Weekly Wrap Up: The First One in Florida

  WooHoo!  Our first week of school is finished!!!!  And, dare I say. . . We had a GREAT week!  I don't want to speak too soon (because, I mean, it has only been a whole week) but, I am absolutely loving our new curriculum, Heart of Dakota.    

  

 This week in science little man learned about creation.  We also talked about how it takes the earth one year to orbit the sun.  We then had our lamp be the sun and little man be the earth.  Every time he went around the sun once, we would scream out Happy Birthday Earth!!  Needless to say, the earth's orbit got faster and faster and faster.  But whatever.  He got the point and had a great time doing it!

 

 The bigger boys are talking all about the ocean for science.  Um, this just happens to work out real nice for us since we just moved about 20 minutes from the ocean.  I see some serious fieldtrips in our future! :-)  They each made a picture showing high tide vs. low tide and the moon's alignment for each.

 I love that the art/hands on activities are already planned out in our new curriculum.  Here, all the boys practiced mixing paint to make different shades of blue and purple and then painted their oceans.

 Here are their finished oceans!  Love them! (And my new refrigerator, but that is for another post)  The other picture is one that little man did.  We talked about collages and then he used black construction paper to cover his other paper.  We talked about how God has always been here even when there was nothing. . . hence the cross in the middle.

 The bigger boys also talked about sinking and floating, Why do some things sink and others float?  So we tested some stuff out.

 They really liked pushing on the ball to feel the water push back against them.

 Here is my Drew man filing his vocabulary cards in his vocabulary box.  His words this week were lamentations, impostors, and stranded.  They had to look up the definitions in our dictionary, copy to a card, and then file said card in vocabulary box.

 Dalton is working on his math lesson on the white board.  Way more fun than stinking ole pencil and paper!

 I have big news in math land.  I love Saxon math.  I have been using Saxon math since we started homeschooling and I plan on continuing to use it with everyone. . . except for Drew.  He doesn't do well with the format and math had become absolute torture.  He hated it and in return I hated it!  I looked and looked and have decided to give Teaching Textbooks a try.  I am so excited.  I already taught all three boys separately for math.  So it is not like adding a different math program will take longer.  In fact, it might cut some instruction time because Teaching Textbooks teaches the lesson.  Not me!!!  Math just comes easier for Dalton than Drew.  Drew makes good grades.  He just has to work much harder for them than Dalton does (in math).  I love that using a different curriculum will take the pressure off of Drew to compete with his brother.  Competition is just built into boys.  At least my boys.  Drew will start Teaching Textbooks on Monday so I will let you all know how that goes!

In history, the bigger boys drew part of the world and mapped out Christopher Columbus's route.

 And last, but not least. . . My little man took his first spelling test.  Well, not really.  It was the first one where he wrote the words out on paper instead of using letter tiles or just doing it orally.  He was so excited and felt so grown!

I love that our new curriculum already has a poem picked out for my bigger boys to study.  This week they worked on Four by the Clock by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  My little man has a "Rhymes in Motion" section everyday.  This is beyond perfect for my super active fellow.  This week's rhyme had him leaping, clip clopping, hopping, waddling, etc. to all the different continents.  So fun!

I hope that everyone had a great week!  Head on over to Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and see what everybody else has been up to this week!