TOG Year 4 Week 3

This week, we began a four week study of WWI.  In some ways, I am looking forward to studying this myself.  I only have a vague recollection of the Progressively tilted public education I received in history, but history has always fascinated me.  So to get to study it now, when I have the benefit of being able to care about the subject and want to learn from the mistakes that were made, is exciting.  Yet, the brutality of WWI - any war - is not something that I look forward to.  It will no doubt bring questions that are hard, but that I realize my children must begin to ask and have answered.  We must understand that the problems in this world are all traced back to the sin of humankind and their refusal to follow God's plans.  And WWI is no exception. 

The older princesses had a sleep over on Thursday with the Bible Study they have attended this summer.  So we had to cut short our normal Friday activities due to tiredness.  Princess E has two assignments yet to hand in (Sunday morning) and will have to complete them this afternoon.

Princess E - 6th Grade - Dialectic
McCrabb: Book A Tests 4-6
Latin For Children Primer A: Review lessons five (second half) through first part of lesson eight.
IEW: We wrote the final draft of our Sea Snakes paragraph.  They each choose another paragraph to do a KWO for and will do another paragraph this next week.
Math-U-See: Reviewed sections in Delta done last year and watched a few lessons on DVD that weren't remembered
MCT Language Arts: We began reading Grammar Island.  It is a quick review, so far, of what we already know.  But we are doing some fun whiteboard exercises.  They love to write on the whiteboard!
TOG Yr4 W1:  Timeline; President Notebook - Woodrow Wilson; Student Activity Pages (SAPs); Accountability and Thinking Questions (AQ/TQ); Reading - The Gift of Music, Stories for Young People: O. Henry, Home Run to Heaven: Billy Sunday, The Complete Idiot's Guide to the 20th Century, The Usborne Introduction to the First World War; Read Alouds - The Story of the World Volume 4, Pollyanna

Princess S - 4th Grade - Upper Grammar
McCrabb: Book A Tests 4-6
Growing With Grammar 4 (GWG4): Chapter 1.7 to 1.9
Math-U-See:  Reviewed multiplication facts from Gamma that we learned last year
TOG Yr 4 W1: Quizlet vocab; Important People Copywork; SAPs; Read Alounds - same as above; Reading (again - portions each week) - An Age of Extremes, World War One, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Fanny Crosby: Queen of Gospel Songs
IEW and MCT Language Arts: same as above

Princess L - K - Lower Grammar
Winter Promise Advanced K: Review letters u,c,l,g,w,y,v,z, and x; study the -an family and -ap family; practice handwriting letters; read "A Cat" - A Word Family Mini-book.
Math-U-See: We continued working on flashcards and added in the +0 and 0+ facts.  Working on saying them faster.
TOG Yr 4 W1: Read Alouds - same as above; Reading - The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, In Flanders Fields: The Story of the Pom.  This last one, we pretty much just read the poem and looked at the pictures and talked about the fact that there was a war almost 100 years ago that included much of the world. 

Princess M - PreTOGGer
Did some games from Letter of the Week.  She enjoyed the size and shape sorting activities with Princess E.  I printed out the A-Z Floor letters and laminated them.  Princess S made a maze around the house and they hopped from letter to letter saying the letter names.  I printed out the Do-A-Dot pages and she covered the circles with pom-pom magnets with Princess E and then with small circle stickers with Princess S.  Yes - I am relegating preschool this year to my eldest two princesses.  They do a fabulous job and they love it, and so does Princess M.  I need the time with Princess L for Kindergarten, and the only way to do it is to have them attend to Princess M.  When you homeschool, you just do what works.  And this works for all of us for now.

TOG Year 4 Week 2

This was a bit of a mixed up week for us.  Nanny came to town to attend a funeral, and as anyone knows, it's hard to concentrate when Nanny (our word for my mom) comes to town.  They did pretty good at getting their tasks done and having some time to play.  Also, we made a short trip to the North Shore so our day on Friday was very limited.  There were some things that got skipped this week.

Princess E - 6th Grade - Dialectic

McCrabb: This would be one of the things we skipped this week.  We'll get back on track next week.
Latin For Children Primer A: Review lessons three, four and first part of five.

IEW: we began the first lesson of SWI-A.  This was really a review as we watched the version of Key Word Outlines that comes with TWSS.  We watched the DVD and did one outline.  But that was as much as we fit in.

MCT Language Arts: We started lesson two of Sentence Island.  Then I realized that really, I was supposed to start with Grammar Island.  So I let the Nanny excuse work for the rest of the week.  We'll start Grammar Island on Monday, but I know we'll speed through this grammar review.
TOG Yr4 W1:  Timeline; President Notebook - William Taft; Student Activity Pages (SAPs); Accountability and Thinking Questions (AQ/TQ); Reading - The Gift of Music, The Call of the Wild, With Daring Faith, Bully for you Teddy Roosevelt, The Complete Idiot's Guide to the 20th Century ; Read Alouds - The Story of the World Volume 4, Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor

Our discussion time got cut short due to having to leave town at 2:30.  I had the best intentions of finishing on Sunday.  Yeah - right!

Princess S - 4th Grade - Upper Grammar
McCrabb: Skipped this week
Growing With Grammar 4 (GWG4): Chapter 1.4 to 1.6
TOG Yr 4 W1: Quizlet vocab; Important People Copywork; SAPs; Read Alounds - same as above; Reading (again - portions each week) - An Age of Extremes, Titanic, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
IEW and MCT Language Arts: same as above

Princess L - K - Lower Grammar
Winter Promise Advanced K: Review letters l,p,s,n,o,j,h and d; study the -ag family and -ab family; practice handwriting letters.

Math-U-See: we reviewed building numbers with the blocks and the various names we gave each of the colored blocks.  Also we began learning how to do flash cards.  More on this in a separate post here.
TOG Yr 4 W1: Read Alouds - same as above; Reading - The Legend of the Teddy Bear, If You Lived in the Time of the Great San Francisco Earthquake.  The second one we just scanned over and read certain portions.  She doesn't like the pages without pictures, so she gets squirmy and loses focus.

Princess M - PreTOGGer
Spent quality time with Nanny while her sissies were doing their school work.

We will be adding in Math-U-See for the older two princesses next week.  I will do a review with Princess S of her multiplication facts using both flashcards and the online drills at the Math-U-See site.  I will be offering a peanut M&M for each fact she can answer in a three second time slot the first time she gets the card.  And yes, I'm so nice I'm even going to let her review the cards on her own first.  I figured it would be a fun way to get her to do this dreaded task.  I'm not sure what we'll do with Princess E for review.  I may just have her do some online drills this week to see where her weak spots are.

Flash Cards - Learning the Skill

Princess L learned how to do flash cards this week. Or should I say, she learned how to do Math flash cards the Math-U-See way.  One of the things that is listed as a goal in Math-U-See is mastery of the facts as demonstrated by completion of flash cards in three seconds or less recall time.  They have an online drill on their website that will show you the time.  But my kids always had issues with adding time while they hunt and peck for the numbers on the key board.  Princess S had issues with flash cards.  She would get lost in what she was doing, and it was very frustrating for both of us.  Since I was forced to improvise I am using some of those lessons learned with Princess L.

First, since she is only in Primer, there is not the requirement to master the facts.  So that isn't our goal yet.  But to make it easier, I only made up cards for the +1 and 1+ facts.  As I learned with Princess S, it is necessary to make both sets of cards.  Even though she could verbalize the fact that in addition you can switch the order, when I only made one set of cards she would get lost on paper when it didn't look the same as the flashcard.  She would have to switch the order either in her head or by physically writing the problem the other way.  And while that is doable, it certainly adds much time to any assignment. 

Next, I had her read the front side of the cards out loud as a sentence.  This helps with the auditory sense processing what they hear.  Then she built the sentence with the math blocks.  This helps with the tactile sense and the visual sense.  Then she figure out the answer.  That was our first time through the blocks.

The next time through the blocks I had her read the front of the card as a sentence and say the answer without using the blocks.  I told her she could read them in "silly" voices.  This helps to break up the monotony and makes it fun!  She had fun coming up with different voices and accents. The next time through I asked her to just give me the answer as quickly as she could.  This is what we did today.

Finally, I will make sure that each answer is given within three seconds.  If it is and is correct she gets to keep the card.  If it is not it goes back in my pile to be reviewed again.  After she displays mastery of the +1 and 1+ facts, then we will move on as the scope and sequence of Math-U-See suggests.  I generally will use the flash cards until she can get the facts we are working on, then add that stack to the review cards and spend time on those.  To my discredit, I did not do that with Princess E, and I believe she has issues with her facts still.  Princess S, due to ADD and SPD, knows her facts well, but cannot always show that she knows them depending on the day, hour, weather, mood, etc.

Subject Predicate Play

So the princesses had an assignment as part of our MCT language arts studies.  They had to write a short play where character number two always interrupts character one immediately following the subject portion of the sentence and completes the sentence with a predicate.  They worked on this Thursday and rehearsed today.  There were a few spots that were a little off, but I think they did quite well.  Here's the result:

TOG Year 4 Week 1

This year, we are starting our year off a little differently.  We are starting our year rather light in that we are not beginning all our subjects at the same time.  We will be adding in the other subjects so that by the fourth week of school we have all our normal classes integrated into our schedule.  We loosely follow the schedule of a local charter school where some of the elder princesses' friends attend.  This fact, and the fact that I use interlibrary loan A LOT, means being a few week ahead of other homeschoolers in the area helps assure that I will get the books I need when I need them.  But, there are still some commitments and activities that get scheduled becasue most kids are still on summer break.  Therefore, having a bit lighter of a load will help us be able to do those activities.

Our Tapestry of Grace studies have us doing year four, which is the study of the Twentieth Century.  This is significant because DH and I, the Grandparents, and the two Great-Grandmothers have a change to tell our own stories to the princesses.  We've lived through or experienced many of the events we will study.  These events and people have had a large influence on our lives in different ways.  I'd really like to figure out a way to record some conversations with the Great-Grandmothers.  They are late 80s and early 90s (how's that for not giving away their ages) and - let's fact it - they may not be around when we repeat this year plan five years from now.  But it is also significant because I truly believe that we are living in a time that will be remembered as the second American Revolution.  We MUST pray hard for our country as the LORD has allowed the consequences of our corporate sin of rejecting Him and His precepts to take root.  But God always sent a prophet to warn His people before allowing them to be destroyed, captured or enslaved.  There are many prophets sounding the alarm right now, and we need to answer the call, put on our battle armor, and hit our knees.  (I'm stepping off my soapbox now.)

Here's the books we're doing for our first week:

Princess E - 6th Grade - Dialectic

McCall Crabbs Standard Test Lessons in Reading (from now on referred to as McCrab): First three tests of Book A - we will begin with three tests a week, but may move to four a week.

Latin For Children Primer A: By her choice, she will be going through this from the beginning as a review to cement in the things she learned last year.  She will take two days per lesson for the first 14 lessons, as these are pretty much a complete review - a few new nouns or verbs in forms she already knows.  Then we will move to three days per lesson for the next twenty lessons.  Again, most of these are review with a few new words.  But there is a second conjugation taught in lesson 15 that she didn't learn before.  So there are a few new concepts that will be challenging.  If she is able to keep up this pace, she will begin Primer B by our second semester.

TOG Yr4 W1:  Timeline (a new activity for her - she'll be keeping track of important events, people and inventions on colored notecards); President Notebook (this contains important facts to remember about each president and first lady as well as famous quotes for copywork); Student Activity Pages (SAPs); Accountability and Thinking Questions (AQ/TQ); Reading (disclaimer - most of these are long books and she will read portions of the book each week) - The Gift of Music, The Call of the Wild, With Daring Faith, Bully for you Teddy Roosevelt, The Complete Idiot's Guide to the 20th Century (she was a bit put off by this title); Read Alouds - The Story of the World Volume 4, Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor

Princess S - 4th Grade - Upper Grammar
McCrabb: First three tests
Growing With Grammar 4 (GWG4): Chapter 1.1 to 1.3
TOG Yr 4 W1: Quizlet vocab; Important People Copywork; SAPs; Read Alounds - same as above; Reading (again - portions each week) - An Age of Extremes, We'll Race You Henry, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Trial and Triumph

Princess L - K - Lower Grammar
Winter Promise Advanced K: Review letters a, f, b, m, e, k, t and r; study the -ad family and -am family; practice handwriting letters (because we only learned the short sounds last year, she will have to learn the other two sounds for a and e)

TOG Yr 4 W1: Read Alouds - same as above; Reading - First Flight, the Story of the Wright Brothers, We'll Race You Henry, The Story of Little Babaji

Princess M - PreTOGGer
I've been working on printing, cutting and laminating various activities from the Letter of the Week Curriculum.  Each of the other princesses will have a 30 minute time block each morning where they will have the choice to either do some of these activities with Princess M or read to her.  My hope is that little by little I will have enough of these put together to be able to do this with her in its entirety starting next year.

Besides the above activities, we will begin our school each morning with a short Bible study and prayer time.  The girls each have a notebook which they use to illustrate the Bible passage.  Next week we will be adding in our IEW/MCT activities.  We did a little bit of MCT this week, but I don't have the video we made ready to post yet, so I'll show it next week.

Two More Songs by our DDs

So this first song was written by Princess E.  Most of it she wrote while at church camp, and then came home and finished off with Dad.  He is playing the guitar, she is doing all vocals, and her uncle is covering bass and drums (as well as being the recording tech.) 
       

   
   
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The second song is Bless the Broken Road.  DH and I have known and loved the song for years, but our DDs were introduced to it on the Hannah Montana the Movie soundtrack.  Rascal Flatts did an accoustic version on that CD, and they learned it.  This is their version with Dad's accompaniment.        

    
  
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 We're so honored that God blessed us with musically talented children, and we're anxious to see what He has in store for them.

Look What Joined Us for Dinner

So I came back to pull my casserole out of the oven and found Princess M standing on the kitchen table pointing out the window.  While I was scolding her I quickly glanced out the window, and here is what she was looking at.

This beauty was perched on top of our play set right off our deck.  We watched for a few minutes, then sat down to eat before our dinner got cold.  Unfortunately, it was not very appetizing watching the raptor carnage before us. See all the little pieces on the green tarp covering?  That would be little pieces of chipmunk face.  DH tried to wash it all off but ended up having to climb up there to get it down.  If anyone can tell us exactly what kind of bird this is, please do so.  We figure it to be some kind of hawk, but not sure exactly what kind.