It has been a wonderful week of sunshine, outdoor play, and lessons at home. I have been blessed by the fact that Izzy has not said anything about missing school, wishing she were there instead, or really even talked about public school. In fact, in our prayer time, one of her praises was that she got to be home for school. It has been so wonderful to walk her through simple problem solvings of life. Helping her process situations and unknowns and providing opportunities for independence has been good for her maturity. I feel like I know her so much better than I did 3 months ago!
Here is a quick glimpse into our week!
In Bible, we began the story of Moses. We weaved baskets out of construction paper (inspired by this site) and then made babies out of a baby sock, cotton balls, and rubber bands. The girls have been playing with them all week. Lili has declared hers is a girl, so I guess we still have some remediation lessons ahead! We moved onto the burning bush and then did the 10 plagues. I was inspired by this craft (KidsBibleDebJackson used artist palettes to depict each plague) but instead of circles I divided wedges into our paper plate so they had more room to draw. I also then wrote on the back of each plate what the plague was. Our verse has been Psalm 24:1 so we are focusing the stories on the idea that God desires to rescue his children because they belong to him- and that includes us!
This week in writing with our awesome WriteShop Primary we did a imaginative narrative on outer space with a focus on using a spelling dictionary. I used the opportunity to read books and watch a couple shows on outer space and imaginative trips there. Izzy enjoyed the cross study so I think units will someday be in our future. She published her writing by placing it into a cardboard tube rocket. I have also instituted more free write or prompt writing time. She needs more practice beyond the guided writing of just putting her thoughts on paper. No more than 5-7 sentences and 15 minutes, but its enough to keep her skills up beyond the skill or topic of the lesson in WriteShop.
In math we started CLE 200 officially and completed light unit 1. Izzy has enjoyed it so far and did very well on the review lessons. Today (Friday) we did our first lesson in light unit 2 and she did ok. We will need more time for math than in past weeks since there is more material to get through. One way I have found to make it easier (for the spiraled content) is do some of the problems myself and she has to check my work. I sometimes get them wrong :) Little does she realize she is still doing the problems when she 'grades' my answers.
Our "back to basics" was the focus of reading this week. We finished our first light unit in CLE reading 200 and overall I'm just not convinced its the direction we need this year. Izzy needed more focus on reading comprehension- pulling out main idea, supporting details, the 5 W's, etc of what she reads and be able to concisely express them. So we have been working through pages in this book by Carson-Dellosa and other free resources I've found online. It is helping, but we still have a long way to go. Suggestions?
Art was fun- our last color lesson for awhile as I will work back and talk about lines. We did page 44 in How to Teach Art to Children. We talked about warm and cool colors. We found pictures in magazines to make collages. It was fun to get out of our paint rut.
Lastly, our new adventure of the week was lapbooking! Izzy is traveling with her dad and some other family to a children's home we support in Bangladesh in November. So, together we looked at books from the library about Bangladesh to learn some of the culture and features. The books do paint a rosier picture of Bangladesh than what is actually true, but the idea is there. The pictures also began to expose her to things she will see while there. We loved doing this together and I cannot wait to do more. Not sure if I did it right, but it worked for us. I used some of the free templates from HomeschoolShare.com that focused on countries. Feel free to share any resources or suggestions you have about lapbooking!
I've joined in the weekly wrap up linky at weird, unsocialized homeschoolers!
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