What's in store?

 Bible

Noah * Babel * Abraham * Lot

We started out last week reading form The Children's Illustrated Old Testament, but I decided that I didn't particularly like it, so we have switched over to my original plan of reading from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible.  I love that this classic is both teaching us about God and teaching us how beautiful language can sound!  Charlotte Mason knew what she was talking about!

Language

The Princess will continue her Delightful Reading lessons, practice reading to me and read quietly to herself.  She will also work with the stories "Dick Whittington and His Cat" and "Jordan & Maria", learning the letters C and D in the process.  She will learn some cute C and D rhymes and practice writing capital and lower case Cs and Ds.  She has also requested to bring back the Mosaic Letters I had her doing last year, so she will do Mosaics of C and D.

The Hippie will continue reading daily from classic literature.  She read Mr. Popper's Penguins again last week as well as The Littles.  She is now reading Stuart Little and The Secret Garden. She will also work with the Old Testament story of Noah's Ark this week, doing one day of copywork about God's Promise to us, painting a picture of Noah's Ark, the animals, the rainbow and the dove and possibly playing Noah's Ark with our wooden animals.  She will learn to write capital and lower case Bs in cursive this week and review capital and lower case cursive As.   She will also write a letter to someone, address and mail it.

As a family, we will continue to read aloud The Wizard of Oz..

Math

The Hippie went through the first ten chapters (by choice) of Life of Fred Apples this past week.  She will continue that this week, but I am going to slow her down to 1 or 2 chapters a day (so that she doesn't have to do TEN practice pages in one sitting).  I have been on a mad hunt for what to do from here for math and I believe I have finally found the answer.  I am wanting to go with Math U See and start her at Alpha so that she can get a very strong foundation.  Of course, my only problem right now is MONEY.  I don't have the money to buy it.  I am trying desperately to sell a few other homeschool items, but having no luck.  I will try to get my hands on the Math U See as soon as I can, but in the mean time, we'll just continue to try to practice things hands on around here.

This week I will be telling the Four Processes Story (we didn't get to that last week) as well as the story of the Symbols.  I'll have both girls draw pictures of the Four Gnomes in their Main Lesson Books and we will practice adding and subtracting with our jewels.  I will also get the Hippie to do some written problems that I make up.  We also do our best to incorporate math into every day life anyway.  

Science/Nature

In science, we are learning about the moon ~ its phases, its gravity and how its gravity affects the tides.  We will go out to the beach at high tide and low tide on the same day, marking each and noticing how far apart they are.  The Hippie will be making an entry into her Science Lesson Book this week that includes a drawing and small writing about what she's learned.

We are also taking a nature walk at the beach and collecting various types of shells.  We will examine the shells, sort the shells and draw pictures of them in our Science Lesson books.  I am going to see if I can find a book of shells so that we can determine what kinds of animals once lived in the shells we collect.  If not, we will try to find the answer on the Internet.  Either way, we will do our best to label the drawings with the information we find out.

In addition to our hands on activities, we will read aloud "Falling Leaves" and "The Mighty Oak".

Social Studies

We are focusing on the Old Testament right now (combining Language and Social Studies).  The Hippie will also continue copying the Hebrew Alphabet into her lesson book.

Art 

As with every week, much art is incorporated into all lessons via the drawing into the main lesson books.  This week, we will also paint ~ The Hippie will paint Noah's Ark (as mentioned above) and the Princess will be painting the brick oven and D and d for the door for her "D" story.

Enrichment

We are baking pumpkin cookies on Monday.  The girls have a performance for their Homeschool Theater Troupe on Saturday at the Vegetarian Festival.  They will be putting on two skits and also doing a Flash Mob.  The girls have their Waldorf Handwork Group on Wednesday (includes Fall Circle Time and handwork ~ The Hippie is working on knitting and purling while the Princess is working on weaving with a wooden loom).  We will go trick-or-treating on Monday and leave most of the sugary treats out for the Sugar Plum Fairy to take away.  We will also bake Soul Cakes on Wednesday in honor of All Soul's Day.

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I think that about covers it.  What are you up to in your homeschool this week?