Life after a break, unit 19

GI hope everyone enjoyed the holidays, I know my family and I did! The break from school and activities was very nice though we did stay busy with visiting family. 

This week we cracked open HOD after a three week break ( one Christmas unit week and two weeks off from school). 

Monday: 

I am so proud of Ian! He remembered all the letters we have done!! That is a huge accomplishment for him! 

We are on unit 18 of LHTH this week and working on the letter o on which Ian is doing amazing. We read about Isiah and how he was sent to help God's people be good and stop being bad. Ian drew the story out and did well at following directions. 

We worked on counting to 20 and writing numbers as well as various work on the white board. We ended by listening to our bible CD. 

One thing all kids did new together was Life of Fred! I am trying to switch up math  a bit. Ian did not get all the math but loves Fred! The girls like it all! They do xtramath math along with it. They each received a Kindle Fire HD from Santa! They can now both work at the same time! 

The girls finally got to start learning cursive and it went well on the first day! 

They are on unit 19 of Bigger. They eased  back into school pretty well. They were ready to learn cursive and use their Kindle for school. 

We finished up mysteries before the break so we are not doing DITHOR or storytime for a few weeks ;) The girls do have independent reading  of 30 minutes a day. 

They listened to "This is My Father's World" and read their new poem "Open Range". We also reviewed adjectives and did our language all orally today. 

Their weekly bible verse is Proverbs 18:24. We talked about friends verses acquaintances and which we would rather have more of. We also discussed that Jesus is our friend and always with us. 

In writing we are working our way through writing non fiction and kicked off with writing with cause and effect. We will do a few lessons this week and finish the unit next week. 

In science we started reading the Pioneer Sampler book and the girls were so excited. We met the Robertson family. Winter was ending and they finally got to have an egg! I think we will like this book! 

In history we read about Thomas Jefferson being elected as the third President of the United States. He wanted to expand the country so he bought the Lousiana Purchase. We did not do the art for this week :( 

Tuesday 

Co op starts back next week so we had normal school today! 

Ian did well on his morning activities! He worked hard on his math and did very well on his letters. We read about how one day God will make everyone happy and they will all get along. 

The girls read how Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the new purchase. It took them almost two years. The girls were disgusted about what the men ate, deer, buffalo, fish, dog, and horse! We mapped out two of the rivers the men traveled, the Mississippi and the Missouri. Geography was fun! 

I'm science we read about hens and roosters and the girls did a notebook page on them. 

We wrote sentences with lots of adjectives for language. Practiced our bible verse with the freeze game. Sang  our hymn. Practiced piano. Learned how to make a cursive c. Read for 30 minutes. Read and found new words the rhyming pattern in our poem.  And also did a writing lesson on cause and effect where they had to were two cause and effect sentences after finding several examples and classifying the parts.  Let's not forget we did chapter two of LOF and xtramath. It was a busy day followed by dance class.

Wedneday

Brrr! We saw some light flurries here today! It was just the kind of day to stay in and learn! 

Ian worked on his letters and a lot of math! We counted out coins to put in our square. One to one correspondence still gives him trouble. We also read about Jeremiah! Ian was sad he was in jail. 

The girls learned more about Clark and his meeting with Indians. They thought it was funny that the Indians thought a gun shot was thunder that sent a man out of heaven! We did our vocabulary words today from our reading. 

Our vocabulary had words pertaining to fire as did our history reading so science  fit right in. We read about how important but dangerous fire was to pioneers. The girls learned that a fire needs oxygen to burn from our experiment. 

We also did LOF, wrote sentences with adjectives and a cause and effect relationship, found a pattern to our poem, sang our hymm, did a bible lesson, and worked on cursive. 

The girls have piano lessons today as well and Ian goes to speech. Tonight is AWANA!! 

Thursday 

Today was another busy and cold day!! 

Ian and I worked on the number 6 and counting one to one. We read more about Jeramiah in our bible time as well as practiced his Cubbie verse. Ian made a scroll to go with our bible story. He wrote a few words he knows like "no" "mom" and my favorite " I love mom" :) 

The girls had a busy day as well. 

They did their LOF which they are really  into as well as xtramath for fact practice. They worked on a review of adjectives in language. One advantage of two kids in the same guide is that for things like language I can have one child to odds and the other evens and they can't copy! 

I modeled a cause and effect paragraph and then we did a shared writing of one which they copied down. This was part 4 on our cause and effect unit that we will finish next week. We did work on our strokes for cursive and the girls practiced their names. They had 30 minutes of reading independently. I do go back and ask questions about what they read. 

We finished poetry for the week and sang our hymm as well as worked out to our bible verse :) We did a variety of exercise movements and said our verse after so many. Ian has learned the verse this week because of it. The girls did talk about how the verse applied to Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea. Friendliness was a big part of their expedition. 

In history we read from our Journey's book about Lewis and Clark. We added them to our timeline and wrote 5 facts about them in history notebooks. Their favorite fact was that Lewis had a dog named Seaman. 

 We made a model of the Continental Divide to demonstrate how it works and the girls enjoyed that. We finished up history for this unit. 

In science we read about our pioneer family and the making of brown sugar from sap. We learned how it hard it was and that it was done in early spring. Sarah from our reading had to carry the heavy barrels and buckets in the night and cold. She escaped a Lynx!   

We demonstrated how that a maple tree used the extra sugar in its sap to keep it from freezing so a tree can live in the winter. We all had fun with this exploration! We ended up finishing all of our science for the week today as well! 

It looks like tomorrow will be a light day and that we may start some on unit 20 to make up for starting back to co op next week. 

Friday 

We had a short and easy day today. Ian and I read his bible story and devotion and talked about it. We also reviews his letters and numbers on his board and wrote a few short words. 

The girls practices on their cursive an write in their learning logs. We do these weekly now and they have to write 5 things they learned during the week. They also did free writing in their journals. They both wrote about Christmas. They had to write 2 pages this time! 

For our bible lesson we read the story of David and Jonathon and talked about true friendship, having God at the center! 

We read in science about Willy and Cecil at school and how they became friends. This was day 1 of unit 20. 

The girls only did xtramath today and read real books for reading :) 

We also did day 1 unit 20 of history. We read about William Henry Harrison and Texumseh. Instead of the coordinate activity in the guide we did subtraction secrets to practice grid coordinates. 

It was a fun way to end the day and start the weekend!!