Homeschool Highlights - Week of August 22, 2011

Sunday:

Worship services.  We all enjoyed and took much from the message about humility, gentleness, and patience.

Learning Games:  Played Dora memory matching card game.  Mom won with 19 matches to Shayla's 17.

New School Dedication Ceremony.  Even though this is our last year with the public school (Morgan is a senior!  Yay!)  We still thought it would be nice to attend the ceremony.  Especially since Morgan was playing in the band for the ceremony AND because after the "official" ceremony, a group of Christians representing many churches and denominations in the county, came together and prayed around the new school.  It was an awesome experience and I feel privileged that we were able to be a part of this!

Family movie:  Yes, I consider this to be school.  Shayla doesn't watch television.  Her ADHD brain can't sit still long enough.  I have been picking family movies on Netflix based on an email list of good movies sent out from Above Rubies awhile back. 

Today we watched Lassie.  We used the movie to discuss many social/character traits such as:  love, honesty, forgiveness, etc.   In the end, she really enjoyed the movie!

Monday:

Literature based unit studies:  King Bidgood's in the Bathtub by Audrey Wood.  (These are not the most fun activities, but some are part of the curriculum we have been using)

• Reviewed definition of compound words, then identified words in the story.
• Taught story elements:  setting, characters, identified problem, events, and problem solution.
• Studied details of illustrations on each page.
• Sequence.  Identified events in sequential order
• What are some things you like to do in the tub? 
• Write and illustrate a similar story.
• And of course, Shayla's favorite, take a nice, leasurely bath, just like King Bidgood (although, not as long!)

(reading, language, art appreciation)

4H meeting.  Planning for fair booth.  We have not attended a meeting in quite awhile, and Shayla was back to her old habits of covering her ears. :(


Tuesday/Wednesday:
therapy.

Thursday:

therapy.

Literature based unit study:  We're Going On a Bear Hunt retold by Michael Rosen

• Rhythm and expression.  The book was a variation of the song. 
• Music & Movement
• Discussed onomatopoeia - words that imitate sounds, like squish, or buzz.  Identified examples of onomatopoeia in the story.
• Sang and did movements to other verses/obstacles of the song/story.  Some were different verses that we had heard before and others we made up ourselves.
• Used teddy bears to demonstrate location/directional oppositional words (over-under, in-out, on-off, above-below)
• Discussed fantasy vs. reality or fiction vs. non-fiction stories and gave several examples of each.  Shayla decided that this story was fictional and I asked her to support her reasoning.  She made several good arguements, including the hunters did not have guns - in case they were attacked, and you would not take small children and babies hunting for bears.
• Art with watercolors.  We looked at the artwork in the story and decided it was an example of watercolor painting.  Shayla used her watercolor paints to paint a picture of a teddy bear.
• Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations has put together an awesome pack to go along with Going on a Bear Hunt, which is also a BFIR book. 

Chalk Games. 

• hopscotch (phys ed)
• Jumping contest.  Use chalk to mark how far each person can jump, then measure (math, measurements)
• Hit the Spot.  Draw a circle in the middle of the playing field.  Bounce a tennis ball in the circle.  Another player catches ball, or you can bounce it against a wall.  Player is out when they do not bounce ball in the spot. (movement, eye/hand co-ordination)

Friday:

• therapy

• Literature Based Unit Study:  Heckedy Peg by Audrey Wood. 
• Review contractions.  Identified contractions in the book and told what words made up the shortened word.  Discussed what letters were omitted when the word was shortened. 
• The names of the children in this story are the days of the week.  We sang Dr. Jean's Days of the Week song and practiced writing out the days of the week.  *Note to self:  Need to review capitalization rules.
• Comprehension:  How did the mother guess which foods the witch had turned her children into? 
• Character trait:  Obedience.  How would the story have changed if the children would have obeyed their mother?
• I made up an awesome worksheet for this.  I used Google image to make the foods the children asked the mother to get and the foods the children were turned into.  She was going to cut them out and glue them on a paper.  In between, she would write the name of the child (Sunday, Monday, etc) BUT, my printer was giving me issues and when I was working on those, my computer restarted and all my hard work was GONE!  UGH!

(language, music, writing, reading comprehension, character training)

Geography/Social Studies:

 

Attended Morgan's first football game of the season.  I plan on making it to more games this year since she is a senior.  :/

She starts off by cheering the pre-game and first half of the game!

Then at half-time, she switches up to march in the marching band.  Yes, the picture is blurry, but she's always on the move!

In the end, our team lost, but we had great time!

Saturday: 

Geography/Social Studies:  We received our first postcard from photocrossing.  It came from Dresden, Germany.  We also received an email that Shayla's second postcard had been received to it's destination in Russia.