Summary Saturday: Floating Needles, Shining Sun, and Paper Pizza

Chipette

Math: We did a chapter out of our Math in Focus book this week and the corresponding workbook pages. I also let Chipette take two of the upcoming chapter tests because I really thought she could pass the tests without doing the work. I was right; she made 100% on both. That’s two chapters out of the book we get to skip! Yipee!

Language Arts: We are still working our way through Sentence Island, Practice Island, Music of the Hemispheres, and Building Language. I can’t believe how quickly Chipette is able to find all the parts of speech and parts of a sentence now. It was such a struggle at the beginning of the year I was afraid I’d made a mistake using Island level for 3^rd grade, but it’s been the perfect fit.

Our most exciting news is about writing. We are using Classical Academic Press’ new writing program, Writing and Rhetoric: Fable. It has been exactly what we needed for writing. While I loved Writing with Ease and the skills it was teaching Chipette through narration, copywork, and dictation, she is such a natural writer that she was wanting more and a chance to really work on some creative writing. Writing and Rhetoric: Fable is the perfect blend of a classical writing program like Writing with Ease, but with a fun creative writing flair thrown into the mix. Perfect for kids like Chipette who enjoy writing, especially creative writing.

Here is Chipette’s rewrite of the fable The Mouse and The Lion. 

Her instructions were to chose an animal smaller than a mouse and write the story from the experience of the smaller animal helping the mouse.

  

Literature: We finished Unit 8 in K12’s Third Grade Literature program. This unit was all about Greek mythology. A great warm up for our 4^th grade study of ancient Greece.

Read Aloud: We finished A Long Walk to Water this week. It was such a wonderful story! Next up we are reading Children of the Longhouse to go along with our study of the Mohawk and Iroquois nations.

Independent Reading: Chipette finished The Secret School and is starting Freckle Juice this week.

Natives and Nations: I caved in to the girls’ demands, reworked our weekly schedule, and started back our world geography studies by finishing up Kenya and starting South Africa this week. Here are the completed Kenya notebooking pages:

For her own personal study Chipette and I are studying Native Americans two days a week. This week we focused on the Chippewa or Ojibwa people who lived in the forests around the Great Lakes area.  Here are our completed Chippewa notebooking pages:

Did you know that almost all of the wild rice that is harvested in the United States is still harvested by the Chippewa people and in almost exactly the same method that their ancestors have used for hundreds of years? Well now you do!

Science: Currently Chipette is doing two science programs, Sassafras Zoology and Apologia’s Flying Creatures, but this will be changing soon since she is only one chapter away from finishing Apologia. This week we did an experiment to see how a water strider was able to walk on water by making a needle float.

In Sassafras we have gotten WAY behind. Since I tied it to our world geography studies when we stopped world geography, we stopped Sassafras. Unacceptable according to Chipette since she LOVES Sassafras! This week we finished chapter two about lions and cheetahs and next week we’re moving on to chapter three. 

  

Magpie

Math: She did pages 123-136 in Singapore Essentials A and pages S-1, S-2, S-3, and S-4 in Miquon Orange.

Phonics:  This week she completed three lessons in Logic of English Foundations A and two lessons in Reading Made Easy. She also finished Book of Get Ready for the Code. She starts Explode the Code Book 1 this next week and is SUPER excited!

Literature: Our book study this week was The Three Pigs by David Wiesner. I had never read this one before and it was such a FUN book! Definitely put this one on your list for your next library stop. I even caught Chipette reading it on the sly! Here’s Magpie doing a piggy math activity:

I’m still trying to find a chapter book that will grab Magpie’s attention enough that she doesn’t need a picture on every page. This week I’m checking out Gooney Bird Greene by Lois Lowry to give that one a shot.

Science: This week for our Bernstein Bears’ science program, we studied the Sun. We learned some basic facts about the sun, and then we talked about how the sun makes daytime and nighttime, our years, and our seasons. Lots of work with the flashlight and our globe! Magpie works hard on her notebook pages and here are some that she completed this week:

Language Arts: I’m branching out into something different for Magpie this year for first grade. We are using Language Lessons Through Literature Level 1. I had never heard of this curriculum until a couple of weeks ago, but it was exactly what I wanted for Magpie, a very gentle introduction to language arts using copy work, picture study, poetry memorization, and fables. This level focuses on writing mechanics, and the next level for second grade focuses on parts of speech. Our first week to use it was this past week and she loved it! So far I’m pleased with my purchase as well.

Monkey

I try not to be one of those mothers who thinks that everything their little darlings do is soooo advanced, but I have to say that Monkey’s fine motor skills for a three year old boy are AMAZING! Check out this pizza and toppings that he cut out and glued while I was doing school with Magpie.

He wanted something to do so I gave him a page out of this old cut and paste book. When I looked over he was cutting like a champ, so I told him I’d pick up a new cut and paste book for him. It was actually really cute.

Monkey: I school too, Mommy?

Me: Sure, I’ll buy you some cut and paste books like this and you can do those.

Monkey: You be my teacher?

Me: Of course.

Monkey: *Huge hug* Dank you, Mommy!

So that’s a major selfish reason that I homeschool, it doesn’t get better than that!

Lots of ciphering, reading, and writing planned for the upcoming week in the tree house,

Chelli

Summary Saturday: Natives, Storms, and Veggies

It’s been a loooonnnngggg time since I’ve written up our week in review {since March!}. Not because we haven’t been schooling, but because 1) I have no camera other than the one on my phone and 2) I have gotten out of the habit of taking pictures while we are schooling. Later I’ll think, “Ugh! I should have taken a picture of that!”

Chipette

Math: We started Beast Academy 3A this week. I schedule it between our chapters in Math in Focus. Chipette really loves this math program. I was worried about her reaction to it because the books purposefully try to make you think about the answer and fail a few times before getting it right. Chipette generally does not do well with failure or having to work for an answer, but she enjoyed this a lot. I’ll be honest: I had to look in the back at the answer key for almost every problem. In my defense, though, it starts out with geometry which is my weakest math area. She (we!) completed pages 7-23 in the workbook and read pages 12-33 in the textbook.

Language Arts: So our language arts love this year has been Michael Clay Thompson Language Arts. We are using the Island level this year. It has been a fun and challenging program that has made Chipette a grammar guru. This week she completed five sentences from Practice Island. She does four-level analysis on these sentences which is basically like diagramming a sentence without diagramming. Here is a picture of one of her completed sentences:

  

We also read from Sentence Island (she loves Mud!) pages 31-51 and from Music of the Hemispheres (poetry book) pages 98-105. In writing, we did four lessons in Writing with Ease 3. In spelling, she took a level test and passed, then completed two and a half more levels.

Literature: We finished Unit 6 in K12’s Third Grade Literature program (the dark horse of our lineup this year) and started Unit 7. Both of us love this literature program so much. It’s fabulous!

Read Aloud: I finished reading Journey to Jo’burg and I started A Long Walk to Water. These coordinate with our World Geography studies that we stopped doing for right now. I want to finish up one subject before we pick those up again. Anyway, we are supposed to be studying Africa right now, so that’s why these are our books for now.

Independent Reading: Chipette finished reading Henry and Ribsy and started reading The Secret School.

The New Stuff: To finish out our school year, I wanted to do a Native American study with Chipette before we jump into the colonial period of American history next year. We won’t start a new school year until the calendar year, so that gives us plenty of time to dive into some of the major tribes. This first week we have studied the Inuit and also a little of history of how people came to be on the North American continent. We also read a bit about the mound builders of the central United States as well. Here’s Chipette’s completed notebook pages:

  

Magpie

Math: We are working our way through Singapore Essentials A at a pretty fast clip since most of it is review for Magpie. This week she did pages 103-122. Once we get to Book B, I will slow things down quite a bit. Here is a picture of her working on making patterns using our linking cube set:

Magpie’s favorite math is working in her Miquon Orange book using Cuisenaire rods which is why she calls it “block math”. We use Miquon here and there. I usually do a lesson or two with her after we’ve done a unit of Singapore Essentials. Here is Magpie figuring out an answer for Miquon using the rods:

She did pages A-13 and A14 this week.

Phonics: Magpie’s reading is coming along very nicely. She has made a seamless transition from letter sounds to cvc words and now to consonant blends. This week she completed three lessons in Logic of English Foundations A and two lessons in Reading Made Easy. These programs have two very different approaches to teaching reading, but I like both of them for different reasons. We alternate a different program each day. By far, my workbook loving girls favorite phonics program is the one she does on her own: Explode the Code. I use these workbooks as a refresher course over what we’ve already covered in our other phonics programs. This week Magpie did pages 63-79 in Explode the Code C.

Literature: Our book study this week was One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss. We focused a lot on rhyming words, including made up rhymes. At the end of the week I let Magpie design her very own Dr. Seuss character and then she had to tell me about it, what it ate, where it lived, etc. Very fun and probably my favorite childhood book!

Science: I was using Elemental Science’s Exploring Science with Magpie, but I couldn’t do it anymore. There was something about that program that didn’t jive with what I wanted for her. While she enjoyed it, I dreaded teaching it. So much so, that I would skip over it even though I had it written in our plans. Finally I broke down and bought The Berenstein Bears’ Big Book of Science and Nature while I had a free trial of Amazon Prime. Once I had it in my hands I knew that this was what I wanted to use for her science, so I made out a lesson plan and started making notebooking pages to go along with the book. I supplement the topics with science videos (Magic School Bus is a big hit!) and both fiction and non-fiction books. This week we studied summer, thunder, lightning, and storms. Here are Magpie’s completed homemade notebook pages:

The New Stuff: I picked up some Veggietales lapbooks for Magpie that were marked down super cheap. We finished up our first one this week on Sweetpea Beauty. We talked about what true beauty is and how that’s what is most important to God. I love the way Magpie’s lapbook turned out:

And she liked watching Veggietales for school!

That was our week in a nutshell.  

Be sure and stop by this week as the iHomeschool Network’s “Not” Back-to-School Blog Hop. My big experiment of going on my own using a very Charlotte Mason inspired curriculum line up will be revealed!

Assessing and adjusting in the tree house,

Chelli

Summary Saturday: Always Blogging Behind

I seem to always be behind on my blogging lately which really bugs me, but according to Preacher Man, “No one else cares, Chel,” which is definitely true.

Here is what The Tree Dwellers have been up to in the past month:

World Geography and Science

We’ve traveled to three countries since my last Summary Saturday, Italy, France, and the Netherlands. Two of these countries I’ve actually visited so we had fun looking through my photos and souvenirs.

While in Italy, we made Margherita Pizza from scratch after reading the book, Pizza for the Queen.

It was so delicious that it has become a new staple around our house at lunch time!

We also studied Galileo for science while we were in Italy. The girls had a great time replicating his experiments with falling objects.

They wanted me to tilt the chair so it would be like the real Leaning Tower of Pisa, but I declined.

Next we crossed the border into France where we enjoyed some delicious food…

Bacon and Cheese Quiche and Chocolate Truffles (which were so, so, so good!).

I had Miss Jane and Chipette make the Eiffel Tower out of toothpicks which they thought was really cool.

They are already planning a trip together to France one day. All I can say is prepare now Frenchmen!

After France we went to the Netherlands and painted Delft blue pictures of windmills.

Had some hagelslag, which is simply bread spread with butter and topped with chocolate sprinkles, but the Dutch ate this a lot for breakfast while I was there.

Chipette really loved my wooden shoes and once I told her that they are only worn outside and left by the door when you come in, then every time she went in the backyard she had to wear them until I finally took them away so they wouldn’t be destroyed. There is a fun story behind how I got those shoes and their history, but maybe another time.

My goal is get my lesson plans for these three countries up on the blog this week, so be sure and check back later.

Chipette

For some reason I took very few pictures of Chipette’s school these past few weeks, but she did have a lot of fun doing this assignment for Spanish.

She wrote a comic strip in Spanish using the greetings that we’ve learned so far using REAL Homeschool Spanish.

Magpie

The biggest news in Magpie’s life over the last month was the loss of her first tooth.

She was so excited and the Tooth Fairy was very generous!

Phonics: Magpie’s reading is really coming along. She can read CVC words pretty consistently which makes her happy. A large part of her phonics progression has been the fun games included in Logic of English Foundations.

For this game I taped the phonograms we’re working on to the door to the garage.

When I said a phonogram’s sounds, she threw a soft ball at the correct one.

The other game was very similar. I wrote some phonograms on our marker board, then moved it to the back porch. I gave Magpie a squirt bottle of water and she shot the phonogram with water when I called out a sound.

You could also do this with chalk on a sidewalk instead of a marker board.

We had a lot of fun with our literature studies as well. We finished up Good Night Moon and tried to do a sequencing activity where you put cards in order showing what you do to get ready for bed.

We had a little problem though. One card showed the bunny eating a carrot as a bedtime snack. Magpie realized very quickly that she doesn’t get a bedtime snack and there wasn’t a card for going to the bathroom. Of course using my awesome art skills, I drew a bunny on the potty so that Magpie could finish up her sequence.

Chipette and Monkey found the bunny on the potty very, very funny!

We also enjoyed our early spring weather by going outside and observing what animals and plants were in a circle of the front yard.

Monkey

Not to be left out Monkey enjoyed some school time with us as well, especially our Delft paintings.

I love the concentration on his face!

Another fun-filled month of learning and loving in the tree house,

Chelli

Summary Saturday: A Hop Across the Pond

This week we didn’t come close to completing the amount of work we did last week, mainly because we all got some bad allergy stuff happening on Thursday and a couple of play dates on Saturday. We usually use Saturday as our makeup day if we miss a day during the week. We still managed to get all of our world geography studies in and most of our basics.

World Geography and Science

We visited Great Britain this week and while we had a lot of fun, it seemed a little flat to me. I guess because I’ve studied British history quite a bit in college and since the US used to be a British colony there wasn’t as much difference between our country and Great Britain as say between Russia and the US, which we studied last week. Plus the amount of books on GB is astounding!!! We could have spent a month on it and barely touched the resources available.

We built Stonehenge out of Lego blocks.

We had a British tea party with scones, sandwiches, and cake.

And at the last minute I swapped out my planned science for a dinosaur dig since the first dinosaur bones were discovered in England and an Englishman invented the word “dinosaur” to describe these “terrible lizards”.

Of course I checked out lots of great British children’s literature to read including King Arthur and Robin Hood stories, Wind in the Willows, Mother Goose nursery rhymes, Beatrix Potter stories, a story about Queen Elizabeth, some retellings of Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and biographies of Charles Dickens and Shakespeare. See what I mean? So many topics!

Don’t forget that I am posting all of our world geography and science plans on my blog. Just click on Globe Trotting Girls in the tag cloud or on the specific links under the curriculum tab to take you to all of those posts.

Chipette

Math: We completed pages 73-96 in Math in Focus and she finished up the corresponding workbook pages. She also did some pages in Intensive Practice and Challenging Word Problems.

Read Aloud: I started reading The Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye. This is a wonderful story and beautifully written. We are both enjoying it a lot!

Literature: Chipette took her first test in K12’s literature course and did great! We also completed one lesson from Unit 2.

Spelling: We completed one level in Apples and Pears.

Language Arts: We read and discussed 12 pages in Grammar Island. Chipette did 4 pages from her New American Cursive book, and we did three days of lessons in Student Writing Intensive A.

Loop Subjects: We didn’t complete any of these. L

Independent Reading: Chipette read 20 pages from Emily’s Runaway Imagination.

As part of Chipette’s independent work for third grade, she’s been learning to type correctly on the computer. We’ve been using Dance Mat Typing which is a free typing program from the BBC. There are four levels and underneath each level are three stages. She works on one stage for an entire week before moving on to the next stage the next week. It should take her about 12 weeks to get through the entire program before we move on to another free resource I’ve found.

She LOVES Dance Mat Typing and I use it as the treat at the end of our school day. As you can see Magpie likes to watch and learn too!

Magpie

Math: She did 6 pages in her math workbook, and we did two lessons from MEP Reception.

Phonics: We completed 2 lessons from Logic of English Foundations and she finished up Book A of Explode the Code Primer. Yay, Magpie!!!

Handwriting: She did 4 pages in Doing It Carefully and practiced writing letters and words using a, d, g, and c in Italics.

Logic: We finished one lesson in Lollipop Logic.

Science: Nothing L

Literature: We started our literature study of Curious George, but haven’t made it very far.

Reading Mother Goose rhymes made a big impression on Magpie this week, so while I was working with Chipette during school, she grabbed the small marker board and drew Humpty Dumpty.

I thought it was pretty good for a five year old, especially his face!

Monkey

This week while the sisters were at our homeschool group, Monkey and I made our usual trip to the park. He found a feather by the swings and was so proud!

He carried that feather around all day, brought it home, and it’s still in his room. J

Looking forward to travelling to Italy this next week in the tree house,

Chelli

Summary Saturday: From Russia with Love

This week we really churned out some school. Finally, I feel that I’m really getting a handle on house+school+blog which means that it’s time for something to mess it all up! And, no, I’m not a pessimist, just a realist.

World Geography and Science  (Remember you can find all of my world geography and science lesson plans posted under the Globe-Trotting Girls label or under the curriculum tab.)

This week we traveled to Russia. Here are some pictures from our week abroad:

We made Matryoshka dolls for art.

We ate Strawberry Kissel which was really good!

We added Russia pages to our notebooks, the Russian flag and a map of Russia labeled with the capitol and some landforms.

We read Baba Yaga folktales, learned about Grand Duchess Anastasia, and the rise/fall of communism.

For science we learned about the tundra habitat and added a page to our notebook.

Then we learned about some animals that live in Russia on the tundra.

The best part (for me at least) was when I discovered that a beautiful, painted wooden spoon that a Ukrainian man had given me while doing some mission work abroad in college actually turned out to be something very special. It was even featured in one of our books on Russia.

  

The girls really loved looking at that!

Chipette

This week Chipette completed the following:

• Math: p. 28-70 in Math in Focus plus corresponding workbook pages. Eight pages each in Singapore Challenging Word Problems and Intensive Practice.

• Read Aloud: We finished Nancy Drew and The Secret of the Forgotten City.

• Literature: We completed three lessons in K12 Third Grade Literature.

• Spelling: We did two levels (lessons) in Apples and Pears Spelling.

• Language Arts: We read and discussed 21 pages in Grammar Island. Chipette completed eight pages in her New American Cursive book and five days of lessons from Student Writing Intensive-A where she’s working on key word outlines.

• Loop Subjects: We almost got all of these in this week (two science classes, character training, Beautiful Feet Geography, and Spanish), but we didn’t quite make it to Shakespeare or our second class of Spanish. We’ll start with those two this next week.

• Independent Reading: She read 100 pages of Emily’s Runaway Imagination this week.

For fun this week, our homeschool group watched a play in Houston by the AG Theatre. They put on a production of Thumbelina. Both Chipette and Magpie really loved it!

Magpie

• Math: She completed 12 pages in her math workbook, and we did 4 lessons of MEP Reception.

• Phonics: We worked through 4 lessons of Logic of English Foundations, and she did 8 pages in her Explode the Code Primer book.

• Handwriting: She did 8 pages from Do It Carefully by Rod and Staff and continued practicing a, d, and g in Italics.

• Logic: We went through two lessons in Lollipop Logic

• Science: We started Exploring Science this week by Elemental Science. It is very easy to do and very fun. Magpie loved it.

• Literature: We finished up our study of Corduroy by playing store. Just like Lisa in the book buys Corduroy, I set up a store in the dining room and let all three of my kiddos buy toys.

  

They had so much fun that I caught them later in the day playing store in the living room together!

To round out our week, I let the girls decorate boxes for their Valentine mailboxes. We are participating in a Valentine exchange through one of my online homeschool groups and have been receiving Valentines from across the country, so I thought it would be fun to let the girls make some boxes to keep the Valentines in until February 14^th. I won’t let them open them until the big day!

They had a lot of fun doing this and are very excited to see what Valentines they’ve received.

Monkey

The highlight of Monkey’s week was going to his first birthday party for his friend, Abe.

He had a grand time and thought he was big stuff getting to help Mom pick out Abe’s gift.

The best compliment of the week was when Chipette told me that she loves when we do school every day because it makes our days more fun in the tree house, and I agree,

Chelli