Homeschool Weeks 3 and 4 (1st and 3rd Grade, 2018)

We have now completed a whole month of school.  Here is a look at some of the things we have been doing over the past two weeks.

I love starting our days with Bible class.  I consider it a blessing to be able to have this time with my boys to talk about the things of God.  Lately we have been learning that God is everywhere and He knows all things.  We have also learned about the Trinity.  The boys have been memorizing a verse a week of Psalm 1.  They have one more verse to learn before they can recite the whole passage. 

One afternoon Cruz was playing in the school room and drew this on our board.  When I asked him about it he told me it was Heaven.  He drew the gates and drew God "shining in all His glory" (that is what the squiggly lines around the man in the center means).  I feel bad to erase their artwork sometimes so instead I take pictures of it to help me remember.

This year our Sonlight lessons include a weekly time of prayer for different people groups around the world.  Most of these will be unreached people groups which are groups of people that have not had a chance to hear God's Good News.  We have used the acronym THUMB (Tribals, Hindus, Unreached/ Unchurched Chinese, Muslims, and Buddhists).  So far we have spent our weeks praying for each of these groups as a whole.  Beginning next week we will begin praying for specific people groups.  What a great opportunity to teach my boys to pray for lostness.  Have I mentioned already that I love Sonlight? 

They have loved our recent History lessons.  We have studied the Egyptians.  Cruz has always been fascinated by Egypt and loves to study about it. Part of our lesson had us reading this book about King Tut.  It was very interesting.  Our study gave me a great opportunity to talk to them about what other people believe about the afterlife and what we as Christians believe happens to a person when they die.  I am always looking for ways to share Christ with my boys and tie our lessons back to Him.

As a project they got to use their Legos to build a pyramid.  Cruz built the pyramid of King Khufu and also added the smaller pyramids out front for the queens.  He included a secret entry into his.  Maybe one day we will get to go see the pyramids in person.  That would be a great field trip!

Ben working a math sheet. 

Cruz practicing his spelling words using our letter tiles.

So far I am loving our Keyboarding Without Tears lessons.  I teach a brief lesson on Mondays and then they have daily exercises to complete on the computer.  Not only are they learning to type but our lessons also cover some great topics on using technology safely.  In this particular lesson Ben became a digital detective.  He had to read some scenarios and decide if each person was being safe or unsafe online.

In this digital age it is never too early to start teaching them to be responsible.

Cruz's reading assignments currently have him reading through this book about the Pony Express.  

He has completed readers on the States of Idaho and Montana.  In addition to a few others, he has also recently read through these two books about a family who immigrated to the United States from Sweden long ago.

Buckle up for Science!  We have had a lot of fun.  We have been studying about animal habitats, migration, and conservation.  We also began a study on animals around the world.  We began by learning about the animals of Central and South America.  So far we have covered animals that live in the Andes Mountains and the rainforests.

Our experiment topics have been on floating and boats.  In week 3 we focused on floaters.  We each gathered a few objects to test.  We first guessed which items we thought would float and which would sink.  We then tested them to see if our guesses were right.

We marked the water line on a cup of water.  We then dropped a ball of clay into the cup and noticed that the water line moved.  We then shaped the same ball into a boat and noticed that the water line changed again. 

Afterwards they played with their "boat" in the large bowl of water.

Another way we tested the water line was by pushing a balloon down into the water.  The pushing makes the water rise up on the sides of the bowl.  We tested this with three different sizes of balloons to see if it made a difference.

They discovered that if you pushed down hard enough the water would spill over.

On week 4 we had fun with boats.  We began with a meat tray and loaded it with marbles.  As long as the marbles were spread evenly the tray floated.  If we put all the marbles onto one side, it would sink. This was a good lesson on balance.

Notice the "coach" here giving instructions to his little brother.

We did the same test with an egg carton.

and we made a boat out of foil and tested it as well.

We put marbles (cargo) into a cup and then put it in a large bowl of water.  We marked the water line (Plimsoll line).  We then filled the water with salt and noticed that the water line moved.  We could add more marbles (cargo) to the salty water.  Ships can carry more cargo when traveling in salty oceans.

Lastly we learned about submarines.  Tanks inside a submarine can be filled with water to make it sink.  Air pumped into the tanks make it rise again.  We tested this by filling a water bottle with water and letting it sink.  We inserted a tube and when we blew air into it the bottle would rise.  They loved this.  Science is always fun around here.

In Art the boys had to choose a visual aid to look at and then draw what they saw.  We used our Science videos as our aid and after watching them one day the boys had to draw an animal they had seen.  Cruz drew a chameleon.  Ben drew a butterfly, a tiger, and a snake.

Lastly, we finished up Charlotte's Web (and it made me cry, again).  Our next read aloud is Homer Price.  We are a few chapters into it already and we are enjoying it.  The stories have been very entertaining for the boys.

My days are spent either in school or preparing lessons for school.  It takes up most of my time but as you can see it is definitely time well spent.