Tolle Lege Christian Academy

Weekly Report-October 16

Here's this week's wrap up!  :-)

For our World History studies, we have been listening to Story of the World Volume 2 while we travel to violin lessons and as we travel to field trips and such.  We are up to Chapter 8, The Great Dynasties of China.  We had some good discussions about the spread of religion as went through the chapters on India.

For our American History studies, we finished up reading about the beginning of European exploration of the "New World".  We have been reading selections from This Country of Ours and America First; and we also read The Discovery of the Americas.

In Math, we finished up chapter 9 in Math U See, and JB started working in her "October Problem Solving" book.  I am going to try to add more variety into our math studies as JB continues to cement all of the basic facts.  She finished up week 9 in her Daily Math book.

 

 

 

In Language Arts we are focusing on nouns and have begun making notebook pages.  We started a grammar lapbook last year, but we are reviewing with notebook pages as we read through the Ruth Heller books.  This week we read Merry-Go-Round:  A Book About Nouns.

 

 

We started two new read alouds: Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Ben and Me:  An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin by His Good Mouse Amos by Robert Lawson.  JB is currently reading Little House on Rocky Ridge by Roger Lea McBride on her own  (She loves all things "Little House"). 

We are going to begin to focus on some of my favorite picture book authors and this week we started reading books by Patricia Polacco.  We read and enjoyed Babushka's Doll and When Lightning Comes in a Jar.

I am also excited to report that JB did an oral narration of a chapter from Fifty Famous People without one bit of hesitation!

JB has been doing a lot of writing in her free time lately.  She is working on one book called Fairyland and another called Miriam Marigold.  She has also taken great delight in starting a journal/diary for herself and has made several entries this week.  Here is an excerpt from Fairyland.

 

JB also finished an art project inspired by a post at Art Projects for Kids.  She really enjoyed the process of using the tissue paper to stain the paper---though some of our tissue paper didn't really bleed like it was supposed to!  I'll have to see if I can find another brand for future use.

 

She continues to enjoy dance and violin lessons and is learning her second variation of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star on the violin. 

And there you have a sampling of what we've been up to this week! 
:-)

What We've Been Up To

Since I have fallen behind on "weekly" reports, here is a collection of some photos showing a few of the things JB has been up to in recent weeks.  

JB had a lot of fun making a delicious stuffed shells dish!  She did everything on her own!

 

We've gone on two great field trips!  One to our local art museum:

 

And one to a local living history museum:

JB really enjoyed digging and sifting for artifacts in the archaeological dig area!

 

She started violin lessons (stay tuned....if I can figure out how to record and upload her first song, we'll be sharing that soon....)

 

And we had our first art class.  I am leading a series of art classes using Mary Ann Kohl's book Discovering Great American Artists.  Can you guess the first artist we studied?  (Hint:  some people call his style "action painting".  :-)  )

 

The final painting:

 

Until next time...

 

Weekly Report-August 28

What a great week we've had!  JB was so enthused to start her history and astronomy study this week.  I have not felt settled with history and science plans until now, but thankfully Story of the World 2 and Exploring Creation with Astronomy have already brought much delight and learning from the first pages.  I think they'll be "keepers".  I think I get a little bogged down with all the choices out there, but having these books as our main study from which we can jump off into further interests will help us (ME) focus!  LOL   We will continue reading America First for our American history study also.

I decided to add in Writing with Ease Level 2 this week.  We will continue to use the Classical Writing Primer, but since JB and narration are a little like oil and water right now (when asked specifically to narrate....she can tell up a storm when not asked  ;-) ) I thought the WWE approach of summarizing might actually help her comfort level with narration overall.  Short and to the point.  :-)

We're plugging along in our other subjects, so I thought I'd just share a few pictures from our week.

If there is singing involved, JB likes to be behind the book.  :-)

 

We are learning the hymn, Take My Life, and Let It Be.

 

Reviewing the song in Chapter 12.

 

 

A history narration.  She wanted to find an especially fierce looking barbarian online.

She asked to color something else for history (she had a lot of fun coloring the flying carpet picture from the SOTW workbook), so she picked this coloring page we found  here.  And yes, there is PINK on that helmet, because "if I were a queen, all my soldiers would have a little pink on their helmet somewhere."  :-)

We went on our first group field trip of the year this week as well.  It was a behind the scenes tour at an animatronics factory/studio.  Cool stuff!  :-)

 

Great Art Lessons Site

I know some of you read through email or a feed reader, so you might not actually see my side bars very often.  Just wanted to let you know that I discovered another really great art lessons site:

Deep Space Sparkle Art Lessons

The lessons look like so much fun, I'm tempted to try some for myself!  Creating art can be so relaxing.  Deep Space Sparkle joins with Art Projects for Kids as two of my favorite sites on the web!

Enjoy!

Speaking Of Math U See...

Steve Demme was one of the speakers at our convention this summer, and I so enjoyed his talks that I went to!  I'm not sure how I missed the link from the Math U See site to his family resources site (well, I have a sneaking suspicion that it was my nose to the grindstone watching of demo videos and reading about the curriculum....LOL)------but many of his regular talks are online at his family site and he will be adding more resources in time.  His encouragement to families in general and to homeschoolers is heartfelt and biblically based.  It is so good to hear from those who have gone before and what they have learned.  His talk on being a disciple and training disciples was one of my favorite at convention.

Weekly Report-July 31

This week I was a little ambitious in my planning for what we could accomplish, but we had a wonderful week, nonetheless!  :-)  I am trying a different idea for organizing/planning for the week; and if it seems to be one that will stick, I"ll share it here soon.

Here is the summary of the week:

Math-
JB actually asked to do more math this week!  I was so proud of her independent work!  Math U See is just her style!  We are almost finished with  Lesson 7 in the Alpha book and are taking things in stride. I am hoping that she will really master all of her facts as we work through this book, so we are not in a great rush to finish.  I was able to purchase the Beta book at our convention, so we'll have that ready and waiting for later in the year. 

We are on week 5 in the Second Grade Daily Math book.  I really recommend this book series for anyone wanting to cover more traditionally sequenced math concepts in short daily practice.  For those who are required to take yearly standardized tests, but whose main math program may follow a slightly different sequence than government school math texts----the Daily Math series is an excellent resource!

Language Arts-
We have been reading Little House on the Prairie together.  JB is continuing to work through the Classical Writing Spring Primer, although at a much slower pace than the author has written.  There is just so much in this book, and since she also does other copywork and narration, etc. we are enjoying the Primer at our own pace.

Latin-
We are still working through Song School Latin and enjoying the songs and new vocabulary that we (yes, we!) are learning!  :-)  I planned for this to take more than a year, and I am still looking for what we will use when we finish SSL this year.

Natural History-
Oscar, Cat About Town by Herriot

Map Drill/Geography-
JB is working on learning all of the states this year.  She LOVES geography!  We are using Sonya Shafer's ideas for map drill, and I am completing a weekly map along with JB.  I have never done that well with geography, so I have areas to work on myself.  We also read the first three chapters of Paddle to the Sea.  (I really like this book, and I am excited to share it with JB!)

History-
We have been reading Viking Adventure and also began reading Leif the Lucky this week.  I am going to use the Beautiful Feet guide and suggestions for the notebook pages as our "spine" study of sorts as we study early American history this year.

Logic, Picture Study and Sewing rounded out JB's week this week.  She is excited to begin work on her second sewing project soon!

Why Study Nature?

This post written by Jimmie is one of my favorites about why we should focus on nature study, and I just wanted to share it with those who read here. (So be sure to click over and read it.  ;-) )

Also, Barb posted her second ebook, and it is lovely!

It has been so hot lately, that we haven't done much outside other than swim, but we have been enjoying the beauty in our own backyard and will start our nature journals soon.

Praise the LORD.
       Praise the LORD from the heavens,
       praise him in the heights above.

Praise him, all his angels,
       praise him, all his heavenly hosts.

Praise him, sun and moon,
       praise him, all you shining stars.

Praise him, you highest heavens
       and you waters above the skies.

 Let them praise the name of the LORD,
       for he commanded and they were created.

He set them in place for ever and ever;
       he gave a decree that will never pass away.

Praise the LORD from the earth,
       you great sea creatures and all ocean depths,
       lightning and hail, snow and clouds,
       stormy winds that do his bidding,
       you mountains and all hills,
       fruit trees and all cedars,
       wild animals and all cattle,
       small creatures and flying birds,
       kings of the earth and all nations,
       you princes and all rulers on earth,
       young men and maidens,
       old men and children.

 Let them praise the name of the LORD,
       for his name alone is exalted;
       his splendor is above the earth and the heavens.

From Psalm 148

 

Sew Teach Me

Sew Teach Me is one of this year's summer convention finds!  JB has been wanting to learn to sew and she just completed her first project from this curriculum!  The first three projects are hand sewing and then she will begin to learn how to use a sewing machine, and she is so excited (as am I  :-)  )!

This first project is a "Twig Treasure Wall Hanging".  We altered the directions a bit by using a dowel instead of a twig, and then JB added three of her treasures from two special friends (the beaded animals at the top and bottom and a bracelet that she can slip in and out of the stitching to wear).  We found some wooden beads and embellishments in one of our craft boxes that sparked her imagination. We recently had some crape myrtle trees planted in our yard, so she made a crape myrtle tree with the brown, pink and green beads.  She then cut out some paper hearts to finish everything off.  I think it turned out lovely.

Artist Study

Some general sources for artist study:

Great Artists Series by Jennie Ellis Keysor

• Volume 1
  http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=keysor&book=artists1&story=_contents
• Volume 2
  http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=keysor&book=artists2&story=_contents
• Volume 3
  http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=keysor&book=artists3&story=_contents
• Volume 4
  http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=keysor&book=artists4&story=_contents
• Volume 5
  http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=keysor&book=artists5&story=_contents

Narration

One of my goals for this year is to have JB narrate (Charlotte Mason (CM) style) from at least one subject each day.  For some reason, she does not seem to enjoy narrating orally.  However, she asked if she could do a written narration for one exercise this week (a narration of the first chapter of The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse by Thornton Burgess), and it was so nice!  Much more expressive and detailed than the verbal narrations that she has done.  :-)  Being the proud mamma, I just thought I'd share.  I'm going to type it up exactly as she wrote it----spelling, capitalization and punctuation are hers.  :-)  The only thing I've changed is typing JB where she actually wrote her first and last name.  :-)

Danny Meadow Mouse is Worried
Narrated by JB age 7

Danny Meadow Mouse was sitting on his doorstep thinking and thinking.  But of course he was only thinking because he was worried.  He was worried because his tail was so short!  The reason he was worrieing about that was becasue---well nobody knows not even Danny himself.  But I can tell you somthing.  When he had met his cousin Whitefoot the day before Danny saw how elegantly he was dressed.  And Danny thought the most wonderful thing about him was his long slim tail.  And since then he was jealous about that long tail couisn Whitefoot had and the short tail he had himself.

At the bottom of her composition she drew a quick sketch of Danny. 

Since this chapter and narration was a part of her Classical Writing Primer (Spring) work, she has already asked when she can do another from that book.  :-)  We'll continue to work on verbal narrations, but I will also allow her to write anything by request (though this is not a requirement of CM at her age).