What We're Learning Lately

I thought I would put up a quick post sharing some of the things we are studying or reading right now.

In family studies we've been learning the 10th Article of Faith, singing hymns we already know, and yesterday finished our study of artist Bev Doolittle. We also have "Who's Your Hero?" Book of Mormon Stories Applied to Children in our morning basket now. The fun cartoon illustrations capture even my younger boys' attention. Today was talking about courage and the story of Abinadi. We're up to Idaho in our 50 states study and the kids can also sing the 50 States song up to that point. We've been doing grammar together with Mad Libs and Ruth Heller's World of Language books. We've finished half of our first poetry book, A Child's First Book of Poems. We're on chapter five of our civics book, The Land of Fair Play. Our Ohio history story book about animals, Critters, Flitters, and Spitters, has been just okay, not great. We'll keep going with it for now but I've also pulled a new book into our basket that we use sometimes instead. That book is Nature Anatomy: The Curious Parts & Pieces of the Natural World by Julia Rothman. It is beautiful and interesting in one.

Makayla is finishing Apologia Biology Module 10 this week about ecosystems. She's measuring angles in Geometry. Veterinary science has her comparing cattle and horses. She is shadowing a local veterinarian this weekend for a live presentation she'll do in her online class. In writing she's learning to write a persuasive essay. Makayla's current literature title is One Second After, a fascinating and all to realistic book about life after the collapse of society due to EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) attacks. In history this week she's learning about the major points of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to set the stage for her Medieval times study and the Crusades. One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and Beowulf are up next in her reading. Her third science course (after Veterinary medicine and biology) is herpetology. She's been learning about brumation in bearded dragons, as one of her beardies is brumating, right on schedule for her age apparently.

The rest of the kids decided to linger in King Arthur's stories this week. At the end of last week we did a discussion about the story arc of a narrative story (we used Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone). Then I introduced the idea of a framed narrative, where there is an overarching story but also short stories within that. We had reached the point in our King Arthur book where we had followed out the main narrative so this week we're in some of the shorter stories within the story. For example we read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Next week they will move into One Thousand and One Arabian Nights as well (fewer stories than Makayla). This book is also a framed narrative. You have the story of Sherazade trying to avoid being killed by telling stories. Then you have the stories themselves. 

This Thursday we're dissecting owl pellets for nature study. Why? It just seemed appropriate because we've had a lot of puke happening at our house with a sick baby, owl pellets are owl puke, and we read a cute book about an owl from the library. We're going to try to put a few skeletons together from the pellets and see what we find.

Math for younger kids is a mix of counting, adding, adding with place value, rounding, estimation, division, parallel and perpendicular lines, and adding decimals.

Literature is everything from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to Ranger's Apprentice, the One and Only Ivan, and The Sheriffs of Savage Wells (that would be mine).

Handwriting for Caleb this week showed me we may need to pull out our Peterson Directed Handwriting chants. He's drawing letters pretty well - but without an example in front of him he draws half of them backward! Neat and tidy, but backward. He loved using our large dry erase board to write them though.

Reading for Oliver is stepping along consistently. He's learned the first job of silent E, the consonant team 'wh', and this week is reading Skunk Hotel to me for lesson 20. Next is making silent e words plural.

Well, my time is up but that is a whirlwind tour of topics we're learning about this week! October is coming quickly. I'm not quite sure how that is possible, but my calendar assures me it is.