Seventh Grade with Agent H

Agent H's seventh grade curriculum was a bit of this and that.

We switched him from Teaching Textbooks math to Life of Fred math this year. We liked Teaching Textbooks but I had a hunch Agent H's learning style leaned towards LofF and after a year of it I think I was right. I had him get used to the LofF style by doing an Intermediate level that was a little young for him. Next he did the Fractions and Decimal & Percents books, then he started the Pre-Algebra books.  It was a lot of math.  He hasn't completed it all yet so we'll continue on through the summer months but I feel like it will keep him fresh for starting Algebra in the fall. He self-corrects and for every lesson that he gets less than one wrong on he gets to go to the SunRidge candy jar and dig out a few. I happily have had to refill it quite a few times.

I also used the free allinonehomeschool.com (more about it in this post) for his english, computer, reading material, science, Spanish. I was impressed with all of the assignments, really! They also do a nice job of breaking up the assignments with the occasional "thinking game".

Agent H has really enjoyed the history curriculum with Living Books Curriculum over the years so we decided to stick with them. History is his joy so he happily put his nose in the books and did mostly oral narrations for me.

He had such a busy year and handled it very well. Karate on Monday nights, Assistant Games Director for the Sparks at AWANA on Tuesdays, Middle School Ministry activities on Wednesday, our small group met on Thursdays, more karate on Saturday mornings, random social events. By the Lord's grace only is his introvert mama handling all this running around.

In the picture below I think he's giving me one of those "hammy" if-I-have-to-do-one-more-math-lesson-my-brain-will-burst looks.

He found a neat spot out in the woods behind us to build a little lean-to. He'll head out there with his knife and hatched and tinker around. His heart is leaning towards some type of military or police career. My mama's heart kinda quakes at the thought of the danger involved in those careers. Time to pray some more.

First & Fourth Grade with Agents L & E

We tried out a new curriculum this year. It's called Allinonehomeschool.com. It was created by a missionary mom and it's free.  Their website is set up so that you pick what year/level your student is on for basic subjects (math, language arts, computer, etc) and then you pick what level history/science combination you want to do. I had Agent E and L do their respective grades and then we joined together and did Level One history/science together.

It worked pretty slick. My goal for the year was for the kids to gain another level of independence. I used an application called Evernote to create them daily school to-do lists. The application allowed me cut and paste text from the allinone website directly into their online to-do list. They would simply click on the links in their to-do list and go read about their language art lesson and do an online game that reinforced the concept. I like the concept a lot but ran into enough of problems with Evernote that for next year we're switching to Google Docs.

Along with a lot more computer access came a lot more online security measures. It was a necessary hassle to go look at each new website that a lesson was at and approve them so the kids could have access. Again, it was a free curriculum.  It was worth the hassle.

Agent E still used Teaching Textbooks for math and Agent L used Life of Fred.

Preschool with Shortcake

For preschool we followed along with the free Getting Ready 1 schedule that Allinonehomeschool.com created. We added in some favorite activities from Heart of Dakota and joined her big brothers in some of their activities, but mainly she just did lots of playing and helping mom.

Service Projects

Agent H's curriculum inspired us to seek out service projects this year.  We have found a couple of ways to pursue this . . .

1.) Head to church and help out with organizational projects in the children's area
2.) Make a list of people to pray for
3.) Make a batch of bars to put in the freezer at church to be used for those in need
4.) Send an encouraging card to someone

I have a few other ideas in mind:

An idea I picked up from a friend is this one about writing letters to those who have been jailed for their faith in other countries through Prisoner Alert.

And then there's working with these local missionaries and friends at cru.

I can't believe we haven't made it to Feed My Starving Children yet this year, going to need to make that happen.

Project Life - Week 8

This week's photo assignment was "everyday adventure".

I'm a homebody to the core and thankfully my kids don't seem to mind so most of our adventures take place at home in the simple things.  Here is an everyday kind of occurrence.  Agent L was happy to have his big brother (Agent H) join him for a few minutes of playing cars and dog-fighting airplanes.  Agent E (the knight/Union soldier in the background) was doing his math.  Have I blogged about how much we love our math program this year?  I could write them a love letter for how they have transformed math time at our house.  Thank you Teaching Textbooks!

Project Fair 2013

Time for the project fair at our homeschool co-op.   I love these things and then I love when they are over!

Agent H's project focused on the life of a Civil War soldier.  He is such a history lover and he just reads and reads and gushes everything he has learned.  I think he gets it from EH's dad. :)






Notice the Lego soldiers with horse and cart (teeny tiny on the table there)?  Everything in life is better with Legos.  We made some hard tack to serve and put out a sign warning about possible broken teeth if they chewed it.  It's supposed to be good for something like five years!

Agent E made a book about eco-systems as we read through his science curriculum.  He wrote the book as if he and Agent H were traveling and so there are lots of great pictures of him running away from a volcano erruption, his brother pulling him out of quicksand, having tea and toast in the desert.  

I am so proud of their hard work!

2012-13 Curriculum

Okay . . . here goes another year of this adventure called home education (and a boring text only post - I'm so out of the blogging sadle)!  This year we'll have a 4th grader (Agent H), a first grader (Agent E), a preschooler (The General), and Shortcake who will again be along for the ride with a few tot activities.

I searched the web for reviews on the curriculum we're using this year and couldn't find any first-hand users.  I was so intrigued by it I went out on a limb and bought it anyway.  The name of the company is Living Books Curriculum.  It's a Charlotte Mason based curriculum.

4th Grade
Bible: The Story of God for Kids, recommended by Living Books Curriculum

History: The Story of the Ancient World from Living Books Curriculum.  We are starting with the grade one simply because that puts us at the beginning of World history.  I will be supplementing his study with independent reading.  Our first independent read is Adam and His Kin by Ruth Beechick.  We'll also use this book for narration.

Science: Answers in Genesis, God's Design for Heaven & Earth and weekly nature studies

Dictation (in leu of a spelling program): We'll be using Agent H's AWANA handbook

Math: This will be our first year using Horizons

Read Aloud: The Snow Treasure, some of the books from The Chronicles of Narnia

Extras: As listed below under first grade

1st Grade: Living Books Curriculum, Grade One

Bible: The Story of God for Kids, recommended by Living Books Curriculum

History: The Story of the Ancient World from Living Books Curriculum (LB Curriculum), grade one of course.  I've been pre-reading this and I LOVE it!
AND
American History, here is the list of books.
Geography:  See the books here.

Science: An assortment of living books that study life, earth, heath and physical science. See here for a list of the books.

Reading: We are using Hooked on Phonics.  The LB Curriculum does include a program but we're just going to stick with what has been working for us.

The LB Curriculum also includes poetry, art, and music appreciation, the same read alouds I listed for Agent H above plus a few others.

Penmanship: This is new grounds for us as well.  We have used Handwriting without Tears in the past but we're switching to the LB Curriculum recommended Italics program.

Math: Horizons

Storytelling (narration): Aesop's Fables

Nature Study: Weekly nature walks with the Handbook of Nature Study in hand.


Preschool
The General and I will be doing mix of LetteroftheWeek.com, Little Hands to Heaven by Heart of Dakota, and Totally Tot's ABC program.

This was our first week of school.  Yes I know everyone gasps at our early start but we really needed to start.  There is a certain amount of peace that the school schedule brings and we have been out since May so we've had quite a nice break already.

I'm going to try Charlotte Mason's recommendation to keep lessons to 15 minutes.  After just one week of school our experience has been that we are able to complete our lessons in the morning - a big change from last year.  But I admit that we have just one week done for this school year and time will tell if that lasts.

Happy studies!

Expedition Earth: Our Final Review

It's our final geography review for the year - it really is!!

Back in the very beginning we made paper mache earths.  This is what ours turned out like . . . opps!  The picture below is what it was supposed to look like.  Our friends brought theirs along and kindly made it into a pinata!  Of course someone needs to run off with "the world of loot"!  He is soo his father's son.

Then the kids enjoyed their last game of Jeapordy - I was pleasantly surprised with what they all remembered! Whew, I'm going to pat myself on the back a tiny bit and breath a sigh of relief.
















Then we ate lunch and for dessert we had these fantastic world cupcakes that our friends brought.  Seriously KS, they turned out so cute!  Can you believe they left the cake for us too? YUM!

Expedition Earth: Animal Study

With each new country we studied six new animals and then posted them on our animal classification door.  The mammal kingdom outnumbered the rest by a land-slide.

Expedition Earth: Australia

Here we come Australia! Thank you Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!

Agent H especially requested that we save Australia for last because it's his faaaavorite!  So I was happy to oblige.  

Here are our highlights:

We made two types of boomerangs - the origami version actually worked!
Studied the Great Barrier Reef
Made sponge paintings of reefs
We sang "It's designed to do . . ." over and over and over.
Watched a light show and tour of the Sydney Opera House
Studied Ayers Rock
Learned about their super cool plastic money
Practiced our "Aussie" talk

Links to all the above are on my Pinterest board for Australia.

Expedition Earth: New Zealand

Here we come New Zealand! Thank you Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!

The Oceania's were lots of fun!  Here are the highlights from New Zealand:

We ate kiwi (hehe!)
Watched on old cartoon that came on each night when New Zealand's television broadcasting would shut down for the night
Learned about their tribal dance and saw their soccor team perform the dance.
Made whizzer crafts
Read fun facts
Studied the animals
Looked at the dreamy landscape and talked about hobbits

Here is a link to my Pinterest board for New Zealand.

Expedition Earth: Egypt

Here we come Egypt! Thank you Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!

This was our last stop in Africa.  Only one continent to go after Africa folks - I've got to say I'm ready!

As you can see The General was really concentrating on his heiroglyphic rocks!

We made a nice little village of oragami pyramids too!

Since cats are a very important part of Egyptian culture I had to include this photo of Agent H's Mr. Kitty with our creations.

Oh these headdresses were FUN to make!

We also did the apple mummification project.  Eight slices of apples (equal size) burried in specific mixtures to see which one would be best preserved.   

Here is a link to my Pinterst board for Egypt.

Expedition Earth: Nigeria

Here we come Nigeria! Thank you Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!


All I can say is be sure that your kids are ready for some quicksand talk.  This topic turned out to be a bit too scary for my six year old.  Poor guy had dreams our whole house was submerged in quicksand for a couple of weeks.  Of course it all originated from this YouTube video (I fast forwarded part of it for modesty's sake).


We made homemade quicksand - The General played with the left-overs for an hour plus! We scrapped a fork across the top, submerged army guys, and just got messy.

We also prayed, read stories, and played mancala.   Here is an online link to coolmathgames.com's mancala. 


Here is a link to my Pinterest board for Nigeria.

Expedition Earth: Morocco

Here we come Morocco! Thank you Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!


We had some fun videos to watch with this country:
The harvesting of saffron
Cactus farming
AND the Moroccan Mall (the largest mall in Africa). Being from Minnesota home of the Mall of America we HAD to see that one. 


The boys had fun swishing around the Ilukeres fly whisks we made.

Here is a link to my Pinterest board for Morocco.

Expedition Earth: Kenya

Here we come Kenya! Thank you Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!


I have a friend who years ago suggested I try making toasted wheat berries for a snack.  I never could remember just how to make them until I found the recipe in our The kids' Multicultural Cookbook.  Agent H and I munched on them all day.  This time we used hard wheat berries.  Next time I hope to make them with soft wheat berries in hopes that they won't be quite so hard to chew!  We did find out that they have strong gums and teeth as a result of chewing on these.  No wonder!  (I have to mention that this was actually an Ethiopian snack that we snuck in during our Kenya week.)


We made fabric baskets, read a book about Mama Miti, watched a YouTube about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro (okay yes this is actually located in Tanzania).

Here is the link to my Pinterest board for Kenya.

Expedition Earth: South Africa

Here we come South Africa! Thank you Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!


We started out the contintent of Africa with our first salt dough map.

Some of our highlights from Africa are:

Tugela Falls

Western Deep, the deepest mine in the world

The Cullian I, the World's largest diamond

Studying Africa's five biggest animals: rhino, lions, leopards, elephant, buffalo

and of course . . . the African penguins!

Here is a link to my Pinterest board for South Africa.

Human Body: Tongue

The bowls held lemon juice, sugar water, cocoa powder, and salt water.  A few Q-tips dipped in the bowls and strategically placed on our tongues brought some interesting facial expressions.

Human Body: Nerve study

We used trains to study how messages are sent throughout the body. Up and down the tracks the messages went to and from the "brain".

I massaged the boys' feet since there are a large amount of nerves in them.  We looked at a chart I found on Pinterest (here) that showed what parts of the body are effected if you rub a certain part on your foot.  They wanted to return the favor . . . :).  I promise my feet didn't smell, no matter what Agent H's face is saying.

HArtS Fair 2011-12

Our co-op hosts a HArtS fair each year.  It's a project fair for history, art, and science.  This year Agent H (3rd grade) studied the Mexican American War (we have found that he has a love for studying wars and military strategies) and Agent E (K) studied one of his favorite subjects: Cheese!

Agent H used this ebook from CurrClick and read lots of library books.  His board was cut into the shape of the Alamo - he did a great job!

Here's Agent E's board and a plate of the cheese we made.  Here is a photo show of how we did it . . . please humor the many photos.   I was so excited we actually made cheese - and it tasted SO good!  We used the recipe at this blog: Food Wishes.