Friday, January 8, 2010

What We Have Been Studying Lately

I thought for those that are interested I would give a recap of some of the things we having been doing lately:

Science
We only have 4 more chapters in Flying Creatures Zoology book so we decided to take a couple weeks off from it and do a lapbook on Oceans. We've just started but Grace doesn't really like it. Mainly because she really doesn't like working independently, which is why I chose to do this now. She needs to start working on her own and learning how to find answers out on her own.

History
Just finished reading The Cabin Faced West and about to start The Sign of the Beaver. Kind of learning about Indians and Settlers going out west. Grace is reading and narrating a book about Sequoyah and the Cherokee Alaphabet.

Reading
Grace has been reading through the Warrior Series and about to finishe the first Percy Jacson book.

Geography
Reading The Family Under the Bridge to learn about Paris, France as well as a travel book I have about France. Also some educational games on kidzui.

Math
Review pages daily of times tables and large digit subtraction and addition as well as long division and multiplication. Also fraction. Finishing up Making Math Meaningful and soon moving on to Life with Fred - Fractions.

Language Arts
Still working on spelling, context clues, cursive, writing, grammar worksheets, and reading. Also use spellingcity.com.

Bible
Almost finished with The Children's Story Bible by Catherin Voss. Loved it. Moving on to Greenleaf Guide to the OT. Also doing a Bible study about the book of Proverbs.

Art
Grace has many drawing books that we work through as well as other medias that we do periodically. She is learning crocheting at her handicrafts class. We also learn a new artist through a co-op once a month at my house.

Music
Grace attends chorus at Trinity and we learn about one composer a month through the co-op at my house.

Drama
Just start working on The Music Man.

5 comments:

Bronwyn said...

It looks like you are doing lots of interesting things. We read The Sign of the Beaver a couple of years ago and just loved it. We also have the movie and it is really good as well.

Dan said...

I was happy to discover your blog today. I was unable to find a contact link. I hope it's OK that I'm contacting you through a public comment.

I see that you are using Spelling City. I've also developed an educational program for Windows called SpellQuizzer that helps children learn their spelling and vocabulary words. It really helped my children with their weekly spelling lists.

- SpellingCity is indeed an excellent free tool for teachers and parents. But there are some advantages that SpellQuizzer offers over SpellingCity.com:

- SpellQuizzer doesn't require an open Internet connection. Many homeschoolers prefer not to have their young children working on a computer with an open Internet connection due to all the undesirable material that is on the Internet. With SpellQuizzer there is no need to expose children to the world wide web.

- SpellingCity.com doesn't have recordings of all the words one might wish to practice. For those it does have the sentences used aren't personalized. With SpellQuizzer you can make spelling lists for literally any words (or even facts) you wish your child to practice with. The recordings you make are in your voice rather than a stranger's. And you can personalize the recordings and even make them funny with an amusing sentence or funny voice. I always try to throw in some funny ones for my daughters such as "Handsome: Your daddy is the most handsome man on earth." That one got snickers. :-)

- SpellingCity.com may well be around for ever. Or it may go down for good tomorrow. There's no way to know for certain. A person who purchases a license for SpellQuizzer has the software for life whether I stay in business or not.

As I said, SpellingCity.com is an excellent free resource and I don't mean to attack it in any way with what I've said above. I'm only pointing out reasons one might prefer a product like SpellQuizzer. I would appreciate your reviewing SpellQuizzer in Cabin In The Woods. If you would like to host a giveaway for one of your readers I'd be happy to provide a free license to the winner. You can learn more about the program at http://www.SpellQuizzer.com. There's a video demo you can watch at http://www.spellquizzer.com/SpellQuizzer-Demo.htm and a community site where SpellQuizzer users can share their spelling lists with one another (http://www.SpellQuizzer.com/Community).. Finally, there's a page targeted to homeschooling families at http://www.spellquizzer.com/spelling-software-for-homeschoolers.htm. I'd be happy to send you a complimentary license for the software. Please let me know if you are interested.

Thank you very much!

Dan Hite
TedCo Software
http://www.SpellQuizzer.com

Catherine said...

Thanks for visiting my blog!! Sounds like ya'll have a good plan going. Enjoy.

Tonya Gunn said...

Looks like I will be putting The Cabin Faced West on our list. Thank you for sharing. It is nice to read about what other homeschoolers are doing. Thank you for visiting my blog as well. Warm wishes, Tonya

Leslie said...

Looks like y'all are doing lots of fun stuff. The composer a month co-op sounds neat. Can you share more about how you are doing this? Lots of details for someone who is musically challenged. :-)

Blessings
Leslie