Second Grade

Well now… I see from my posts list that I haven’t said a peep here since February. Feeling sheepish about that, but rest assured that we have done quite a bit of larnin’ in the last five months. We have wrapped up most of our first grade work, with the exception of Math. We changed curriculum mid stream and so we’ll just go year round on that until we get caught up. Math is not one of our joys. Ahem.

For this coming school year we have made a few changes. First, we are doing Classical Conversations this year and all three of us (four, actually, if you count Daddy) are very excited about it. We’ll be doing the Foundations program on Mondays.

I also decided to switch to Rod & Staff grammar for this year. I had no complaints about Growing with Grammar last year, but it just didn’t feel as substantial as I wanted it to be, and since it’s one of her stronger subjects, I thought I should push her a little more. It’s my impression that R&S is a bit more thorough. We did add light Latin this year as well.

So here’s our second grade plan:

• Explorers Bible Study (God’s Promises – OT Overview)
• Horizons Math 2
• Rod & Staff Grammar
• Spelling Workout
• Writing with Ease 2
• Story of the World 2 (Middle Ages – my favorite period of history! I’m excited.)
• Christian Kids Explore Earth & Space
• Song School Latin

One other thing that I am excited about – the latest homeschooling craze: workboxes. Iif you are not familiar with them, here’s a thorough overview of what’s out there. Consider yourself warned.

I had already been mulling on a way to help Princepesa begin to work more independently and to see what she had left to do. She’s a very visual person, so the system should be a good fit for her. I like it because it will serve to keep me accountable. As another mom said, nothing like a pile of empty boxes staring you in the face to make you get tomorrow’s school day ready. I also think it will be a good way to incorporate all those fun things or ideas you find at conventions or blog surfing but never actually get around to doing. I’ll do another post in the future showing how I set up our boxes and what’s going in them.

So we’re all ready for second grade. We won’t start for another couple of weeks, but it’s all set. For now we’re going swimming.

Overheard

Overheard today while the kiddos were looking at a huge map book:

Viking: WAIT! STOP! (Speaking way too loudly because he’s excited)
I think I saw Egypt!

Princepesa: (after looking where he was pointing)
No, that’s just South Dakota.

Week of January 26, 2009

Language Arts
Spelling	Spelling Workout, Lessons 4-8
Writing	Writing with Ease, Week 6, started 7
Grammar	Growing with Grammar, Lessons 28-32
Math
Saxon Math 2	Lessons 28-32
History
Ancient History	King Hammurabi & Babylon (SOTW, ch 7) We made a model of a ziggurat.
Science
Human Anatomy	We studied the circulatory system. We added the heart to our body outlines, read a pile of books, and did some narrations.

Memory Work

Bible	I John 4:19 The Apostles Creed
Hymns	Amazing Grace
History	Fifty Nifty United States (School House Rock)
Math	Adding Three Facts
Poetry	The Caterpillar by Christina Rosetti

Reading

You can see a list of everything we read by checking our Goodreads shelf.

Projects

(You can see more photos of our school work on our school’s photo gallery.)

We checked in on our chicken mummy named Pharoah Chicken-kamen. You can see photos in our photo gallery.

We made a Sumerian seal for our history project (carried over from last week). We also made a model of a ziggurat.

We also started some Valentine’s Day decorating and crafts.

Blast Bill Nye the Science Guy!

You know how at the end of his little science DVD’s he always puts a silly song – they rewrite pop hits with words for the current topic? A bit Al Yankovich, but not so annoying.

I digress.

We watched a video on blood and circulation and the song is stuck in my head! It’s to the tune of Love Shack and the original and rewritten words are all jumbled up in my head making a nonsense song that just won’t leave.

Blast that Bill Nye!

Snow Day

This should actually be titled “Snow Day – Homeschooling Pastor’s Family Style”.

We woke up to 6-8″ of snow, so the kids were out sledding by 7:30 am while Daddy cleared snow. (This is when a corner lot and a big curving driveway is not so fun.) I enjoyed almost an hour of silence. Once everyone was sufficiently frozen they came in for hot chocolate and breakfast.

Everyone changed into dry clothes and we packed up all our schoolwork and headed into the church office. The office was closed, but the February newsletter still had to be printed, so the kids sat and did school at the workroom table while I printed the newsletter.

Homeschool flexibility has its benefits, I guess. I think.

Quote of the Day

We were reading The Moses Basket by Jenny Koralek to go with our history studies of Ancient Near East. There was a page talking about the enslavement of the Israelites and it said, “They worked hard. If they stopped to rest, cruel overseers would whip them back to work.”

To which Princepesa replied,

That does not sound fun.

Because, of course, when you are six and living in the comfortable Midwest, everything should be fun, right? LOL

Week of January 19, 2009

We had another good week in school, although we got behind just a bit from watching Inauguration Day events. Here is a summary of what we have accomplished:

Language Arts
Spelling	Spelling Workout, Lessons 36; Started book B (see pic below)
Writing	Writing with Ease, week 5 and part of 6
Grammar	Growing with Grammar, Lessons 27-31
Math
Saxon Math 2	Lessons 24-27
History
Ancient History	Story of the World, chapter 5.
Science
Human Anatomy	We worked some more on skeletal system.

Memory Work

Bible	I John 4:19 The Apostles Creed
Hymns	Amazing Grace
History	Fifty Nifty United States (School House Rock)
Math	Adding Two Facts
Poetry	The Caterpillar by Christina Rosetti

Reading

You can see a list of everything we read by checking our Goodreads shelf.

Projects

(You can see more photos of our school work on our school’s photo gallery.)

We checked in on our chicken mummy named Pharoah Chicken-kamen. You can see photos in our photo gallery.

Principesa finished Spelling Workout A!

Puzzles

As part of our human body lessons we did a great big puzzle of the skeleton today. It is four feet tall and the puzzle had 100 pieces.

Surprisingly Viking was much more willing to plug away on it and Princepesa lost interest sooner, but we got it done. They were both impressed with the size of it once we got it done though.

Inauguration Day

To be totally honest, I am less than thrilled about today’s inauguration, but my thoughts about today are on my other blog. I want to communicate these thoughts to my children at their level.

I am however, thankful that we live in a country that can peacefully and honestly elect a new president and transfer power smoothly. I am proud that after our country’s history with racial inequality that we can elect a black man as president. I recognize that today is history in the making, so we are planning a few Inauguration Day events.

We are still in catch up mode, so we couldn’t skip school altogether. I did record the Inauguration coverage so we can watch it once we are done with school work for the day, the added benefit being that we can buzz through commercials and talking heads.

I also downloaded the Presidential Inauguration ebook from Currclick for Princepesa and some coloring pages from Enchanted Learning for Viking. We’ll eat our lunch in the family room while we watch the coverage and work on our minibooks. And when it’s done, we’ll pray for our  new president.

Nature Study Books

I stumbled across some interesting books in our local library and thought I’d share them. They look like fun books for nature study ideas, and some just plain fun ideas. All of the books by the same author look interesting.

The book I originally found is The Kids’ Winter Handbook. It has ideas for indoor and outdoor fun, crafts, recipes, games, and science experiments. There are instructions for playing traditional games like crokinole, making ice crystals and bird feeders, and planning a family winter Olympics. Unlike many books which are full of neat ideas you’ll never actually do, this one looks fun and generally realistic.

Once I flipped through the book, I went looking for others by the same author. I found The Kids’ Summer Handbook which has all kinds of fun games and things to do at the beach, at home, after dark, on rainy days, etc. There are activities like sand candles, a beading loom, and drying and pressing flowers. I also found The Kids Book of the Night Sky which I’m going to try to find for our home library. This one looks very handy for astronomy study next year during Earth Science. I especially liked the directions and pieces to make a planisphere.

These authors have quite a few other books in the series which are worth looking into. Maybe your library has more of them than mine.