Our First Week of School

Preparing Hearts For His Glory Unit 14

{Plus Free Printable To-Do List}

Monday morning was our first day back at school for the new school year!  Yay for new beginnings! As I wrote about yesterday, the night before our new school year, I made up a new schedule for each of the kids.  They check off each of their boxes each day.  The boxes consist of chores, independent work, school with mom, music practice, quiet time to do a hobby or art, and their meals.  At the end of the week, each of them have the chance to earn a choice for our “Fun Friday” family fun night.  One can choose dinner, one our dessert, and the other our “fun” thing which is either a movie or a game.

 

I want to start off by saying again how much I LOVE Heart of Dakota’s, “Preparing Hearts for His Glory”.  We think the world of it and their history and Bible portion is absolutely fantastic.  I like that each part and each lesson is not too big of a bite for each child.  They can complete the work without feeling overwhelmed, and yet it is goes deep.  I should note that I am not currently using it exactly as written.  We do so many add ins that I freely delete extras that are listed in the teacher’s manual if I feel that it is not the right fit for my children.  I started doing this ever since we got the dyslexia diagnosis for my now 10 year old.  If something seems like too much or not a good fit for him – we replace it with something more appropriate.  We are not currently using their science at all because we are about to start our co-op which uses Apologia.

 

We started out our school day with the All About Me page that I created.  (These worksheets are offered as a FREE download on this website by joining our email list!)  This is just a fun sheet to break back into the school year.  I plan to use one on the first day and one on the last to compare answers, handwriting, and drawings.  It is fun to keep these in the kid’s portfolio to see how they answer the questions differently from year to year.

 

In the mornings, we do chores and independent work.  So, the bigger kids work on math that I circled in their workbook (review and practice questions), Phonetic Zoo, Read Naturally (on the iPad), CLE Language arts (for our 3rd grader), and Reading a book of their choice for 15-20 minutes.

 

After lunch we get started on Preparing Hearts for His Glory by starting in the History Box and moving through each box until we have completed the left page.  This week we learned about India, China, The Silk Road, how silk is made, silk moth’s, and missionaries: Amy Carmichael and Hudson Taylor.  We also learned about character traits and attitudes such as compassion, sacrifice and faith.

 

The kids were able to draw a silk moth, write the steps of how silk is made, sketch a map of the silk road and draw a panda bear.  I love how the lessons all flow together.  I feel the kids are retaining more because while they are learning about the history of the ancient countries they are also learning about certain things which make them famous.  On top of that, they add in the missionary studies which truly ministered to me.  The chapter on servanthood and the chapter on faith both really stood out to me.  The kids and I were able to have some really meaningful discussions on what it is to follow Jesus.  We learned about two missionaries – one who served in India and the other in China.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the afternoon our son who has developmental delays and autism works with me on his math and we use the reading program, Reading Eggs, to help him with phonics.

 

We also use this time to work through the Easy Grammar Grade 4 lesson for my 10 year old.  He is learning a list of prepositions this week.  It has been a good week and we finished with a game of bingo with both the 5th grader and 3rd grader (I should say “preposition bingo”) which was included with the Easy Grammar book.  When our 3rd grader finishes her work, she plays an iPad game which helps with math facts and math drills.  They finish their day with writing in a journal something they learned about that week.

 

 

  

 

 

 

Books we are reading:

Hero Tales by Dave & Neta Jackson

A Child’s History of the World by V.M. Hillyer

Grandpa’s Box by Starr Meade

Curriculum:

World History/Bible/Geography/LA: HOD Preparing Hearts for His Glory

CLE Math: 409, 207, 108

LA: CLE & Easy Grammar

Spelling: Phonetic Zoo (5th grader)

Reading: Read Naturally (5th grader)

Reading: Reading Eggs (Special Needs 7th grader)

 

 

Feel free to download a copy of our to-do list: