Beyond Unit 5 (Alex)

(Still playing catch-up.  We did this unit in January 2015.)

 

We read about Love Bradford, a little girl who came to Amsterdam on the ship.  Her father was unable to make the initial trip, and she lived with a Dutch family for quite some time while waiting for her father to make the journey to America.

We learned what Dutch homes looked like, and we learned how the houses leaned to the side.  We learned how beds were tucked into the kitchen walls.  We compared Dutch houses with our own homes. 

I love how each day’s Bible Study box has a few questions to help children think about the meaning of the verse & to connect that verse with both the history lesson and their own lives.  Each Day 5 includes a separate Bible passage and study questions.

I’ve been sharing weekly details most of the time, but I don’t want to do that every week in case I give away too much of the details of the guide.  I would never want to overshare so much that I keep someone from buying the guide, so every few weeks, I’m going to “not share”!

This weeks’ grammar lesson was about recognizing and writing ‘asking sentences’, otherwise known as questions.

This week’s spelling words had the short ‘u’ sound.

Still pluggin’ away at Singapore 1st grade

We looked at a globe and explored how much of the world is covered with water.  We named the 5 oceans, and we talked about why most major cities were built near the ocean or large bodies of water.

We’re occasionally using some of the history notebooking pages found in the Facebook group, and Alex labeled the oceans on this unit’s page.

We chose A Lion To Guard Us as our adventure book for storytime!  This was a wonderful read, and all three kids enjoyed listening to this story.  I love how it turned into a sweet time of snuggling and reading to all three of my kiddos each afternoon!

This week’s poem was “Song For A Little House”.  Alex used it as copywork, and he illustrated the poem at the end of the week. 

We read about Love Brewster, patiently waiting for her father to come.  She was given a beautiful tulip plant to raise while she waited.

For artistic expression this week, Alex cut a flower pot from brown paper and a tulip from pink paper.  He glued the tulip on a green popsicle stick, and we cut a slit in the blue paper along the top of the flowerpot.  He could make his flower grow.  (Jensyn loved this, and she claimed it as her own later!)

We talked about how light moves in waves through space, and we compared it to waves of water.  It’s been too long for me to remember clearly, but we didn’t exactly follow the book’s directions.  It may have been an activity suggested in the science book, rather than the one in the HOD guide?



We usually do two science days each unit, but I try not to share everything.  First of all, I don’t always take pictures.  Secondly, I don’t want to share it ALL…I just want to remember some of what we did & give you, the reader, a glimpse into what Beyond is all about!
 

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Beyond Unit 4 (Alex)

(I am trying to get caught up!  We did Unit 4 in January, and it’s now March 16th.  You’re going to be bombarded with posts in the next few weeks, because I am determined to get through it all!)

This is my typical view during school time…3 kids busily working on something.  That something may be school work, a coloring page, a puzzle, or slicing paper into teeny-tiny pieces (Jensyn!).

This unit’s theme was the Pilgrims leaving England for Holland.  They encountered many challenges in leaving England!  We learned about canals instead of streets, windmills, storks, and dikes.  We made our own playdough dike to show how it kept the water out of Holland. (I dropped this dish the next day, shattering it to itty-bitty pieces.  It was one of my favorite casserole dishes!)
 

  I don’t have a picture, but we added “Pilgrims in Holland, 1608” to our timeline folder.

The Bible verse for this unit is Matthew 16: 19 – 21.  In the picture below, Alex is reading his Bible verse aloud.

This year, we’ve used a file in the Facebook group to print out all of the Bible verses.  I then cut & laminated them, and we’re adding each verse to a binder ring.  This way, all the verses are handy for review purposes.

Day 5’s Bible study reminded us to think of others before thinking of ourselves.  We want to have a heart that desires to please God and serve others. 


Day 5’s grammar assignment was to read several statements that I wrote on the white board.  Alex then had to find the subject and the predicate in each sentence.

 
Alex loves words.  He won’t admit it, but he has a large vocabulary.  He catches on to new words quickly, and he’s often trying out new words as he converses with us.  He enjoys doing a written test (or copying his words) each day, so he had several pages like this throughout the week:

 


a quick peek at where we were in Singapore 1…

We read about the city of Amsterdam and the way it looked like it was floating in the water.  We found it on the globe.  We also discussed the horizon and directional words (north, south, west, east) and using a compass.

We finished up Gladys Aylward’s story.  What a wonderful, yet intense book and adventure!  Other than changing a few words (I believe the word prostitute –or something to that effect – was used to describe a setting that made Gladys uncomfortable, and I wasn’t about to explain that to my 7 year old) , I read the story ‘as is’.  I think it was good for Alex to be aware of what it means to serve Christ as a missionary.  As I write this on March 17th, Alex *still* mentions Gladys and her adventures from time to time.  I know this story has stuck with him!

We also watched the Torchlighters video of Gladys Aylward upon completing the book.  It is MUCH more child-friendly, although it only tells a small fraction of Gladys’ story.  It was a nice way to wrap up our biography reading!

This week’s poem was entitled Daybreak.  We’re continuing to read the poem each day, using it as copywork each day, and then have Alex illustrate the poem at the end of the week.  We printed & coil bound the poems at the beginning of the school year so Alex can have his completed poetry book as a keepsake if he’d like.

This week’s art project was to make barn doors from a sheet of red construction paper.  Alex had to listen to instructions to learn how to properly fold the paper and use white crayon to draw the Xs on the barn doors.  After that, he had to copy his Bible verse and paste it inside the barn.  (The barn goes along with Day 5’s Bible study.)

After reading about how the Dutch captain’s ship got a hole in it and almost sank, we learned about how surface tension holds up ships on the ocean.  We then did our own experiments with a dropper bottle and a penny to see how many drops of water we could fit on the penny.


 

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Beyond Unit 3 (Alex)

(I am trying to get caught up!  We’re currently on Unit 11.  We did Unit 3 around Christmas, and it’s now March 16th.  You’re going to be bombarded with posts in the next few weeks, because I am determined to get through it all!)

Alex wasn’t letting me take pictures for a while, and it’s important to me to respect his wishes on that, so we have some weeks that are very lacking in pictures.  This is one of those weeks

In Unit 3, we read about trouble with King James in England.  We learned how the Pilgrims were forbidden to worship outside of King James’ church.  They were caught worshipping in a barn.  The men were put in jail. 

We played a really fun, active dice game to see if we’d end up in King James’ court or in prison.  Each number on the die stood for a different action (“Go to King James’ court – take one step forward”  -OR- “Put God before the King – take 2 steps back”)  We played this game again and again!

This week’s Bible verse was Romans 12: 9 – 10.  Again, we practice in fun ways like galloping until Mom says ‘freeze’,  then reciting the verse…over and over again

The Friday Bible study helped us think about what to do if someone hurts you.

This week’s grammar concept was subject and predicate.  We made 5 cards with a subject and 5 cards with a predicate.  Then we mixed and matched to make silly (but complete!) sentences.  Alex had a lot of fun with this!

  

I went through a phase of not taking many pictures!  We were still working through Singapore 1A, going slightly faster than Beyond’s schedule.

We read about Magellan’s route, discussing how the world is round and not flat.  We looked at a globe, looked at the horizon, and looked at a map in one of Alex’s history books.

  continuing to read Gladys Aylward

We read a poem called Uphill aloud together each day.  Alex used it as copywork and draw a picture of the poem. 

We didn’t do it.  Art is at the bottom of my importance list, and since it was Christmas-time, we had plenty to keep us busy. It was meant to be a picture of a pretty, trailing vine on a stone wall…remiscent of the garden walls at the Brewster family’s inn.

We read about Queen Anne admiring the Brewster’s garden, so for science we learned about bees and pollination.  We used crushed crackers to show how bees spread pollen.

 

We also had a science lesson about light and darkness, using black paper, white paper, and a flashlight.  It went along with the history reading about the Pilgrims meeting in the dark to make it harder for King James’ soldiers to spot them.

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