More school updates

Okay, I am not even going to promise this will be quick! Those of you who continue to read our school updates are real troopers!

We recently finished up our Little House in the Big Woods book. All of the kids were sad to finish it. We will eventually read through the rest I hope, but are taking a break to read a few other books.

This picture is of afternoon story time. After naps we like to read our chapter books while enjoying a snack. A whole apple is the kids all time favorite snack. What is it about not having it cut up that they like so much? :)

 One of our favorite activities for this book was making our own homemade butter! We just put cream into a clean plastic bottle with a few metal bolts to add friction. Then we shook and acted silly until we had made fresh butter.

After shaking up our butter, we enjoyed a treat of homemade butter and maple syrup on bread, like Laura and Mary enjoyed!

Can I just share how much I love our All About Spelling program? It is realy painles and simple to teech. The boys are fenominal spellars! I realy can not speek highly enuf about this program. ;-p

Gracie was begging me to do more school with her and has started learning her letters. She is having a blast with her learning too! (Jacob likes to be a part of everything too and is quick to point out A's in books! :))

I am not really working on writing with Gracie yet. I think that is better suited for later on, but she is drawing A's on everything and loves to practice her "writing."

I think this may be one of my favorite pictures. Luke loves reading to his younger siblings. His younger siblings love having him read to them too! (P.S I always wanted a big brother, so I love seeing how comfortable Gracie is with her big brothers.)

In art we were working on learning to mix colors. The watercolor crayons are saved for Luke and Ben, but Gracie and Jacob loved the finger paint version of the lesson.

Here is another art project, learning to draw lines and shapes from a real item in front of you. The boys want to practice this all the time lately.

Our TOG studies have dealt mostly with Biblical history this month. We have studied Joshua through Saul. We have also learned about the neighbors of the Israelites. In one book we had discussed the Israelites' custom of washing feet. Luke and Ben remembered the account of Jesus washing the disciples' feet too. So, we decided to let them have a chance to serve each other in this way.

 

When we were reading the account of the Israelites' victory over Jericho, Luke was visibly upset. He asked why God would kill all those people in Jericho. He said, "How could they hear about God and choose to believe Him if they were dead?" Tough question! We talked about God's plan for the Israelites, and Daddy reminded him of the story we had learned about Rahab. The people did hear and have a chance to believe, but only Rahab believed. She and her family were saved as a result. Such deep questions from such a little one! I am so glad that we have the opportunity to ask these deep questions, to search our Bible for the answers, and to discuss them as a family. I've seen these kinds of questions and discussions come up time and time again this year. I know there are a lot of great curriculum out there, but we really love Tapestry of Grace for our family.

This month in science, we have taken on a month-long project of charting what the moon looks like! We have studied the Earth's moon and have loved searching for it every day/night. Thankfully Apologia's course website had a link to a site which helped Mommy cheat and figure out what time of day the moon would rise and set each day! I also found a site which shows you a picture of the moon for that day which was helpful on the cloudy days and bad weather!

One Saturday I was going to work and saw the moon out in the AM. I sent Jeff a text and asked him to bundle the kids up (it was 20 degrees out) and take them outside to see the moon. I got a text later that said "no moon, we are all freezing now...." Ahh, the sacrifices we make for scientific inquiry!

One neat experiment this month was to make our own telescope. Pretty cool, but with strict instructions not to point it at the sun!

One really great item we have for school is a markable map. One side folds out to be a map of the States, the other side is of the world. Anytime we learn a new geographical item, we add it to our map. Last week when the meteorite crashed in Russia, I let the boys see the pictures on the internet. They were pretty excited that it was something we had recently learned about in science. Although, tender hearted Luke was more worried about the people that got hurt. We pulled out our map and added Russia to our map.