Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with A LOT of Science

That's right we did a lot of science. In the form of experiments.

Mackenzie

We're finishing up the last lesson in our Apologia Anatomy from last year as well as finishing our first lesson in Apologia's Swimming Creatures.

In anatomy we were studying growth and development and all of that. Including DNA. So we made an edible DNA strand that we saw all over pinterest.

It was simple. It was fun. And tasty.

The directions are HERE. (P.S. We are now done with anatomy. So only one science lesson for us.)

We also worked on our Try This! and project activities from lesson one of Swimming Creatures of the 5th Day. We did them co-op style with our friends who are studying the same thing. They didn't get to do any of their science experiments last year so we're making them this year. lol

One of their projects is to make an Ocean Diorama. Each lesson they will add examples of the types of animals they studied. This week they created the box and put in some animals from the abyss.  They also had a demonstration of how water pressure effects your body using a ballon and a 2-liter bottle. They made "wind currents" using a tub of water and mini fans. The book suggested using hair dryers for that. Water and hair dryers? LOL No thanks. Lastly they demonstrated how water temperature can effect currents.

She has 3 more lessons left in MUS Epsilon and one more in Growing with Grammar. Then she can start her next level. Yay! IEW continues to go well. She's loving those keyword outlines. We'll start lesson 2 next week.

In the world of home ec, she baked my husband and I some yummy carrot cake cupcakes. From scratch. Cuz we both turned 41 this week. I'm a day older. And wiser. lol

Kayleigh

The first thing I want to share is this: Progress. We are off the dreaded "starter level." Thank goodness. We were so happy we thought about throwing a party in celebration.

I'd like to say that she made some great reading progress but I can't. I'm not sure what they're trying to teach them other than typing skills. And maybe spelling. I'd kind of hoped to teach her to read before we tackled spelling. But at least there were no tears. But that might be because she only did one round of the new level. lol But I'm choosing to remain hopeful.

Naturally, we read a lot. Which is good because we like that. Sonlight had some fun suggestions to go along with some of our stories. When we read The Greedy Farmer from The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book she was comparing liquid volume by pouring milk into cups of different sizes. I'm not going to lie and tell you that she gave a hoot about the mini-math lesson. She was only into the pouring and the drinking of the milk. When we read Tiger Tries to Cheat she had a blast acting out the story with some of her stuffies. She also built the Tower of Babel with blocks but I didn't catch a picture of that. Sorry.

We worked on lowercase b in All About Reading pre-1. She did her little craft, practiced blending with the puppet, and I finally got around to making a salt box for letter tracing like I've been planning in my head for months. Because it was so hard to to find the 30 seconds that it took to prepare. In my defense, the real issue was remember to by a box for it. A 97 cent pencil box from Walmart did the trick. She loved it and used it to draw every letter except for b. lol J was a favorite for this activity. Who wants to place a bet that when she gets to J, she won't want to write it? The odds are in your favor.

We had a blast with our Language Lessons for Little Ones this week. We read a poem about caterpillars and butterflies so I decided to turn it into a little science lesson. (I told you we did a lot of science.) We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and talked about the life cycle of a butterfly. Then we made a life cycle craft using various band aids. How cool is that? Pinterest rocks!! And now I have a lot more band aids in the house.

This week in Handwriting Without Tears , we learned about Mat Man. And body parts. And counting. So versatile. lol We sang the song, built Mat Man, and then she drew him. Everybody loves the Mat Man song.

We did do math. I just didn't photograph any of it. =o)

Oh, I forgot to share our Bible verse for this week. Colossians 3:20. I love it! It's never a favorite of the kids though. I can't figure out why. lol

So how did your week go?


Linking up to: Weekly Wrap-Up, Collage Friday, Preschool Corner, and The Homeschool Mother's Journal.

Not-Back-to-School Blog Hop: Student Week

This week is student week on the Not-Back-to School Blog Hop. So without further ado, here are the students of the Sonlight Academy for Girls.

Sonlight Academy for Girls 2012-2013 Class Roster

Favorite Subject: Sonlight

Least Favorite Subject: anything with "Winter Joke" Promise

Favorite Color: Blue

Favorite Book: Harry Potter series

Favorite Music: One Direction

Loves to: read, piano, art

One Word Description: DRAMA!

Favorite Subject: Snack

Least Favorite Subject: Coloring

Favorite Color: Pink

Favorite Book: Three Sleepy Kittens

Favorite Song: All in All (or Jesus Lamb of God as she calls it)

Loves: rocks, tape measures, and small dolls with hair to brush

One Word Description: Crazy!

Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with a Sixth Grader

Yes, you read that title right. My first born is now, sniff, a sixth grader. Sniff, sniff. Against my wishes. Can you believe the nerve of this child? I should probably ground her.

In fact, I think I shall. And I'll give her extra math. And make her write a ten page report. By hand. And fix her liver and onions for lunch. That will teach her to squash all of this growing up.

And that is not all that this little girl did this week. She also got baptized. In the very ocean that God created with his own hands. The idea of being baptized in the very oceans that God mentioned creating in the Bible thrills me. As does the thought that maybe the water from Jordan, where Jesus was baptized, had made it's way to the Atlantic where my daughter was baptized. How exciting that thought is?

I will not ground her for this type of growth though. In this case I will rejoice with her and be a proud mama.

Now on to the rest of our Wrap-Up...

Mackenzie

As I mentioned, against my will, Mackenzie started sixth grade this week. We haven't started up a full load yet as we haven't started back up with our Sonlight studies  yet,  but we did start some of our new items and are finishing up a couple of other things. We did miss our Sonlight though.

We started our Institute for the Excellence in Writing this week. If you've read my blog in the past, then you'll know that finding the writing program that best fits our needs has been a challenge. We did really well with Writing With Ease but Writing With Skill didn't click with us the same way. Since I've only heard rave reviews about IEW, we decided to give it a try. So far so good. Just one week in and I'm ready to rave. Key word outlines? Genius!! Mackenzie was very excited about writing this week. Always a great way to start off the new school year.

We are finishing up our last few lessons in Math-U-See Epsilon. We got a little behind in it due the amount of math programs we reviewed last year. She was supposed to finish it up this summer but she was lazy about it so she has to start off sixth grade finishing last year's math. Bummer. lol

She's also working in Life of Fred fractions and loving it. The original plan was to just do a LOF lesson after completing each MUS lesson. But she thinks it's hilarious and does it every day without complaint. Math win!

And, as a mom, you just can't complain when your child wants to do extra math. It just wouldn't be right.

We're also finishing up our Growing With Grammar lessons from last year. That's not because of anything Mackenzie did or didn't do. It's because we started off the year using Advanced Language Lessons (follows First Language Lessons) and then in January the author decided that she wasn't going to finish writing ALL after all so we had to find something new. Despite the late start with GWG, she is almost finished with it. Then on to the level 6. Woot!

We started our new science, Swimming Creatures of the 5th Day, and it's going well. We've been skipping the experiments and projects because we're going to be doing those as a group with our friends. So we'll do that stuff next week. We're excited about working with our buddies.

We were happy to get back to our Visual Latin. Always a lot of fun. And we got back to our composer studies. This week we studied Verdi. We're also adding back in our artist studies that we didn't keep up with last year. We're using COAH's World's Greatest Artist units as our guide. I think having something scheduled will help keep us on track.

Mackenzie also started working in her Artistic Pursuits' book. I bought this because she had decided not to take art at Young Musicians of Virginia, but she's since changed her mind. But since I already bought the book, and it's self-led, she's going to do it anyway. This week she was learning about outlining objects.

All in all, our first week of middle school was a good one. Attitudes were in check, lessons completed in a timely manner. Here's hoping week two goes just as well.

Kayleigh

Week two of preschool is complete. It went really well for the most part. Except when it comes to a review item. There is one thing we're reviewing that she just hates. Just mentioning the name of the item makes her cry. With tears. For real. The poor, poor dear. I think when we get past what I will call the "training phase" she will be fine and even enjoy it. But at the moment it's a never-ending, tedious nightmare. Ugh!

That photo is tragic, isn't it?

Bible

We're onto letter our letter B verse in My ABC Bible Verses. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. Matthew 5:9 Avery timely one for a household with two girls who love to bicker. I choose kindness as our Virtue for this week. I might stick with it for next week because Kayleigh has really been struggling to be kind lately.

Math

Our little math trio of Math-U-See, Mathematical Reasoning , and Family Math for Young Children: Comparing has been working out really well for us. This week I traded our Family Math activity for something I saw on pinterest. I put number cards and paint cards in our education cubes and she rolled a number and a color. Then she dot painted the correct number of dots using the correct color with our Do-A-Dot markers. She loved that.

Also please note, her spectacular coloring skills on her MUS page. The best I've ever seen her do. The little minx has been holding out on me. Again. All this time she just scribbles a few scribbles and calls it good. Now that I know she can color neatly...

Language

Naturally we've been doing a lot of reading for our Sonlight core p 4/5. One of our nursery rhymes this week was Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater and the IG suggested making pumpkin pancakes as an extension. Well I didn't feel like standing in the kitchen flipping pancakes but I'm am determined to incorporate more "making memories" activities into our school so I decided to let the girls make pumpkin cookies. One of our favorite fall treats. Yum! So bake them they did and they were delish!!! I helped with the icing because they had lost interest by then. But they were baked to perfection. I give them both an A+!

Notice that Kayleigh discovered a new way to clean the beater. She's nothing if not creative. And determined. lol

And thanks to Michelle over at Delightful Learning. It is her blog that inspires me to spend more time "making memories" instead of stressing over the 3Rs all the time.  She is everything that I wish I could be. But instead of beating myself up for not being as creative or organized as she is, I decided to do better with the personality that I was given. And drool over her blog in-between. She has tons of great ideas. Some of which I'm able to incorporate. Love her!

I am still loving Language Lessons for Little Ones. (Which I discovered over on Michelle's blog, btw.) This week Kayleigh had to do her first narration. And she did a great job. I was so impressed. She choose a story that we had just read in Uncle Wiggily's Story Book, one of our Sonlight read alouds. I still can't believe how well she did. Maybe she's a natural? lol



We still haven't touched the book in Handwriting Without Tears. We're still having a lot of fun playing games that help us get used to the wood pieces. And we did a really fun activity that had us drawing "free style" to classical music. We choose Vivaldi's Four Seasons and had so much fun! Who said handwriting had to be boring and tedious?

Other stuff

This week's Artistic Pursuits' The Way They See It  lesson was on telling a story with your crayon ala Harold and the Purple Crayon. So of course we had to read Harold and the Purple Crayon . Then Kayleigh drew her own crayon adventure about her guinea pigs on a mountain. She was quite pleased with it. lol

Do you know what else I like about this book? It includes a picture study using a famous work of art with each lesson. This, of course, will help with the skill of narrating. Hooray!!!!

And that dear readers was our week. How did your week go? Well I hope!

I'm linking up to the Weekly Wrap-Up, Homeschool Mother's Journal, and Photo College Friday.

The Day Heaven Rejoiced

"Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift the Holy Spirit." -  Acts 2:38

So happy for my Mackenzie!

Review: Mr. Pipes & the British Hymn Makers

Christian Liberty Press is well known for providing quality educational materials to home schools and privates schools. I myself have used several of their products with great success. When I saw their name up on the Crew vendor list I my mind was sent to dream about what they might be offering for review.

Christian Liberty Press provided us a chance to review an e-book called Mr. Pipes and the British Hymn Makers. This is the first book in a new series by Douglas Bond.

About Mr. Pipes

This is the story of two teens who, while on vacation in England, are befriended by an elderly English gentlemen called Mr. Pipes. Through this relationship they learn about famous British hymn writers. They also learn about the value of traditional worship and praise.

Our Experience

Basically this story of two kids stuck in a boring old town while their mother is busy working. They wind up meeting some interesting people who help then discover that there is more to the town then meets the eye. Mr. Pipes, who plays the pipe organ, in particular teaches them about Gods grace using hymns and stories about famous British hymn writers.

The book covers nine hymn writers in as many chapters. Each chapter is filled with history, humor, and interest that will keep you reading. The stories behind the hymns are a fascinating look into the writer's real life experiences with God. And the book includes a musical piece from each hymn writer, which I thought was really neat. I'm hoping to get my piano playing daughter to play a few when her lessons start back up.

F.Y.I.

Website: http://www.shopchristianliberty.com/brands/Christian-Liberty-Press.html

Age Range: 7th through 10th grade

Price: $8.79 for the downloadable ebook

Disclaimer: I was given a few copy of this e-book for review purposes. All opinions are my own or those of my family.

Review: VocabularySpellingCity

With online learning being all the rage these days, I was very excited to learn that I'd be reviewing Vocabulary SpellingCity.com. I've used Spelling City in the past so I was looking forward to checking out the new upgrades. And there was a lot to check out.

About VocabularySpellingCity

VocabularySpellingCity is an educational website with 25 different learning activities including spelling tests, vocabulary Flashcards, HangMouse, Unscramble, and crossword puzzles.
VocabularySpellingCity has thousands of lists available for use at each grade level. Most of the popular lists from published programs are already available on the site. In addition, our Teacher Resources section includes lists such as math words, Dolch words, or Latin root words.
VocabularySpellingCity is perfect for all subjects.

Our Experience

I was given access to the premium membership and wow! This program is so versatile. I am still swooning over all of the wonderful things that they have added to the original program.

I started off by creating our own personalized spelling lists based on our spelling program. Love.

Do you know what I love even more? The assignment manager. Here is where I can create a week's worth of assignments using the lists that I created. Once you have the lists created it's as simple as pointing and clicking on the many different game options to use as assignments. There are so many combinations that each week's worth of assignments can be fresh and new. No boredom.

Then my daughter can log on under her account and complete the assignments for that day. It's a marvelous thing.

There are so many ways that I can use this in my homeschool. I've already started creating lists and assignments based on our reading vocabulary and latin studies. The possibilities are endless.

Once the assignments are completed, Mackenzie gets instant feed back and I get a nice little report with her progress.

Many of the features are free but just the ability to create lists and assignments makes this program well worth the money. With the free program you can: share lists, import lists, handwriting practice, printable worksheets, teacher resources, spelling tests.

Premium upgrades include: vocabulary tests, definitions, synonyms, antonyms, parts of speech, automatic test results, record keeping, progress tracking, individual student log-ins, student grouping, word list grouping, game & activity logs, premium games, interactive flashcards, printable flashcards, no ads, telephone support, and more.

And how did my student like it? She loved it. She did it willingly every day without a word of complaint.

I'm looking forward to using this program to supplement our spelling and vocabulary studies in our homeschool for many years.

F.Y.I.

Website: www.spellingcity.com

Pricing: $29.99/year for up to 5 students. What a deal!

Disclaimer: I received a free subscription for review purposes. All opinion are my own or those of my children.