Our Week Ahead - 18 August 2012

This week will be a complete-n-catch up week with history and everything else is as per normal, whatever that means ☺


SOTW4:
We've placed about 12 or more weeks of time line figures - think history review, in our timeline books  today  and we hope to the relevant time line figures for our composer of the term studies and artist study placed in on Friday.  We do like Sonlight's book of time and the children enjoy flicking back through the keep sake they are making.

Science/ Nature Studies:
Our science of late has been focused around the lambs, and so the children haven't done any work with human anatomy. I have placed the lab set for human anatomy out in full view but no one is interested enough to delve into it, right now that is. Dealing with lamb formula and  their wet feet is much more interesting!

Science reading - and indepth science dialogue with DH, continues though.

Math & Language Arts
We are continuing on with our 'next' lessons in each area of study. 
I have got Daisy pausing for reflection on division over at Khan Academy.
And she has just started level 3 of WWE (happy smile).
Bobs is doing so well with WWS with little - to no, input from me.

Art:
Art and craft is coming along champion ☺ Daisy wants to carry on practising her water colour technics and Bobs is crafting world war scenes - think hours of painting and assembling teeny-tiny figures, and we are trying to resurrect a more regular sketching time during the week.

History Read Aloud:

In the evenings we're reading aloud Days of Terror by Barbara Smucker (details the early years - in one Ukrainian based family, after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.)

Readers for Bobs:
The Good Master by Kate Seredy (SL 7)
The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy
And he's hoping, absolutely, that the next Robot Wars book will arrive from book depository.

Readers for Daisy:
Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright  (SL 4) and a huge pile of picture books!!
 One of the picture books in Daisy's pile is a really lovely New Zealand history story:  Le Quesnoy: The Story of the Town New Zealand Saved by Glyn Harper.
 DH & I have both enjoyed reading this delightfully relayed tale of NZ's history in WW1.

The story in a nutshell:
Le Quesnoy (pronounced Leck con wah) is a town in northern France. It is surrounded by high walls and deep trenches. In World War I it was occupied by the German army for four long years. In November 1918 the town was liberated by soldiers from far-away New Zealand. Because these men used a bit of kiwi ingenuity they were able to take the town back without a single civilian life being lost. This has become one of the most famous stories in New Zealand military history and the relationship between Le Quesnoy and New Zealand continues to this day. This book tells the story of Le Quesnoy's liberation through the eyes of a child living in the town at the time. Stunning watercolour illustrations and simple language make this an ANZAC picture book that young readers will be able to imaginatively engage with.

We purchased our copy at a local book supplier.

Time Line - Sonlight Book of Time

Since it's our last week of scheduled learning, you know the 5 weeks on - 1 week off run we do, I've got the next week set up to be our tidy-up-and-complete-various-things week.

One thing we like to do during week 5 on our schedule is to work some more on our Sonlight Book(s) of Time.

We've got all the timeline figures, that match up with the previous 5 weeks of our SOTW 3 readings, cut out and stored in a snap lock bag - then we'll go through a quick verbal review of each figure as we place them in our books.

Waitangi Day ~ February 6 ~ New Zealand

Notebooking Pages

We are planning to use some of our own notebooking pages for when Waitangi Day comes around again, and also for written narrations while we are read SOTW3 Chapter 41, New Zealand and Her Rulers.

We've stored our pages over at HSlaunch ...

Waitangi Day Notebooking Pages

Our History Timeline Book ~ Sonlight Book of Time

We typed a similar post on the Sonlight Forums a small while back, and for those that are not subscribers, we'll reshare those ideas here.
Here is the approach we used, and have been using since Bobbi & Daisy were quite young.

We'd always start our history timeline lessons, when they were younger, with reviewing our timeline books, 'This is where you are, here's Adam, here's Jesus Christ, now let's find XYZ ".

Verbalising the detail of the time when 'XYZ lived' and getting the Dc to note was it BC or AD.

We have limited 'spare/free' wall space so we use as an initial reference a pre-made time line book, The Timechart History of the World . This is concertina & folds out very looooong once fully opened.

The children delight in pulling this book out to use, often!!

We also use the Sonlight Book of Time and reference between these 2 books when placing the timeline figures in our SL books of time. (A timeline version much like "Where's Wally" .)

This system works very well for us, but is not such an instant visual option as a wall or large board timeline.

The Sonlight Book of Time has become a 'living' book the children are crafting, not just a plonk-the-sticker-in-&-shut-the-book, sort of project, until next time.

They quickly grasp that Sonlight's Book of Time is our exploded picture format and relates to a selected small pocket of history we may be looking at on our Time Line Chart.

(We started the SL B.o.T with Sonlight Core K (C) using 'stickers' of Bobbi and Daisy, us, & their grandparents. Including birth & death, marriage dates and the year that those of us gave our lives to Christ.

We then added Adam, & Jesus Christ, & we've been good to go since then!

I have to say, we really like these Sonlight Time Line books and the children have one each. At this stage we do not colour in the figures but are waiting until, perhaps, if they wish to, our next round through history.)

We use Home School in the Woods blackline stickers, sold here through Sonlight , to go with each Core as well as sourcing any extra figures we may need for out different history spine, Story of the World, and a history of science study off History Through the Ages C/Ds .

Scroll down and be sure to collect the sample figures listed on the left hand side bar.
(We use the figures on these C/D's for a quite of things, lap~note pages, copywork, notebooking & projects for many subjects.)

We're also looking forward to using the Australian New Zealand History figure of Janette's C/D (detailed in an previous post).

Xzavan gave a very excellent idea on the Sonlight forums; Paper clip the pre-cut figures to the week they are listed on Sonlights schedule. This way you don’t forget to add/use them.

We’ve created a variant of her idea by waiting until the 6th week of our learning schedule and add any relevant figures then which is a good time to verbally review the history portion or person they represent.

New Zealand & Australian History

Story & Clip Art Disc

I've been looking for a story based text to use for our NZ/Aust history study and ordered Janette Inghams developing text,
Our Australian Story, (click on free sample narrative to read an excerpt),
along with her
Historical & Timeline Figures (Part 1)C/D - The First 100 Years.

This is exactly what I've been looking for. :-)

A living story format for our history spine, and, the figures on the C/D tie in beautifully with the homeschool in the woods figures we've used to date.

The beauty is though, that Janette has included more than just people & places & events figures on the C/D - it also has flora & fauna!!

We'll use this C/D alongside the relevant history in Story of the World Vol. 2 then Story of the World Vol. 3 etc..

Our colour-in Daisy is going to be one happy lass!

Here are the links to; Janette's blog (for some of the ideas she has listed of how to use the figures - the lesson plan link does not open) and her purchasing site.

Janette mentioned via email ...
"I hope you enjoy the first 3 stories.
(me:  We are enjoying these first 3 stories!!
 In the book Janette details the exact figures on each page to read/colour and enjoy alongside the story styled text you are reading.
And, the story starts with the 'creation' of our wonderful southern lands).
Janette wrote on to say ....
The book continues along those lines, with questions etc to choose from at the end of each section. I think I mentioned that the book also comes with an additional page of New Zealand pictures, and tells how Australia first got in touch with New Zealand so to speak."