Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Homeschool Week 25: Seeing The Light

It's the time of the year for me to start nailing down curriculum choices for the upcoming school year.  I have been researching and making notes since I ordered last year's curriculum but I find as the time is drawing closer I am second guessing some of those choices.  I have spent a lot of time lately rereading reviews and trying to make some definite decisions.  I will be choosing a new language arts curriculum for 2nd grade.  What I am using now (Sing Spell Read and Write) was just for K and 1st grade.  As for now I am leaning towards BJU Press for English 2.  I plan to try All About Spelling and A Reason for Handwriting.  I have definite plans to start Sonlight next year.  I will be ordering Core A and combining both boys together for history and literature.  I will be ordering Sonlight Grade 2 Readers for Cruz.  We will continue using Math U See.  I am pretty sure we will continue Abeka Bible although I am looking at other options just to make sure. We will continue Abeka Health also.   Science is still an uncertain.  Right now I am torn between Elemental Science and Sonlight Science.  Ben will begin Sing Spell Read and Write and Math U See Primer for kindergarten.  Making curriculum choices is really hard and stressful.  I want to love what I get and not have to make changes during the school year.  Would you pray wisdom for me as I make these decisions?

This past week in school was another fun one.  We are continuing through some New Testament stories in Bible.  Last week we covered the stories of Jesus Heals the Nobleman's Son, Jesus Goes to the Synagogue in Nazareth, and Blind Bartimaeus.  We learned a new song "I Am The Door".  Cruz is continuing to memorize Matthew 18: 1-6.  One of his Bible worksheets had him write and draw what he imagined Blind Bartimaeus may have seen after Jesus healed his eyes.  Cruz wrote the sky, the sun, a rainbow, and people.

Abeka Bible worksheet

In Language Cruz spent the week focusing on vocabulary words that contain the "sh" and "ch" sounds.  He has a daily spelling test and this week began having to write homework sentences with his daily spelling list.  His grammar lessons were reviewing suffixes and syllabication.  His reading has really picked up in the last few weeks.  It seems as though it has all started to click well for him.  His confidence level has also improved.  It makes me proud to see him excel at something that I have worked so hard to help him learn.  Teaching someone to read is not an easy job.  It requires a lot more patience than I ever thought I had.  But, it has probably been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done.  I think I will always be proud that I taught him that skill. 

reading in Storybook #9

one of his workbook activities- adding er and est

reviewing suffixes

a few of his spelling word sentences

my little super heroes on a recent school day

Ben's language lessons focused on the letter O.  His memory verse for the week was Psalm 118:1     O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good.  Below is a video of him saying it.

Letter O memory verse

practicing sight words

Last week Ben began learning a nursery rhyme a week.  He will have a new one each week until the end of the school year.  His first one was Hey Diddle Diddle.


In Math Ben continues to count from 0-60 and is focusing on numbers 0-16. 
counting noodles in math class

counting on the apple tree

Cruz's math lesson was Subtraction -8.  We also do a lot of reviewing of all the math facts he has learned so far.  

In History we learned about traveling the Oregon Trail.  The boys are really enjoying these pioneer stories.  This has been a really fun curriculum and a great pick for History this year.  They especially enjoyed the YouTube videos we watched showing what life was like for the children who traveled the Oregon Trail with their parents. 





Our activity for the week was making covered wagons.  We used milk cartons and construction paper.  The boys have had a great time playing with these and pretending to be pioneers.

We learned all about the State of Kansas.

In Science we began a unit on plants.  This weeks lesson taught us that plants grow towards the sun.  We watched a few time lapse videos to demonstrate this idea and skipped the experiment that would have had us doing it ourselves.  We learned about the parts of plants and that the roots grow down and the plant grows up.  We made a mosaic plant using tissue paper.  The boys cut the tissue paper into small squares and then rolled each square into a ball.  We then glued the balls onto our plant picture.  This was fun for them and their pictures turned out really pretty,

cutting tissue paper squares

making tissue paper balls



gluing to balls onto their picture

Cruz's mosaic plant

In Art they drew a baby raccoon-


Ben's raccoon makes me laugh every time I see it.  It looks a little scared, ha.

Cruz's journal entries for the week-


In Health we are continuing our unit on Safety.  This week we learned about being safe on the playground.  I have really enjoyed our Abeka Health lessons this year.

That's another week all wrapped up and done.  They are going by a little faster than I would prefer but on the other hand I am looking forward to the summer break.  It will be here before we know it!

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