P and Q

We were back to our old routine on the week of January 7th.  We picked up where we left off before Christmas with our homeschooling.  We started each morning with a walk around the lake.  Once we got into the school room we had circle time, which included new winter-themed songs and verses, penny whistle lesson, and French lesson.  On Monday, we also reviewed all Johanna had learned so far.  After the review, I introduced her to the letter P by telling her the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale,  The Princess and the Pea.

After I read the story, we drew a picture in our lesson books.  Johanna also drew the letter P with her block crayons.

 Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing 

On Tuesday, we played a color game to help review the colors and numbers in French.  They each had a Lego person, um, alien, they created which they used for their markers.

We also reviewed the letter P using the wall card and poem from the LNMOP Manual, and then Johanna re-told me The Princess and the Pea. Afterward, I wrote a summary in her lesson book.

We also made some P penguins.  Grant may be jealous when he sees these, as penguins are his favorite animal.(I found these fun letter activities on No Time for Flashcards and Totally Tots.  We didn't do them with the letters before now, so we may go back and do the  letters we have already covered as a review later in the year).

Johanna's Penguin

Julia's Penguin

On Wednesday, I introduced Johanna to the letter Q by telling her the Grimm's Fairytale, The Queen Bee.

 

After I was done telling her the story, she wrote out the letter Q with block crayons, and we drew a picture from the story in our lesson books.  
 

Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing

Julia also wanted to draw a bee along with us, so here is hers.

On Thursday, Johanna re-told me the story, and then I wrote a summary in her lesson book. 

Once we were done with that, the girls did a fun Q activity.  While I am not "officially" teaching Julia the letters, there is no way she would let Johanna do these fun letter crafts without her!  Plus, it is a good way for her to get familiar with the letters.
 

They had some friends watching them.

Johanna's Q

Julia's Q

Next week we will finish the consonants with X,Y and Z.

Cain's Sons, Enoch and Some Halloween Fun

As always, we started off the days of our school week with some seasonal songs and verses for the girls, French lessons for all, and math review, spelling, penny whistle lessons and exercises from "The Extra Lesson" book for Grant. Last week I began teaching the French words for face, ears, nose, eyes, and mouth to the kids, and asked them to touch all those different parts of the face. (In French, of course!)

On Monday, I introduced the form drawing for the week and read Grant many short stories about the three sons of Cain.  The story I decided to draw on the chalkboard, and then have Grant and I draw in our lesson books was about Jubal playing music for the animals.

After I read the story, Grant and I drew a picture in our lesson books. We continue to use only our red, blue and yellow block crayons to draw our pictures.

Mom's Picture

Grant's Picture

I also read the kids this book which is fun to read around Halloween:

Everyone was feeling a little under the weather on Tuesday, so I kept it pretty light.  Grant and I reviewed some math and worked on some spelling, then the kids painted some jack-o-lantern lanterns.

On Wednesday, Grant told me the story of Jubal playing for the animals, and then we summarized the story together and Grant copied the summary into his lesson book.

Grant also enjoyed doing some Star Wars Mad Libs.

We also did another Family Fun magazine Halloween activity and made some spiders out of wire and dimensional fabric paint. 

Once we were done with the spiders, Grant and I drew spider webs on some of our windows using puffy fabric paint. 

I set Grant loose with a bottle of the black paint, and let's just say he embellished a few all of his window web drawings.

Once the spiders and the webs were dry, we stuck the spiders to the windows around the webs. 

The nice part is when Halloween is over, they will all peel right off.

On Thursday, I read Grant another handful of short stories.  These stories were about the rise of evil in the hearts of men as they began to forget about God after the death of Seth, who was a very prominent and important priest.  God decided to send Enoch to be born on earth to once again teach men about God and goodness.

The picture I chose for us to draw comes from the story of the birth of Enoch.

Mom's Picture

Grant's Picture

Afterward, I read the kids a fun Halloween story about a little hobgoblin who liked to play tricks on people until they carved jack-o-lanterns to scare him away. The story came from this book:

After I read the story, Grant chose to draw a picture from it.

Grant also drew the form drawing for the week into his book.

On Friday, Grant and I worked together to create a summary for the stories about Enoch.  When we were done he copied it into his lesson book.

On Friday evening, we took the kids to their first "trunk-or-treat" with Grant's Hapkido school. They had hot dogs, apple cider, a bonfire for roasting marshmallows, and lots of trunks for trunk-or-treating.  Our vampire, princess and witch had a blast!

King Arthur - Week 2

We started off Monday morning with Grant's paige training, aka, The Games of Camelot.  We began training in the batting cage where we used baseballs as "bags of poison" and the pitching net as the mouth of a dragon.  The goal, of course, was to get the poison into the dragon's mouth, lest you loose your sword in battle. 

After that we used a hoola-hoop as a target for throwing our "spears" through.  The spears were 4-foot-long 1 inch dowels.  Grant also used his bow and arrow to shoot some arrows through the hoop.  I was taking a picture of him doing this when he let the arrow fly, and it hit me, coming full speed, right in the head.  Grant felt REALLY bad, and I told him next time just wait until I am not standing next to the target!

Next, we did some "jousting" with our dowels.  The goal was to knock the other person off first.  Each bout began with a bow and a good luck wish for the opponent.  Each bout ended with another bow, and a congratulations of success from the one who was knocked off.

Here I am jousting with Julia.  This is her "jousting face."

Once we had done that for awhile, I laid out two of the dowels and then moved them farther and farther apart while Grant, and Johanna (sort-of) jumped over them.

Once we were inside, Grant reviewed about ten more of the most common words in the English language by reading it, spelling it, and then spelling it again with his eyes closed.  After that we practiced the penny whistle, and I read Grant the story from here about Excalibur.

Afterward, we had a snack and then I wrote out some words relating to our morning paige training for Grant to copy. 

We finished up with Grant reading me a shortened version of the story of Excalibur which I found here.

On Tuesday, Dad was home in the morning, so he got to join in on the Paige training and did some sword fighting with Grant, as well as throwing some poison bags into the dragon's mouth.

In the school room, Grant spelled out some more of the 100 most common words and we played another noun/verb game.  This time one of us named a noun and the other named a verb about what it does.  We came up with some pretty funny combinations.  We also practiced the penny whistle.

I also set up another game inside where we used silks as stepping stones across a lake filled with magic spirits.  We started out with 7 silks, and then I kept taking one away after each trip across the lake until there was just one left. 

We also drew a picture in our lesson books.

Mom's Picture

Grant's Picture

On Wednesday, we started off the day outside with more paige training.  Once we were in the school room we reviewed our times tables songs, practiced the penny whistle, spelled out some more of the 100 most common words, and then I had Grant copy a poem about Excalibur.



Once again on Thursday, we started the morning with paige training and enjoyed the warm Spring morning.

Inside, Grant continued to read and spell out more of the most common words.

I also had Grant write each word from the spelling list three times on his chalkboard.

While Grant was working on this, the girl's were playing "Mommy and Baby".  Julia was pretending to be the baby, and Johanna was the mommy putting her to bed.

While she was laying there, Julia asked "Mommy" Johanna if she would sleep with her. Aahhh...

We also continued working on our coat-of-arms this week.  We took what we had done on paper to Grandpa Paul, and he cut the shape out of plywood.  When he got it back to our house, we decoupaged it onto the wood, and then began to decoupage the symbols we wanted in each section.  Here it is so far.  Once it is done I will explain what all the symbols and colors mean, and why we picked them.

We were also reading these books with the theme of gardens. 

(From this book we read the story of Peter Rabbit causing

 mischief in Mr. McGregor's Garden.)

And, we began planting in our own garden.  We planted some of our veggies seeds, including carrots, beets, and bush beans.  As well as, sprinkling some wild flower seed mixes on one of the hillsides by our pond. Also, Julia planted some sunflower seeds in a pot, Johanna planted some pink daisy seeds in her pot, and Grant decided to plant some watermelon seeds in his pot.

The color is returning all around us.  The lilacs, tulips, azaleas, and red buds are blooming, the hostas are shooting up, the ferns are unfurling, and green is returning to the surrounding woods. Soon the growing season will be in full swing, and the work in the garden will really begin!