We are not doing formal schoolwork this week because we are in the midst of indoor camp-meeting, but we are still taking the time to do our Bible studies.  Journey Through the Bible by V. Gilbert Beers.  has been great because it spurs some wonderful conversations.  Today's chapter mentioned the shofar.  We had fun listening to and watching Youtube videos about the shofar.

Astronomy Projects

The boys are learning astronomy using Apologia Science.  We have done a couple of fun projects that the book suggests.  The first two pictures are the boys seeing how indentions occur when craters hit a planet.  The last two pictures are of the boys making models of the planet Mercury.

The finished product.  Now we wait for them to dry...

Dictation:Charlotte Mason style

 quoted from Sheila Carroll
www.LivingBooksCurriculum.com

Are you a cracker-jack speller? Or, does the subject of spelling cause you to groan? Most people struggle with spelling.  Likely it is because they were not taught to picture the word before spelling it. 

Charlotte Mason had one of the best ideas I have come across of teaching children to spell by seeing the words before they spell them.  Miss Mason felt that the secret of spelling lay in the habit of visualizing words from memory.   She called this process the royal road to spelling.  If a child were a poor speller, she taught, it was usually a sign of too little reading of high quality literature, or skimming the text without the habit of seeing the words. 

Children can be trained to see the words they are reading. One way this is done is through dictation, usually from a work of great literature the children are reading. The method of dictating a passage to improve spelling involves seeing the word correctly spelled in the mind's eye and then ensuring that the word is written successfully the first time. The reason for the emphasis of having it correct the first time is that the opposite is also true. A misspelled word is seen incorrectly and is difficult to correct.  

Steps of a Dictation Lesson for Spelling Mastery

• The child is given a paragraph to read and study closely
• Then prepares by himself, by looking at any word he is not sure of, and then seeing it with his eyes shut. 
• Before he begins the dictation, the teaching parent asks what words he thinks will need his attention. Most students know but, if not, the teacher can point out a word or two.
• He lets you know when he is ready.
• The teaching parent asks for any words the child is not sure. She puts these a sheet of paper, having the child look until he has the picture in his mind. She then rubs out or places a piece of paper over the word or words.
• Then, the teaching parent reads the selection for dictation, phrase by phrase, repeating only once.
• If there is an incorrectly spelled word the teaching parent places a small sheet of paper over the word, so the child will not visualize an incorrect word. Then, the child goes through the process of visualizing with this one word until he can write it correctly. Most children have little difficulty spelling correctly using this method.  

Note: The preparation for the dictation should take about 10 minutes and the dictation about five.)

January 2012: Reflecting on the holidays of 2011 and looking forward.

We started "back to school" yesterday, January 3, 2012. I was ready to get back after a three month divergence from regular school activities.  It was so fun, but there's just something about normalcy and structure that I crave.
During the holidays, the boys continued to do their seatwork, but expectations were lighter so that we could immerse ourselves in learning about & getting ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.  Of course we also had a complete 2 week break as well.

Our tree

We (mostly I) started working on home-made Christmas gifts about October 30th, and I worked on them right up until the week of Christmas.  Also, I like to spend time discussing and learning about the holidays and their histories during these times. One of the first things we did in anticipation of Thanksgiving was to enjoy the book Growing Together in Gratitude by Barbara Rainey.  We also listened to her book and CD set called Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember.  After that we listened to the Focus on the Family audio drama, "Squanto."   These books are becoming somewhat of a tradition for us during that time of year.  We also made a Gratitude tree, which was basically a posterboard tree with leaves taped to it.  We wrote the things we were thankful for on the leaves.

Another activity we enjoyed was making Christmas tree ornaments out of buttons.

Here are the boys in front of the tree at Spring Mill Inn.  Mom came up for a few days and visited us right before Christmas (I wish I had taken a picture of her with the boys).

For the new year, we are adding a couple of new studies into our daily schedule. 

•   Leading Little Ones to God is "the basics" of leading children to the Lord.  I wanted to make sure I didn't leave anything out when teaching my children about the Lord.  Even though we regularly attend church, daily memorize verses, read a Bible story, and read the Psalms out loud, I want to make sure I don't leave the plan of salvation out.  I thought the book might help me out.

• We are also going through Journey through the Bible.  It is fascinating!  It gives the historical background behind the Scriptures.  It was a must when I saw it!   

•   I am back to ABeka for history, and we are going to use Apologia Science.  I have heard rave reviews about Apologia, and we are going to use their astronomy book.  We will see how it goes!

• Now that we have finished memorizing the Presidents in order, we are memorizing the states & capitals via song.  After they learn that song, I plan to teach them the locations of the states and do a study about each state.

That's pretty much all we are changing for now.  We are already enjoying the new studies!

Memorization: The Presidents

Note: We made the cute hat & powdered wigs yesterday to celebrate finally learning the Presidents. Link credit at the bottom of the post where I got the craft ideas.




Ideas for celebrating the Presidents:
http://holidays.kaboose.com/presidents-day/presidents-day.html

Fun Project: An Edible Lincoln's Log Cabin

The boys have been learning the Presidents in order, and we have been reading about them in Eyewitness: Presidents .  So, just for the fun of it, we built an edible graham cracker & pretzel cabin.  We called it "Lincon's Log Cabin" (in winter, of course).

Now I need to clean up the mess!

*******************************************************************************

Credits to websites and books I used for the ideas, recipes, & patterns:

 :

Got the idea from: http://crafts.kaboose.com/pretzel-log-cabin.html
Found something better at the library: No-Bake Gingerbread Houses for Kids

Online icing recipe http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,166,152161-253200,00.html

Field Trip: Lawrence County Museum of History

The boys have been doing really well with their school work , so I rewarded them with a little field trip Wednesday, October 19th.  We went to the Lawrence County Museum of History.

It was a cool, drizzly day, but that didn't diminish the fun.   We had a wonderful day.

The last two are from when I took them to McDonald's after our visit to the museum to get ice cream and mochas. 

Scripture Memory: I Corinthians 13

Here they are reciting I Corinthians 13. They needed a little help, but they've got it. I love their silly actions.

Missionary Biographies, Subject Integration, and Inspiring a Love for Learning!

One of the most favorite parts of our morning is taking the time to read part of some type of missionary biography.  We enjoy this so much, and usually the boys beg for me to continue reading.  Most of the time, I even have a hard time wanting to stop! 

In my opinion, to read from missionary biographies is one of the best ways to achieve a type of educational integration.  By "educational integration", I mean that children learn more than just one subject while they are hearing the book being read.   For example,* The Peace Child by Don Richardson includes some very complicated words.  It is very beneficial for a child to hear new vocabulary words being used naturally in sentence form.  It helps them to understand what the words mean in a natural way.   Here is an example of a sentence from The Peace Child:
 "And since the Sawi were fully convinced that persons officially declared to be in aumamay were already dead, they had no compunction about interring them in gravehouses either."  The words "inter" and "compunction" are not words a child under the age of 11 usually uses in conversation, so by reading them in a natural way, children learn what they mean.   A lot of times when I come to a sentence like that, I ask the boys, "What did that mean?"
  Usually they can tell me even if they were not previously familiar with the words.  Their understanding is due to hearing the words used naturally in the sentence.

 If the words are still not understood, I usually take the time to look them up in my electronic dictionary (on my Kindle).  Researching helps when the meanings are not so obvious.

Another benefit of reading missionary biographies is that children learn about other cultures.  We have a world map on the wall of our den.  As we read the biographies, we point out the location of the setting of the book on the map.  We are also learning a lot of things about the particular culture in which the missionary is living.  Again, this is a natural way that is much easier to remember than mere rote memorization.  Children seem to absorb the things that are interesting much more easily than "boring" facts.    I am not saying rote memorization is not beneficial (we use rote memorization to learn a lot of things).  What I am saying is that it is much easier for children imbibe the things that are exciting to them. 

Last but not least, missionary biographies are testimonies to the grace of God in the lives of lost people groups.  Most of the books give examples of occurrences of actual miracles. This is another way for our children to hear testimonies that give honor and glory to our Heavenly Father.
I highly recommend reading missionary biographies and/or other books that help children to learn new vocabulary words, geography, cultural & multi-ethnic studies, history, science,  and most of all a love for learning these things!

*Disclaimer:  Most of what I read, I edit as I read .  The Peace Child is a very good book, but I did have to heavily edit it as I read because some of the content was very violent.  This book is about cannibals and the author was very descriptive. 

The Tabernacle

While reading The Bible Story books, we have been reading about the life of Moses and the Israelites' journeys through the wilderness, the building of the Tabernacle, and the Ten Commandments. We also watched a short documentary about the Tabernacle that was very helpful.

When I was in the fifth grade at BMCS, Miss Stetler had us build a small model of the Tabernacle.   It was a great idea, and I can still name the "pieces" from the Tabernacle today.

Guess what we decided to do?  After several hours over a period of about 3 weeks (here and there)  of cutting cardboard, gluing popsickle sticks, molding salt dough, and painting with gold and glitter, we have our very own model.  So, what's my purpose for doing this? Making memories!  And well... it counts as art, it is fun, and I hope this will help them remember the facts as well.

Please forgive the random order of the pictures. I had a really hard time getting these pictures uploaded, and I just don't have time to rearrange them.   The pieces turned out much larger than we intended -and because of space- I just outlined the Tabernacle and tents on brown craft paper.

The order should be: 1.  The Brasen Altar 2.  The Laver 3. The Golden Candlestick 4. The Table of Shewbread 5. The Altar of Incense 6. The Ark of the Covenant (included inside the Ark are the Ten Commandments, A pot of manna, & Aaron's rod).

The Golden Candlestick 

The Altar of Incense (see the smoke?)

The Brazen Altar

The Laver

The Table of Shewbread (see the loaf of bread on top?)

Inside the Holy Place

The Ten Commandments, The Pot of Manna, & Aaron's rod (see the green buds on it?)

The Ark of the Covenant (inside the Most Holy Place) with its items lying beside it.

Here it is in the actual order in which the items were placed.

I still need to even out the handles for the pieces that would have been carried.  I ran out of the long popsickle sticks and had to use what I had (which were ones that I had already cut).