Homeschool Recap: Beyond Little Hearts Unit 7 & More!
My goal in posting this week-by-week summaries is to help other mommas see the type of activities in HOD Beyond guide to determine if this curriculum to be a fit in your home. Having said that, I do not list out every little thing we do. Please feel free to comment below with the type of stuff you’d like me to share to make this more effective in helping you.
History: If you happened to catch my YouTube video about how I’m plotting our course in history this year, then you know I sketch out 7 weeks at a time. So as this was the last week planned on our schedule, it was time to sit down and plan out through Week 14. As I have posted about already, I knew a change was in the works for the history readings. I’ve decided to try the following plan over the next 7 weeks to see how we like it:
Day 1 – Read the summary/key ideas from the history boxes on Days 1-4. Do either the geography box and history activity.
Day 2 – Do the coloring page, Draw Write Now activity (provided by the wonderful moms in the Beyond Facebook group) or artistic expression box in the guide while I review Day 1 reading with video, picture books, or pics online.
Days 3-5 – Do a lesson in My Story from Master Books.
The Water Cycle hands-on visual.
Science: We wrapped up the topic of water by discussing the water cycle. Science moved to the living room floor this week to cure some possible routine-boredom squrimies. We did have to move to the kitchen to use the stove to take water from solid ice, to liquid water to steam and back to water again. But that little move to the living room for science readings and visual illustrations was super helpful. We’ll keep science in the living room for a few weeks and then change it up again when the squirms return. I introduced our next topic, wind/air, by letting the kids pick out experiments from the Usborne book, Science with Air. They chose making airplanes, a paper raft race and the jumping coin on a bottle trick. These activities were all so fun and really demonstrated the applicable science well.
Math: Just in case you missed it from other posts, we are actually a year ahead in math according the HOD. Since our level of Singapore (Level 2) is covered in the Bigger Hearts for His Glory guide, that is where I find all our math activities and assignments. I just can’t say enough about how much I love what HOD and Singapore has done for us in the math department. Praise the Lord! Yay and yay again! Math is met with SMILES! What!? Little dude knows it will be fast and fun and no longer dreads math! I was hesitant on getting a whole other guide just to use it for math this year, but I am SO glad I did and would highly recommend you doing the same if you find yourself in a different math level. I wish HOD continued to provide these simple math lessons through the Singapore levels, but alas, Bigger is the last guide they provide them. So, next year looks like we’ll be using the Home Instructor’s Guide. Please offer any suggestions if you’ve used the HIG after having HOD’s wonderful plans. Just to give you an idea of the work at this point in the year, here was my son’s assignment one day this week.
Language Arts: The addition of one extra day per week for LA is working very well! Since I am just adding time and not overall work/content, some times we finish all I want in two days as originally planned. But having this extra day has helped us keep LA lessons to about 10-15 minutes which is just perfect for us now. Adding in BJU English 2 has been a relatively seamless transition. We do the exercises orally and, with the exception of trying out their writing lessons occasionally, it isn’t adding on extra written work.
Reading: This year is not going at all how I expected in reading. I really thought my son would love the suggestions from HOD. I have found that I have to do alot of rotating, give alot of variety and, just like science, change the scenery often. This week I let him choose books from the library that he wanted to read. I was pleasantly surprised that he had some ideas at the ready – car books! So, momma got all the books about engines and race cars that I could find and he happily read them to me. When it was time to go back the BJU Press reader and books that I chose, there was no complaint…..this time ;).
