a salamander for her birthday.

We also worked on some valentines, in preparation of our upcoming co-op's Valentine's Day Party.

School work, you ask?  Yes, we manged to fit some of that into our schedule as well, although not as much as normal due to the fact that daddy was in Canada this week and I was in 'surival mode'.

I have just received our new science curriculum: 

and:

  Because I haven't coordinated the curricula, we watched a couple videos for our science this week. 

We watched:



and:

The boys created more 'spag-marsh' (hard spaghetti noodles and mini-marshmallows)  creations, trying to replicate some of the structures in the videos.

In addition to the above, we also did:

Math:  Farm Boy is cruising through Math Mammoth 4b, and has been working on division.

J-Straco tried out some Pre-Algebra from Dolciani's text, but decided he'd rather finish his Math Mammoth 5. He is now working on dividing decimals and converting fractions to decimals.

Grammar:  We learned how to diagram adjectives, and learned about possessive nouns and pronouns used as adjectives. We did some parsing to help identify the differences.

Writing:  I had the boys do 'Winning With Writing' for the last two weeks, and to be honest, I don't think I like it.  I'll need to re-evaluate my goals for their writing, and see what else may work better.

Latin:  We have been reading 'Horatius at the Bridge' and chose a portion to memorize.  This tied in well with our history studies of the government of Rome. We also started using Minimus Latin as a fun supplement one day a week.  The boys created Birthday Cards in Latin, which turned out really cute.  We also started another new curriculum:

I plan to use this a few times a week to work on our pronunciation.  The boys really enjoyed the TPR (total physical response) aspect.

History:  We read about the first Olympic games in Greece and the beginning of Rome.

Greek:   I have decided to make Greek a required course for J-Straco this semester.  He did it last year as an elective, but let it fall off after a few months.  It is now back on his schedule on a regular basis. We have been listening to the Greek Alphabet song all week, and Farm Boy has picked up on the letters and sounds.  My next goal is to entice Farm Boy to tackle Greek as well. 

Bible:  We do a couple lessons a week in God's Names, by Sally Michael.  So far we have learned; Elohim-strong Creator, Jehovah Yahweh-self-existent & unchanging, and El Shaddai-God Almighty.

Philosophy:  Some of our recent topics of discussion were:  Should you be rewarded for your efforts in school, Should you let little things bother you, and Is it your duty to give to charity.  We were introduced to great thinkers like Confucius, Marcus Aurelius, and Moses Maimonides.

Reading/Lit:  We are still reading The Children's Homer, and The Lost Hero, and listening to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  The boys also read books on the Olympics. 

I have been reading Climbing Parnassus, and The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being, and listening to The Modern Scholar: The History of Ancient Israel: From the Patriarchs Through the Romans on my I-Pod.

We are so excited that Daddy is on his way home, and we hope to get back to normal next week.

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.