Week 16 Bigger hearts for his glory

This week we finished learning about George Washington. Once again Washington outsmarted Cornwallis. This time he pretended to be preparing to fight in New York but really he and his soldiers slipped out and marched to meet Cornwallis in Yorktown. They surprised Cornwallis and his men causing them to surrender. The kids played a game of war to illustrate how Washington had more chance of winning this battle with his 16,000 men vs. Cornwallis' 6,000. Cornwallis was defeated (in our game of war) after six losses and Washington had 16 tries. The kids really enjoyed this!

 

Our character trait this week was Integrity. I'm not sure who benefits more from learning these weekly traits and how we can apply them to our lives, me or the children. Our verse to go along with integrity was Proverbs 27:19 As water reflects a face, so a man's heart reflects a man.

 

Polly wog practiced her spelling words by writing them in a pan of rice. For some reason this really helps them stick. The only other thing the kids like more is using Spellingcity.com for the fun games.

 

This was a really light week for us as one by one the kids started coming down with the flu on Wednesday. We did as much as we could and then gave up when the older kids got it and worked on getting our bodies healthy again. Here are some random pics from the rest of the week.

Play dough, apple jacks, and spaghetti noodles are so much fun!

Sweet smiley boy.

Getting pretty good at getting out of his chair ;)

 

He was looking at Polly wog in this one. He LOVES his big sister, or his second mom as I like to refer to her as. ;)

I have been attempting to spend one quiet time a week with one of the older kids at a time for some one on one. This is what Polly wog chose to do for her turn this week.

I left him at the table too long with the paint. He was pretty proud of himself.

This was just too sweet not to capture!

 

George Washington Week 15

I took some time off from my blog over the holidays and was going to start back up but things have just been crazy busy. I didn't want to interrupt the natural flow of school to snap pics and update my blog. Things are starting to slow down again so hopefully I'll be updating regularly again.

This week we learned about George Washington and the battle with Cornwallis in Trenton. Cornwallis called Washington a fox because he was so sneaky but he thought he had him good and trapped. Little did Cornwallis know that Washington was a man of initiative and didn't wait for others to tell him what to do... he just saw what needed to be done and did it! Washington snuck around the back of the British and defeated their troops in Princeton. The kids got to act out this battle with toy soldiers. The belt is the Delaware River. Doodlebug is the British side and Polliwog is the side for the settlers.

For art this week we did salt paintings. The kids had a good time with this one... but I thought it was too much work for the result.

Ummm are you sure this is o.k. Mama??? :)

Oh, okay... I guess it's o.k.

Hey, this is pretty fun! :)

 

We also learned about Francis Marion this week, who the children thought had to be a woman since the name Francis and Marion are girls names. ;) This led to a way too long conversation about how the popularity and use of names changes with the times. One of those rabbit trails that you can't help taking, but that set you off schedule for the rest of the day. Anyhow, we learned that Marion was very hard to catch and was referred to as "The Swamp Fox" because he was always hiding out and hard to locate(even for his friends). He, like Washington, was sneaky and once had his men build a tower in one night so they could look down into a British fort by morning and attack. His plan worked and the British had to surrender the fort. The kids got to build a tower out of lincoln logs... which also took way too long lol and school went well into the afternoon on this day. They had fun though and I think the lesson will stick, so it's worth it.

 

Here is the end result. The tall tower is Marion's and the little one is the British fort.

Inchworm had fun with computer time this week. He has mastered pushing buttons the "correct" way with no pounding... FINALLY :)

Little America is getting SOOOO big! Here is what he's been learning in school this week ;) He's learned that to get people to make silly faces he just has to stick his tongue out.

Polliwog has been enjoying her time with the little ones. It really helps Doodlebug and I to be able to focus on English, which is getting more complicated these days. This week Doodlebug had to work on a book report. He did well and when he has his final copy done I'll try and post a pic.

 

Each week the kiddos read, study, and copy a poem. This week's poem was See it Through by Edgar A. Guest. This is one of our favorites so far. Polliwog's handwriting has greatly improved this year and I am pretty sure that is from all the poem copy work. Yay for Heart of Dakota! :)

In science this week we learned about leaves. In the picture Polliwog and Doodlebug were looking at the back of living vs. nonliving leaves. They learned that living leaves have little holes on the back called stomata. They use these to "breathe" with.

 

Inchworm has been having a hard time during school lately and seems to be finding trouble out of boredom. After multiple searches on pinterest I set up many projects for him to play with throughout the week. Hopefully he will play with them in the future and my time won't have been in vain, because all he wanted to do this week was funnel water through the breast pump parts lol Why buy toys, right?

 

In other news:

I finally finished a project I had been working on for Polliwog and am happy to say she loves it. We call it her pink Tinkerbell skirt. It is the twirliest of twirly skirts ever and when she wears it she can't stop spinning... it makes me smile every time too. :)

Inchworm is loving art time thanks to Nona for this neat tabletop easel and no mess finger paints.

 Daddy had a birthday this week so we made bookmarks from the edge of envelopes for him.... which he LOVED!

And last but not least... America had his first taste of solid food!!!! Seven months old and he thought it was pretty tasty :) He did spit up quite a bit afterwards though so we may take it kind of slow with this one. He seems to be happy without it so we aren't too concerned with pushing it.

 

 

 



 



Week Nine in American History with Heart of Dakota

It was a fun filled week learning about Benjamin Franklin. We learned that he worked as an apprentice at his brother's printing press. So we used these foam stamps from Wal-mart to stamp one of his maxims. The kids found out how hard it was to stamp each individual letter and also how important it is to get the letters the right way. We had a backwards letter or two :) This was a super fun project.

 

 

 

In NOEO we are learning about how a light bulb works. Here the kids are examining the filament in one.

For HOD's science we learned how complex programming robots can be. The kids each got a chance to be the programmer and the robot and had to lead the other through an obstacle course.

For Friday fun day goody bag, the kids made bookmarks at quiet time. They cut out family members names from magazine letters and things that person would like and used yarn to tie at the top. This was a great quiet time activity.

Here is a picture of Doodlebug's kickoff project for Drawn Into the Heart of Reading. He had to draw a picture of a time period in history and then add some things in the picture that didn't fit into that time period. I then guessed what the "wrong" period things were. He really enjoys historical fiction books so this is a genre we have really been looking forward to doing.

Here is the kids science pages from our spark experiment. We  had to go in a dark closet and rub a balloon on our sleeves to see a spark. They learned that the friction causes the molecules to bump together causing the spark. This is how lightning is caused in clouds...well the basic of it that is. Trying to type this as fast as my hands will allow since baby is not sleeping these days. :)

This is the science Bible verse we had this week and the kids drawings of one of Ben's experiments.

These are the books they are reading this week for their reading lessons. Doodlebugs is part of DITHOR. Polly wog's is just one that Granny got her that she is reading. Super cute story by the way.

 

Here are some photo's from our Thanksgiving day. Here is one of three cousins. Our baby America is in the middle and on either side is his cousins. Jagg 8 months and Lilah 4 months. Miss Lilah bug was born a week before America.

Here is Polly wog and Lilah bug.

Here is Inchworm giving Jagg some love. This is my sister Sarah and her baby.

That was a short review of our week. We will be taking some time off school here soon so the blog posts will be coming to an end. The month of December we are going to focus on our little family and some fun things we have planned. Will update when I can.

Week eight in American history.

This week was super fun! We learned about the solar system and how David Rittenhouse used his God given smarts in math and science to help the colonists. We also learned about how King Phillip turned against the settlers after the passing of his father, Chief Massasoit. This was a very brutal time period to study and the kids learned a lot about the wars between the Natives and the new Americans.

The kids got to make up their own "safe houses" out of Lego's ( I love HOD) and then play with them. They had wars between the natives and colonists.

They learned the order of the planets orbits around the sun and did these projects to reinforce it. We had a ton of fun with the chalk ones! We also watched Bill Nye the Science Guy DVD (Planets). They really enjoyed his humor of course. 

Bible time fun! Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord will be kept safe. Proverbs 29:25. Their legs are supposed to be in a snare in this pic.

This picture cracks me up!

Cuddles on the couch. Doodlebug was upset... can't remember why now though. They have been playing some secret detective game lately and that is the reason for the beanies... I promise we have heat ;)

Star student!!! The kids stayed on task well this week and even did extra work to be ahead. So the teacher awarded them with a star student scratch it. I can't remember where I got this idea now... a blog I used to read.... anyhow, the kids love this.

Inchworm likes to get in on our push ups :)

Sorry about the sideways pic.. too lazy to fix it right now. Or in too much of a hurry I suppose. This is when the kids were practicing following directions like Captain Church and other colonists had to be very accurate in doing.

We watched  "boz" about a gillion times this week. :) Inchworm is obsessed with this movie for some reason. He can't say his O's so it comes out "boz".

Pumpkin seeds!!! YUM! After Doodlebug and Polly wog beat our pumpkin to a pulp with a baseball bat. With Mom's permission of course!

We made wampum belts with rice when we learned about King Philip and how he wore one to show his importance. The natives and colonists used wampum as money. Wampum was parts of clam shells with holes bored into them.

On Friday fun day the kids got to play doctor and using their scalpels and bandages performed surgery on contractions.

This about sums up our week. Have a great weekend!!!