This year, we are using Heart of Dakota’s Little Hearts For His Glory curriculum.
It is adaptable for children ages 5 – 7. To read more about our choice, CLICK HERE.
Alex is 6 years old. He’ll be 7 in December 2014.
Alex is learning right now that history is HIS story – the story of God’s world!
We read about Teddy Roosevelt. One thing we learned about was a hunting expedition. We made a paper compass, glued on the directional words, and then I gave him directions to find a hidden teddy bear: hop to steps to the north, crawl 5 steps west, etc. (The teddy bear is named after Teddy Roosevelt, which is why we found a teddy bear at the end of our hunt.)
looking through his ‘binoculars’
We’re doing a quick, broad sweep of American history, so we have covered a lot of interesting people and places: Noah Webster, George Washington Carver, Thomas Edison, Teddy Roosevelt, Yellowstone Park, Douglas MacArthur, and Washington DC (Capitol building, White House). The idea isn’t to fully comprehend each person, but to be exposed to these people and places so that they are familiar in the future, when kids are ready to dig deeper and learn more.
In these units, Alex memorized Proverbs 15:3 and Matthew 5:15 – 16. Each day, after the verse is practice, there are key ideas (usually related to the history lesson) that tie the verse together with the learning from that day.
We are working through All About Reading Level 2.
playing a phonics game with ‘ee’ words
Kindergarten B was just too easy for Alex at this point, so we went a little faster to finish it up. We are now working through Singapore 1A math book…it started out a little easy for Alex, so he did two lessons per day until we reached subtraction.
finding different ways to split 10 (7 and 3, 6 and 4, etc)
We often use dried beans as manipulatives for adding/subtracting.
(Goodness…I definitely remembered to get math pictures during these units!)
I don’t have any pictures! We weren’t able to do every science activity. We talked about them, but we missed a few when I had my wisdom tooth removed…school was “basics only” for a few days! We did the readings, but not the experiments.
learning about seawater – water with salt in it, learning about what substances (flour, sugar, cornstarch, coffee grounds..dissolve in water)
learning how geysers work when reading about Old Faithful/Yellowstone Park
a peanut activity when learning about George Washington Carver – skipped because Alex is allergic to peanuts!
We are using Happy Handwriting and Rod & Staff ABC series.
Alex now does Finding The Answers without help from me.
I just tell him the page number, and he does it.
I cracked up laughing when I looked at the book and saw that he’d drawn
Sonic the Hedgehog for “It can run fast.”
Alex is working through Spelling You See, Level A. It’s great spelling and handwriting practice. Because it’s a little easy for him now, we only do every other page.
Alex has thoroughly enjoyed the Burgess books this year! I’ve enjoyed these books, as well. It’s a great time to snuggle with Alex on the couch under a cozy blanket, sharing a story together. My little boy is getting bigger, and he’s not so interested in snuggling anymore…but Burgess time? That’s SNUGGLE time!
We recently finished reading Jerry Muskrat, and we truly enjoyed that book. I love the character traits, the silly personalities, and the good moral lessons found in these books. I look forward to reading them again with Max in a few years!
We read about Thomas Edison. One of his most famous inventions was the lightbulb. For artistic expression, Alex drew a lightbulb. Then he started with yellow paint and painted an outline around the lightbult. We then added a bit of white paint to the yellow, drawing another outline. We continued to add a little white paint until the whole page was filled with shades of yellow. What a fun way to learn about creating shades of a color!
It’s kind of hard to separate art and history, as the art projects often go along with the history. In this art project, Alex made a camouflage tent while learning about Douglas MacArthur.
We played a happy face/sad face game when learning about the US flag and what it means to be a good citizen. I would call out a example, and he would show me his happy face if it was something a good citizen does, or he would show me his sad face if it was an example of bad citizenship.
Alex is very interested in maps right now. I found some maps on Google Images, printed a world map and a US map, and we have these laminated back-to-back so that Alex can refer to them any time a place is mentioned in our readings. This map comes out during dinner, during school work, during play…he LOVES to find places on the maps!
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