Our First Week Back

All in all, I'd say our first week was a success. It got a little off track in the middle due to some interruptions, but we manage to make it through. I purposely designed Fridays mostly free to make up for any interruptions.

We continued on the path of Math, English, Handwriting, Dictation and the usual. However I will post what they accomplished for their other assignments.

Pokemon King:

He rolled a green for A Midsummer Night's Dream, which means he could do a short skit, act out the story using action figures, or write & perform an original song or poem retelling the story. He chose to act out the story with action figures, but it is too large to post. For three stories, he was fortunate to roll a red on the narration die, which means he got to draw a picture relating to the story.

This is from This Country of Ours:

This is from Robinson Crusoe. This is one of the stories he will be reading for himself.

This is from Madame How & Lady Why:

Dinodude:

He, too rolled a green for Burgess's Animal Book, but the movie is too long to post as well. For these two stories, he rolled a red.

Tree in the Trail

An Island Story:

Rocket:

I've decided to go ahead and do Kindergarten things for Rocket this year. We are using Learning Language Arts Through Literature to learn to read. That is what I used with Pokemon King & Dinodude and it worked very well. He is also finishing the Explode the Code Primer Series. In addition to these we are reading various types of books and I'm also hoping to add in some kind of science. I didn't order Saxon Math 1, which is what I used for Kindergarten. I'm debating whether I should order it or just do some math things on our own. Rocket doesn't turn 5 until December, so I might wait until then. Right now, I would really just like to concentrate on teaching him to read.

Weekly Report

I think we've had a very productive week. We were able to get most, if not all, of our assignments done. I think the nice weather earlier in the week was a great motive for getting schoolwork done. 

Pokemon King's Accomplishments:

HISTORY

• King Charles and his 'Cavaliers' or 'Royalists' fighting against the 'Parliamentarians' or 'Roundheads'
  
• Pocahontas
  
• The life of William Shakespeare

SCIENCE

• Cyrus McCormick & the invention of the Reaper
  
• Pressure in soda cans

GEOGRAPHY

• Marco Polo-These are 2 activities from the book:

Weaving

Chinese Mask

LITERATURE

• Parables From Nature-The General Thaw
  
• Children of the New Forest by F. Marryat (this is set during the time of King Charles)
  
• Pilgrim's Progress (we've recently decided to drop this-we will start it up again next year with an easier version-we both need to brush up a little more on vocabulary before we tackle this version again!)
  

LANGUAGE ARTS

• finished punctuation: quotations, apostrophes, commas
  
• wrote a book report (without a lot of fuss, too!)
  
• starting prepositions
  
• poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (some are really good, but others are really hard to follow)
  

MATH

• fractions, circumference, volume, proportions (I know it seems all over the place, but right now they are basically brief introductions)
  

Dinodude's Accomplishments

HISTORY

• King Charles and his 'Cavaliers' or 'Royalists' fighting against the 'Parliamentarians' or 'Roundheads'
  
• Sir Philip Sydney & The Ungrateful Soldier from 50 Famous Stories Retold
  

SCIENCE

• Burgess's Bird Book, which uses real birds to make up stories-after (sometimes during) we look up the birds to see what they look like & also find out a little more about them
  

GEOGRAPHY

• Paddle to the Sea-the story of a handmade wooden boat, traveling along the waters
  

LITERATURE

• Aesop's Fables-The Lion, the Bear & the Fox and The Hares & the Frogs
  
• King of the Golden River-just finished up 
  
• Aladdin & the Wonderful Lamp-the version we read has very little in common with the Disney movie!
  

LANGUAGE ARTS

• prepositions
  
• writing a letter
  
• addressing an envelope
  

MATH

• multiplying by 10, 100 & 1000; making change from $1.00; area of a rectangle; negative numbers on a number line; finding missing dimensions of a rectangle
  

Rocket's Accomplishments

Explode the Code-he varies between 1 and 7 pages each day. Right now we are on the second book, studying 'n' and he's doing such a great job! He concentrates so hard when he makes his letters.

FOR ALL: 

MUSIC

• Composer Gustav Mahler-Symphony 9
  
• Piano lessons have drastically improved-I'm giving their lessons on Friday and they are practicing every day!

ART

• Vincent Van Gogh-The Night Cafe

Pokemon King's painting of The Night Cafe

Dinodude's painting of The Night Cafe

Rocket's painting of The Night Cafe

Term 1 Exams

Last week ended our Term 1. We decided to have an exam week. Originally, I was just going to talk to the boys and have a discussion about what we read about, but they wanted to do some projects. 

Here's what Pokemon King accomplished:

This Country of Ours board game-It's about how the Spaniards driving the French out of Florida.

The Heroes: Perseus-This is when Perseus went to slay Medusa and chop off her head.

Story of Inventions collage-Pictures of the inventions we talked about, such as: spinning jenny, waterframe, locomotive, steam engine, steamboat, first dynamo, etc.

Our Island Story collage-The story of how Elizabeth I helped England against the Spaniards

Here's his lego movie  for a scene from The Princess & the Goblin-A boy named Curdie fights a bunch of goblins.

Here's Dinodude's accomplishments:

Toads & Diamonds board game-The story of a mistreated girl who kindly helps another person. When she does, she is given a gift that whenever she opens her mouth to talk, diamonds fall out.

Aesop's Fables: The Travelers & the Purse-Two travelers find a purse as they are walking down the road.

Aesop's Fables: The Fox & the Grapes scrapbook page-A fox sees some grapes, but is unwilling to work hard enough to get them.

Dinodude's lego movie on a scene from Pinocchio. This is when Pinocchio finds his father inside the shark. It's a little long.

And here's his lego movie summing up The Story of William Tell-The story of a talented archer who is forced to shoot an arrow at an apple that is sitting on his son's head.

 

Updates

I know it's been a while since I've been on. Crazy, busy, no time for anything! That's how our lives are right now. So, this might be a long post filled with a lot of new info. Or it might be a short post. It all depends on how much I am able to get accomplished in the little time I have!

UPDATE #1

Rocket got glasses! At first he was sooo excited to get them. He was talking about getting them all the time. Finally, we get them and he doesn't like them :( Part of the problem is that he (unlike everyone else in our family) is far-sighted. So, after talking to the technicians at the eye doctor's, it seems they take a lot longer to adjust than near-sighted lenses do. So, we are constantly reminding him to put them on. 

I've got 2 words for you:

Jonathan Lipnicki (from Jerry Maguire-"Did you know the human brain weighs 7 pounds?")

UPDATE #2

We had a wonderful family home evening last night. It was Bond's turn for the lesson. He told us a wonderful story about David Whitmer, Joseph Smith, and Oliver Cowdery. It's too long to repeat, but it was an awesome story! After that, we played a rousing game of Stick Pull. In actuality, I'm surprised we don't play it more often, considering we have a house full of boys! 

UPDATE #3

School is going pretty well. It seems like it's taking us all day with all of our daily istractions, but at least we are accomplishing what's on our schedule. Here's an update from the past 2 weeks:

POKEMON KING continues to study Marco Polo and his adventures. We are also reading about Michelangelo. For History, we've studied Martin Luther and Queen Elizabeth I. Last week and the week before, we learned about the electric battery, the electromagnet, and the first dynamo for science. Pokemon King wasn't all that interested in that, but he did retain some of the information. For our Literature studies, we've been reading The Princess and the Goblin, Heroes-Perseus, and Parables of Nature: The Master of the Harvest. In addition to these, Math and English, he's continued quite nicely on Rosetta Stone German. He's finally reached the number portion. I think he's definitely glad he's through with the clown section! He hates clowns!

DINODUDE seems to have a shorter, smaller schedule, but he really enjoys his stories. He's also been studying Queen Elizabeth I along with Pokemon King. His History stories include Androcles & the Lion and King Alfred & the Beggar from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. For his science we continue to read Paddle to the Sea. His Literature studies include Shakespeare's The Tempest, Pinocchio (not the Disney version), How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin from Just So Stories, and various Aesop's Fables. Math and English are a piece of cake for him. He, too is attempting Rosetta Stone. He's not quite as far as Pokemon King, but he is progressing.

Our musician for this term is Franz Liszt. We have been listening to Les Preludes, Liebestraum, and Piano Sonata in B Minor. Pokemon King doesn't like to listen to music during schooltime, so we've been listening to it as we clean up the schoolroom at the end of the day. It's working quite nicely. 

This term's artist is Caspar David Friedrich. His works include: On Board a Sailing Ship and Moon Rising Over the Sea. One week we discuss the painting: what colors, textures were used, how it makes us feel, what we think is going on in the painting. Then we stop looking at it and see how many details we remember. The next week we review it a little, then they paint it from memory. 

Pokemon King's On Board a Sailing Ship

Pokemon King's Moon Rising Over the Sea

Dinodude's On Board a Sailing Ship

Dinodude's Moon Rising Over the Sea 

And here are some pictures that Rocket drew:

So, that about sums up a little bit of what we've been up to. Wally's been staying late after school most days practicing hard for the spring musical. Babymoon continues to amuse us with just being here!

Weekly Report

For those of you who like to follow along in our school endeavors, this post is for you.

We have completely revamped our schooling. We basically were doing mostly traditional book work type things. It was going okay, but the boys were just rolling along. Pokemon King began to get a little difficult. Dinodude was okay, but nobody was enjoying it. I really want them to enjoy it, so for the next 6 weeks, we've put aside the majority of our curriculum (except Math & English). We are now following a Charlotte Mason type schedule. We're using the guidelines from Ambleside Online. We've already completed a week and so far the boys are enjoying it. Here's what we do:

I took a regular die & made it so it has 6 different colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, & purple. Each color represents a form of narration:

red-drawing
orange-written
yellow-oral
green-art/craft
blue-skip narration
purple-student choice

So, after their reading selection, they roll the die. If they land on red, orange, green or yellow, then they pick a folded piece of paper from that category. They do whatever the paper says. Here are some examples:

red-draw a picture of a place in the reading & label it/draw a picture of a character from the reading
orange-write a letter from one character to another/write a multiple choice quiz of what you have just read
yellow-give a telling to mom about what you just read/be a TV reporter & give a report from a scene from your reading as if it is happening live
green-write & perform an original song that tells the story of your reading/make a poster advertising your reading so someone else will want to read it

Those are just a few examples. Here's what the boys did this week.

Pokemon King was sick Thursday, Friday and half of Wednesday, so we didn't complete everything he was supposed to do. But, here are a few things we did do...

This is part of his postcard from the Goblin from the reading "The Princess and the Goblin." (the other side wasn't scanning clear enough)
Here's his picture of Vasco de Gama. He wanted to draw it on the markerboard instead of on paper. He looks kind of like a rappin' Vasco de Gama, doesn't he?


This is his rendering of the first part of Marco Polo.



This is song about Paul Bunyan.


If you can't understand what he's saying, here are the words:
Chop, Chop, Chop the trees,
The tiny toothpick trees.
Hammer the stumps down with the maul. (that was our new word from the story!)
Smash 'em to the little ground.
Chop, Chop, Chop, Chop, Chop the ground with my ax.
Chop, Chop, Chop, Chop, Chop the tiny trees.

These are Dinodude's accomplishments. This one is from a story from "Parables of Nature." It talks about a caterpillar, a butterfly, and a lark.

This is from Aesop's Fable, The Tortoise and the Ducks. Here, he was supposed to make an ID for one of the characters. He chose Turtle and got a little creative with the info!

Here's his skit on Henry VIII.

And here's his puppet show on The Sword of Damocles.

Weekly Report

Here's our weekly report for the September 15th:

Pokemon King:

• Math-It still seems like we're reviewing. He's been doing negative numbers, number lines, bar graphs, and word problems (yea! everyone's favorite!)
• English-simple & complete predicates as well as diagramming
• Reading, Spelling, Handwriting-the usual: read a story & do the worksheet; spelling worksheet & final test; cursive handwriting letters o,l, & v (hooray-he can almost spell olive!)
• Science-the sun & the earth

Dinodude:

• Math-still reviewing (one downfall to Saxon)-word problems, fractions, addition & subtraction facts, coin values & patterns
• English-poetry memorization, story narration, nouns, learning address & family members
• Reading, Spelling, Handwriting-the usual: read a story & do the worksheet; spelling worksheet & final test; cursive handwriting letters a, e, i, & o
• Science-what science is, what scientists do, the universe-he did do an experiment on whether salt has an impact on making objects float. As you can see from the picture...it does!
  

History for both-we discussed China and Dynasties, mainly the Shang Dynasty. We also talked about Pictograms & the boys made their own.

Pokemon King's:


Dinodude's:


We also finished our Mohenjo-Daro buildings from last week:

Pokemon King's:


Dinodude's:

All in all I think we had a pretty productive week. We've got one more week until we break for our move. Hopefully it'll be a good week.

Belated Weekly Update

Another week gone by. Just History again. The boys have been doing so well and I really think they're learning alot! We're studying Ancients this year, which I enjoy learning about as well. We talked about the first writings, cuneiform, hieroglyphs, mummies and pyramids. Here's some pics of our projects. We did cave paintings and cuneiform tablets. The tablets have their initials in cuneiform on it.

Here's Pokemon King's:

Here's Dinodude's:

And here's Rocket's:

Rocket didn't do a cuneiform tablet, but he loves to paint, so we let him do the cave painting. I haven't really officially started with his schooling yet. I'm going to wait until the 2nd term to start him off. By then, I'll have the baby too, so that'll be pretty interesting!

Rocket and Wally say Hi!!

Rocket and Wally here! We're bored, so we're messing around with the blog! (SHHH!!;Don't tell mom!!)

We wanna say hi to everyone!!

Rocket says:
rhbegeheggeggwwhyggwgwgwfwhfgwgfwgwwgw wurwyqwtqhqggqggqgqgqgwggqg

:) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Weekly Report

We didn't do a lot this week, but surprisingly we got some work done. So, here's a weekly report for all three boys. It's condensed into one show, but they're separated a bit. Plus, you should be able to tell the difference.

Just the Basics Today and Last Week's Report

Since Mom is sick today, the homeschooled boys are doing just the bare minimum. We had Monday off because I wasn't feeling well. Tuesday we did everything but Science. Today, I feel worse, but I really don't want to take another day off, so I decided we'll just do some basics. We're working on English, Math, Spelling, Handwriting, Journal and that's all. I tried to load the weekly report, but I'm guessing it's too big. I'll have to do it another time.

Weekly Report

Here's a weekly report from 9 year old:





Here's a weekly report from 6 year old: