This first page is science for the week and the weekly agenda which the kids check off.

sciwk12108.pdf

This second one is grammar. I had to type up the parsing lesson because the kids needed a chart.

henschickens-articlesp2.pdf

This next one is writing for the week.

writewk12108.pdf

This next one is the reading log for independent reading

reading.pdf

P.S. Thank you for the kind comments about the Christmas pictures, I appreciate them. Tonight was the first reading of Advent and the lighting of the Prophecy Candle. I am using a little book we got at Church last year called Flames For the Faithful by Rev. Arden W. Mead. It’s daily devotions inspired by the candles of the Advent Wreath. Here is a website that sells these very inexpensive materials

https://catholic.creativecommunications.com/index2.php 

This is our Jessie Tree. I made it a few years ago by putting a fake tree I bought at the Thrift into a coffee can with Plaster of Paris. We ended up using this tree for Halloween/Fall decorations, Valentines Day decorations, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter and Fourth of July. We call it our Holiday Tree and the kids and I have had lots of fun decorating it over the years. This year for our Jessie Tree I decided to write out some kid readings in mini-books with something to do each day. The children are going to fold the minibooks, accordian style, decorate the blank back side of the mini book, hole punch the book and hang it from our Jessie Tree with some twine. I typed up the mini-books for Advent and will share them in pdf below.

advent-dec1-4.pdf

adventdec5-8.pdf

adventdec9-12.pdf

adventdec13-16.pdf

adventdec17-20.pdf

adventdec21-24.pdf

adventdec25.pdf

Above is our candy Advent calendar, I got this at the Thrift too. We have had it for years and this year I filled it with little mints, one for each day from December 1st through December 25th.

This is our Christmas Tree this year. We got it up just before Thanksgiving. It took some doing as we had to move around some furniture and put the tree together. I’m allergic to pine needles so this fake tree works out well for us.

I collect Nativities and this year I decided to display this one. I don’t have room to put them all up !

The kids have always loved playing with the nativity so I bought them a play nativity one year when they were all very little. They still put it up and play with it.

weeklyplanner.pdf

I’ve just finished reading to myself  recently a novel, The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz. I was in chapter six of this small eight chapter book and came upon a scene where Mrs. Hamilton, the Mom in the story says, “Once in awhile,” to her husband and sons waiting impatiently for dinner, “there comes a time in the Western Country when there is something more important than an hour of work or a meal on time.” p.83

And it caused me to weep, I know that truth too.

Mrs. Hamilton, knew even then in 1784, that playing tea party, in the forest, with her daughter, using the good china plates was needed.

After we are done reading A Lion to Guard Us, we are reading The Cabin Faced West.

A ninja.

A barefoot queen. I know queen manners, curtsy anyone?

A bold knight.

Sadie, the cat, a drawing for the magazine Spider’s Art Contest.

Just doing “school” in the family room.

I made a bow from the branch of a Mexican Bird of Paradise, now to make arrows.

Anyone for drawing people?

A felt mouse, stuffed with stuffing and a bit of catnip. Looks like Sadie the cat approves.

Miss Hickory Drawing

Organized shelf. Go Moma go !

Organized Shelf number two, you are on a roll now woman !

A self portrait.

Another self portrait.

That time line needs pieces, hey at least it’s made.

The white board complete with to do’s for lessons of the day.

I was able to tie the story into Sunday’s Gospel on Matthew (30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A ).

Days 46-49

Everyone did Math, Dd8 did handwriting, all did grammar, we just read Ch.3 of Mary’s Grammar on pronouns and the children have all week written spelling sentences with pronouns and also worked on the story in Mary’s Grammar about the little bee finding both pronouns and nouns in the story. This will take them all through next week as well. I did write up a list of pronouns and taped it on the sliding glass door to help them all. It is nice here in fall and we have set up our little school area on the back porch. I did not explain about pronoun types as in relative, demostrative . . . but instead left it at just pronouns as done in Mary’s stories told by her mother. All the same my kids are catching on to the idea that pronouns are used instead of nouns and name them in reference.

Everyone worked on spelling and it is going nicely as more and more I’m able to add in words from their own writing as they work on the lists in Spelling Power doing just one list a day or less with the goal being to have three words a day to work with.

In writing we finished our discussion and practice of journal writing and next week I thought to introduce them all to summary writing and am having them practice that form in two ways next week.

They all did century book, ds11 doing an entry on Babe Ruth, dd10 on Abraham Lincoln and dd8 on Helen Keller. They all made nature journal entries too and that was fun for them.

I read to them The Spirit of Tio Fernando and they all worked on writing about All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints Day and All Souls Day. The lessons for that are here at Living Lessons. I have dd8’s little lapbook of that here to share:

For Everything else ( History, Science etc. . .)

Ds11 is read Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop and is near finished, he has written a summary of the beginning and worked on a drawing and writing a wanted poster for one of the characters in the book. I will share that when he is done. (Castle in the Attic has a number of sequels and it is one of the best children’s books I have read in a long time, I love it ! )

Dd10 is doing a topical study of whales, she has made- a what whales eat book and a whale joke book. She is reading a few different whale books, the titles escape me. She finished Abraham Lincoln and her notebooking pages on the book, last week. She is very interested in reading more D’aulaire books, she loves the art work in them especially.

Dd8 is near done with Helen Keller and has worked in her notebooking pages all week. See last week’s learning log for links to the Helen Keller notebooking pages I made for her.

In art everyone chose their own projects this week. Ds11 chose a cityscape, Dd10 a cat and Dd8 a diamond abstract type picture. These are all from the Art Projects for Kids site. I have a few to share here.

Days 40-45

Ds11 finished Childhood of Famous American’s Babe Ruth this week. He really enjoyed the book. Here are the mini-books he used with his reading.

Dd10 finished D’aulaire’s Abraham Lincoln this week. She enjoyed the book. Here are the notebooking pages she used with her study.

Dd8 is working on reading Helen Keller by Margaret Davidson, here are her notebooking pages . She also is using the handwriting pages on Helen Keller also at that location.

Everyone is working in Math, Spelling and Grammar. I read two chapters of Mary’s Grammar to them on nouns and this week they had to find nouns in their Spelling sentences and Journal sentences, it went very well. For Journal they had three entries this week. They also all did art, draw a haunted house. Some of the kids are not quite finished coloring those so I will share those later.

I was able to get in some of the misspelled words from their individual writing this week by limiting the words I test in Spelling Power to just thirteen total including the three words they missed from the day before.

Notes on Child Led Learning

While everyone picked the books they were to read, I chose biographies as a topic. They all seemed excited to write about their books at first but as time went they grew tired of thinking of topics to write about. I also had to limit their reading time to just 30 minutes during school as they all seemed to want to read their books very quickly. I feel like they need to slow down with that or do they?

The older two are moving on to books they chose and I’m thinking hard about how to approach this. I would like to get to the point where I am not necessarily prompting their writing and activities on what they read and am working toward that.

I thought I’d leave today’s blog entry with a picture from this week I call Before the Five Mile Hike.

boards  For Real Learning and Homeschool Share for helping me think through how to do things this year after

my”plans” didn’t work out. I’m so blessed to have not only great message boards to get help from, but also a very

patient dh who has listened to me, a lot this last week. We decided to follow our hearts and our hearts say the

children don’t need to hear a chronological history at this time, nor do they need to follow a particular science

program. We decided our focus  is still on the basics of Math, Grammar and Composition, Spelling and

Reading and the rest is gravy.  I sat individually with each child and asked them to brainstorm some things to

learn about. I showed the list to Dh and approved. It’s going well. I feel like I have time to tutor each child, check

Math before the next day, do writing conferences and help children design projects. We are doing okay now.

Days 37 -39

Everyone did Math, Dd8 did handwriting, all did Grammar and Composition, Spelling and Spelling Skills and

Reading. Ds11 is reading Babe Ruth, a Childhood of Famous Americans book, Dd10 is reading Abraham Lincoln

by D’aulaire and Dd8 is reading Helen Keller by Margaret Davidson. I”m reading to them St. Patrick’s Summer

and A Wrinkle in Time.

For Days 34 to 36 everyone did:

Math

Handwriting (dd8 others write all work in cursive)

Grammar  & Composition

Reading

Spelling Test and Skills

Ds11 finished Charlotte’s Web

Dd10 finished Birds Do the Strangest Things

Dd8 finished Squanto Friend of the Pilgrims

In other news, has anyone just read their children a chronological history like M.B. Synge’s Story of the World Series and required nothing more from them than a time line piece and that they pay attention during the reading?

I ask because my children really enjoy reading their own books and doing their own studies on topics from those books, but I worry about letting them do this in a way that is not together? I worry about us all not having a common memory and building relationships.

Let me explain what I mean. For example my youngest, 8 wants to read Meet Addy, and she wants lessons in geography, science, history, language and bible all pulled from her book. This is very easy for me to do. My other two want the same with books of their choice.

I’m nervous about this though. We just finished a study of Jamestown and Insects using materials I purchased for this year. We had fun but boy it was hard to do even half of what was suggested. I really have a feeling they can do history and science with just their independent readers. My inner voice says Why not?
My husband is okay with trying this, but I am having a hard time letting go. I did use Five in a Row when my children were younger and I do feel they learned a lot and since then have let them do book type studies on and off, mostly though with me directing the topics like we did an Egypt study and they each read Egypt themed chapter books and I read aloud to them from fiction and non fiction on Egypt and they did a History Pocket on it, together. In the same manner we have covered Greece, Rome, Medieval Times, Early Americans, Early American Exploration, Columbus, Jamestown, Pilgrims, World War II. Each time I “fed” them information about the topic and they stayed together by reading fiction and non fiction books sometimes of their choice, mostly of mine.

This would be different, they would all go off on their own. Their book would dictate the topic. The book they chose, with my approval of course. I can’t let go that far.

I would love to hear from Mom’s who have children learning all different things in science, history etc… Does it make for a confusing day? Do you let them chose any book they want or do you give them choices of certain books ( that is what I have done, given them choices as I can’t imagine pulling history lessons or science or bible from some of the twaddle we own_)

I know this is long, and I really want to hear opinions Oh my children are ds11, dd10 and dd8, they have always been homeschooled.

Please give me advice and tell me of your experiences. Thank you.

Background: my children all use their own level materials in Spelling, Grammar and Composition and Math. Together we do drawing, typing and French, though in Typing and French they work at their own pace on the computer.

More background: in the past we have read science together too, studying Astronomy using a living text book last year and Great Inventors and Inventions using a living book and we did Science from Five in a Row and we did a study of our state and did a related science study for it and a few other states in past years.

I guess the bottom line is my kids are growing up and they want to do their own thing with more choices than I have given them in the past. I’m excited for them, I know they need to do more research, read more information, write about things in their own words. I’m sad too though, as it seems like we are leaving behind a season.

Write me, I need some words of wisdom.