Homeschool Weeks 7, 8, and 9 (2nd and K)

Homeschool is keeping me busy these days.  I am trying hard to keep us on schedule and in a good routine.  I guard our mornings pretty tight.  We always begin by 8:00 a.m. and go until we finish.  Some days we are done earlier than others.  We are having a lot of fun as you will see in this post.

Our Bible lessons are focusing on the promises of God.  We have learned about the promise of a Savior through the story of Adam and Eve, the promise to the Israelite people, and the life of Joseph.  Our character trait studies have been on love and obedience.  We begin our school days by saying the Pledge of Allegiance.  We then sing a patriotic song and a few Bible songs.  We practice our memory work and do our Bible lesson.  We end by singing a hymn.  I love starting our days with the Word of God.

During our study of the life of Joseph the boys had to draw a few scenes from our lessons.    Here is how they illustrated it:

 1)  Joseph in his coat of many colors 2) Joseph as ruler in Potiphar's house  3) Joseph as ruler in Egypt 4) Joseph being sold as a slave 5) Joseph in prison and 6) Joseph with his father and brothers in Egypt.

Ben's illustrations 

I mentioned that we close our Bible lessons by singing a hymn.  Our curriculum has us learning one hymn a month.  I love that!  We are using the book Treasury of Hymn Histories to learn the stories behind the hymns we are singing.

Our first hymn was "Living For Jesus".   

For our memory work we are continuing to memorize Ephesians 6: 11-20 (The Armor of God).  We are learning one verse a week.  We are up to verse 18.  While on our trip to South Carolina the boys were each given one of these coins to help them remember the verses they are learning.  It is a great keepsake for them.

Here is how Cruz showed up for school one recent morning.  He was proudly wearing his daddy's work name tag.  He is a mess!

In Language Ben is working his way through the alphabet.  We are up to letter N.  We do two letters a week.  

 Ben ready for a language lesson one day.

playing alphabet bingo

In Grammar Cruz completed a chapter on writing poems.  He learned the five steps to writing- plan, draft, revise, proofread, and publish.   He also completed a chapter on nouns.  He learned what a noun is and how to identify common and proper nouns.  He learned how to make nouns plural by adding -s or -es and and plural nouns that change spelling.  He learned to write compound words and how to add commas in a series.  He is also doing weekly journal entries as writing practice.   

writing nouns

Cruz's math lessons have covered addition with regrouping and skip counting by 5's and 10's using pennies and dimes. 

Cruz doing a review of rounding to 10 and estimation

Ben's math lessons have focused on number recognition, number writing, and triangles.

We are using A Reason For Handwriting for our handwriting curriculum.  Cruz practices writing a part of a scripture verse each day and then on Friday has to write it as a test.  Here are his scriptures from the last three weeks.

We use All About Spelling.  Here is Cruz sorting the letter tiles before a lesson one day.  I am sure you noticed he has on no shirt and safety glasses- what kind of school am I running?  HA

Ben wearing safety glasses one day while doing an ABC Mouse lesson.  He does one lesson each day. 

Cruz helping his brother do ABC Mouse.

Cruz does Explode the Code online.  We began in Book 1 and will work our way through all the levels using it as a phonics review.  He does an online lesson each day. He was excited to complete Book 2 recently and receive this certificate.

In our read-aloud time we finished this book about a little boy named Penny.  It has such a sweet, surprise ending.

We also read a few pages a day from both of these books-

 

 For Cruz's daily reading assignments he is reading a story a day from this Bible story book.

Our History lessons have been very fun and interesting.  We finished up our study on Ancient Greece.  We spent several days learning about the Romans, and are now doing a study on the Vikings.  We are learning about their cultures, dress, foods, homes, and so much more.  The boys love our history time.

They also love science.  We are using Sonlight Science A this year.  We have a different theme each day so we are covering a wide variety of topics.  We do science 4 days a week.  We have three days of lessons and one day of experiments.  Our recent topics have been on waves, currents and tides, ice, coasts, caves and caverns, natural resources, endangered species, global warming, and recycling.

Making an "ocean in a bottle" as a science experiment one day while studying waves.

We do our art lessons on Fridays.  We are using Artistic Pursuits for our art curriculum.  The past three lessons have been titled Artists Plan the Space, Artists Fill in Spaces, and Artists Draw in Color.  Here is what they have drawn lately-

They had to draw an object of choice.  Cruz chose his Nerf gun.

They had to observe the outside world around them and draw a scene they saw. 

Cruz drew and painted our neighbor's house

Ben drew and painted our backyard.

Our most recent lesson introduced them to oil pastels.  They were so excited to get to use a new art supply item.  They had to draw and color an underwater scene.

Cruz's underwater picture before he colored it.

Both of their art works using the oil pastels.

They are both continuing to go to speech therapy one day a week.  They love their therapist Mrs. Rene!  They think she is so fun and they get very excited when therapy day rolls around.

Cruz is also continuing his piano lessons one day a week.   He has a daily time to practice as part of our school routine. 

School is fun and we are learning a lot together.  I love this time with my boys!