We rowed Daniel's Duck this week. The kids enjoyed learning about Tennessee, the seasons and log cabin life. They loved the activity where we carved soap.
This was Ian's soap fish. He was so careful with the carving. He was also willing to get a little help. Henry destroyed his bar of soap but had a great time doing it. Sophie had a melt down when hers didn't go as easily as she wanted, and refused to let me help her, so she had to cool off in her room. Henry ended up stealing her bar of soap and breaking it into small pieces so Ian's carving is the only one that survived. We tried another bar of soap with Sophie but it wasn't the soft Ivory Soap so it was too hard to carve. Maybe the next time I remember to buy some Ivory soap we will give it another go. I started Story of the World with Sophie this week. I broke down and bought the CD's and Activity book which I am very glad I did. We usually listen to the section on the CD and then read other library books that go along with the topic. This week just went through the introduction. We discussed "What is History?" and "Archeology". Sophie at first balked at the idea of adding more school into our day. (This is a usual reaction which is why I add things to the schedule one thing at a time) We did History 3 times this week and by the 3rd time she didn't resist me so this is a good start. She really enjoyed the lessons once we got started each day. Plus it helped to tell her we were going to read a Magic School Bus book as part of the lesson.
To go along with our studies we created a wall timeline that we will continue to add to as we go.
I hope the picture is somewhat clear. We put the timeline down the narrow hall. It was hard to take a picture of the whole thing. We just strung string between two thumb tacks. One string/row for each time period. We added a few events to the timeline to give Sophie and idea of what we would be doing. These are just index cards with a picture and Sophie wrote a short description on them.We also made a short timeline just to show Sophie's history. And I printed out a few photos to go along with it. She loved the day we did this because we looked through our scrapbooks and talked about when Sophie hit each milestone.
This has been what we have done for formal schooling this week. We always have a bunch of other things that we learn and study about. We have read extensively about birds and we are also reading a lot of alphabet books with Ian working on letter recognition. Sophie learned how to sew up a little rip in one of her stuffed animals. Henry just sits through everything and loves to feel like he is a part of everything.
All the kids are learning some sign language. We get new Signing Time DVDs at the library each week and usually end up watching one every day. Henry is communicating so much better now. It is always so cute to see him make the signs for things.
Once we get settled into doing history maybe I will start Math or First Language Lessons. But for now this is enough for us for now.
