New Year: New Curriculum

No, we have not dropped our core curriculum. We are still using Heart of Dakota's Little Hearts for His Glory and Little Hands to Heaven. We are very happy with these choices. We just needed to stir things up a bit and make it fit our family's needs. I thought I would give a nice synopsis of how we are doing things now.

I will start out with science. Heart of Dakota LHGHG does include 2 days of science each week. The science lessons are connected to the history readings. We are still doing these days of science, but my oldest is a science nut and just can't get enough. After doing tons of research, I decided to use one of Elemental Science's preschool series. It is listed to be used for preschool and Kindergarten, so I thought it would be perfect.

 

 

We have completed two weeks of this science curriculum so far and the girls have loved it. It includes both a 2 day a week and 5 day a week schedule. We are doing the 5 day schedule and it is working beautifully without making our day too lengthy. I will do a dedicated post for this science curriculum by the end of this week. I would like to blog all the way through it.

 

Brina has now moved on to AAR Level 2. This reading program is phenomenal. I really can't say better things about it. She is on Lesson 24 of Level 2. I expect she will complete it before the end of the school year. If she does, we will finish out the year with reading through HOD's emerging reader book list. Then, we will start Level 3 in the fall.

 

 

On top of the changes I have already mentioned, we have also added in the beginning spelling lists for Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory. Brina is doing well with these words and also enjoys spelling. We have also moved on to Singapore 1A. I am still not sure if we will stick with Singapore at this point. I will reevaluate at the end of the school year.

 

Siri is also doing well with school. We have now started doing Little Hands to Heaven at double speed. We are completing two units each week. This will cause us to finish sometime in March. I am not sure if we will move on to our new curriculum at that point or wait until the fall. I suppose we will decide at that point.

 

I'm sorry it has been so long since I have updated on the school year. I will do my best to keep the blogging up!



Field Trip to see the Da Vinci Exhibit

I have really let this blog fall to the wayside. I need to get back on this! We are now halfway through Kindergarten and preschool. The year has been wonderful so far. The girls are both learning so much. Thanks to co-op, Brina and I have made some wonderful friends. During an awful cold spell, we decided to head out to our local Space and Rocket Center for a day out with those friends. I thought I would share some pictures from our fun day.

We had a great time playing with the models of his inventions. It was definitely nice to get out as our heat was acting up and the temperature was a high of 20 degrees F that day. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Beginning Little Hearts

Hi all! It has been quite some time since I have taken a moment to blog. I hate that I let it fall by the wayside, but we were just way too busy this summer. We are in our second week of Little Hearts for His Glory and having fun with our kindergarten year. I just wanted to share some pictures. Some are from this summer and some from this week.

Coin rubbings during Little Hands to Heaven

Over the summer, Brina finished the second reader from All About Reading Level 1.

Someone is making a silly face while coloring. :)

Concentrating on coloring for her etching

 

Finally getting close to a finished product! She used mine as a guide.

Making a ten staircase with cusinaire rods. I highly suggest checking out education unboxed videos. These are great for developing number sense and working on place value.

We are using Singapore Essentials K for now. The A Book is very easy, so we are doing a couple pages from it every day.

Then, we move on to a couple pages in book B as well. I want her to feel confident and challenged at the same time She is doing well with both. We were using unifix cubes for addition problems, but she seems to understand them better with cuisinaire rods since working through some of the videos I mentioned before. She was able to quickly pick out which rod would answer the number sentence.

 

We have moved into our makeshift school room. It is nowhere near done right now. Honestly, I'm a little embarrassed to have pictures of it, but I thought it might be nice for other people to realize that not all homeschoolers have perfect homes. You all know what I mean! Also, we often do school in our pajamas. My kindergartener has sensory issues and feels that most going out clothes are too binding. As you can see, she also has favorites. I don't know how we ended up with the same gown in the pictures as they were taken probably around a month or so apart. Oh well, I aim to show real life and that is exactly what you are getting!

 

We have had a great first two weeks with Little Hearts! Here's to hoping for many more!

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 4

We finally finished up unit 4 of Little Hands to Heaven. We tried our best to enjoy some nice weather while we could. It gets hot here fast, so we have to just take advantage of the outdoors while we can. This "week" was full of great learning. The unit focused on the letter D and on Bible stories that centered around Isaac, Rebekah, Esau and Jacob. Acting out these stories was quite fun with the girls. I didn't get a ton of in action pictures this week though. I'll do a better job with this for the next post.

We use The New Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes as recommended by Heart of Dakota author Carrie Austin. The Bible stories for the first couple of days taught us how Isaac met his wife Rebekah. To act this out, we pretended to meet our stuffed animals for the first time. It was super cute. We went on in the last half of the week to learn about the story of Jacob and Esau. The girls learned how awful it is to lie. Jacob lied to his father to steal his brother's blessing. This was a great lesson for young children. We also learned about the ladder of angels show to Jacob. What a wonderful sight this would be to see! All in all, it was a wonderful week of Bible lessons.

Our favorite activity of the week was hiding our names-just as Jacob hid his true self from Isaac.

Mommy got in on this too to help motivate them to finish. :)

Here are a few more examples of activities my 3 year old did along with the curriculum this week. A few of these printables were made by my friend Dawn. I have a button for her blog on my sidebar (Mama of Monkeys) if you would like to check her out. :)

We also read a weekly devotional that is also recommended by Little Hands. We chose to go with Kenneth Taylor's Big Thoughts for Little People. We tried the other recommended devotional, My ABC Bible Verses, but it did not go over well here. This week we learned that D is for doing what needs to be done! We talked about helping others and doing chores the first time mommy and daddy ask them to do so. We have been reinforcing this more as they get older, so the lesson had very appropriate timing. This book has beautiful illustrations and I definitely recommend it.

For the next week, we will be reviewing the first four letters of the alphabet and reading some new Bible stories. I'm sure we will have another wonderful week. I am loving the layout of Little Hands to Heaven and can not wait to add in Little Hearts for Brina in July! I will definitely be blogging about our adventure with that as well.

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 3

We just completed Unit 3 of Little Hands to Heaven. Siri is still loving having her own school work. The girls and I are learning so much through the Bible stories. There are some things that I have honestly forgotten. This is one thing that is so wonderful about following a Christ-centered curriculum with our children. We get to learn and grow alongside them.

In Unit 3, Siri learned about the letter C and the sound it makes. She has trouble make the sound, but we are slowly working on it. She knows the sound when she hears it, but her little mouth just has trouble with it.

We glued Cheerios in the shape of the letter for a fine motor activity this week. We also walked princess toys along a letter C on the floor. I would love to share that photo, but my wood floor isn't looking so hot right now. We need to refinish them and I am kind of embarrassed. Maybe next week. :)

The Bible stories this week were focused around Abraham. The girls pretended to be Abraham and Lot and chose which land to take. We also built a tent out of the girls' bunk beds to pretend to be Abraham. We chose colorful quilts.

We also made a tent out of an index card and replicated the starry sky Abraham looked up to with spray glue and silver glitter.

Brina's Tent

 Siri's Tent

 My Tent

We also acted out having the three angels come visit Abraham and Sarah. We had three stuffed animals portray the angels and the girls were Abraham and Sarah.

Yes, we did all the in one day. :) We ran out of time a couple of days, so we read the stories again and acted them out.

Finally, one of my favorites was hugging animals and Bibles. We read the story where God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. God just wanted to know that Abraham love Him more than his son. Abraham almost did it, but God stopped him just in time. Both of the girls hugged a stuffed animal and said "I love you more than anything." Then, they hugged their Bible and said the same thing. When asked how God wants us to act, they both agreed they should love their Bible and God more than anything just like Abraham. This simple action had such meaning for them!

We had a great week learning about the Bible and letters!!!

Little Hands to Heaven: Unit 2

We completed the second unit in Little Hands to Heaven. We had a really great week! Siriana is beginning to enjoy the rhymes more each day. She is really remembering them too. She was looking through The Jesus Storybook Bible today and noticed a in the story of Jonah that a boat was floating. She excitedly ran over to me and told me that the boat did float! I was so proud of her! She listens more than she lets on most of the time. I know it wasn't the same story, but she's 3 so I will take it.

We learned about the letter B this week and talked about Noah and his big boat. We also read about the Tower of Babel. My girls were very much interested in this Tower. I wish I would have gotten more pictures, but we have dealt with some illness here this week.

Siri dot painted inside the letter B here. She just loves dot paint!

Then, I scoured Pinterest and found this adorable Noah's Ark craft. We were able to talk about the Bible Story and count by two's. Both girls did this craft and want them hung up on their wall. 

I'm so sorry that there aren't more pics this week. It's just been a tough one to get through and my house is an absolute mess! Maybe this next week will bring an easier workload. Happy homeschooling!