Homeschool Recap: Beyond Little Hearts Unit 8 & More!
Do you ever feel like some weeks are a breath of fresh air in your homeschool journey? This was one of those weeks for us. I’m writing this post several weeks after-the-fact and still the good memories stand out. I’m not so sure what made it seem so great at the time, other than our experiments/activities worked and were super easy. That could be it, lol!
Map activity from HOD using compass rose.
History: We’ve made it work! The adjustments I talked about in the last post really did the trick. I feel sort of sad that we’ve cut out so much of the reading. However, my kids are enjoying the short summarized version I’m doing and are retaining the info from day to day as we discuss it at other times. My little guy especially loved the focus on activities on Day 2. My Story is always a hit and he was super excited that our new plan gives us one more day each week with it.
Science: Real Science Odyssey is going very well. It is definitely the right for my son’s learning style and my teaching style. It is so easy to speed up, slow down, add extra books or activities to our lessons. It is just enough structure to keep things moving and help me see the general plan. I’ve been able to pick up several books from Master Books via our library to use along with our Bibles and show the hand of the Creator in our science lessons. I can’t deny that it is a bit of work to gather books and such, but it isn’t hard and the dividends of a science-happy little guy are worth it. We wrapped up our study of the water cycle this week with a large diagram. It was so wonderful to consider how God sustains His creation with only such a small percentage of the Earth’s water being drinkable. I never realized how little fresh water (by percentage) we have available to use. Thank you for the water cycle, Lord! Our next science topic was the layers of the earth. Here are couple things we did to illustrate a cross-section of the earth. The pizza was a hit, except the kids thought the orange cheese was weird 🙂 . 
Math: My little guy is eagerly awaiting the multiplication chapter in our Singapore book. We’re almost there! This week was his second favorite topic – measurement! One thing I have found after scanning our Singapore books for the year is that there isn’t really coverage of telling time. This week, we started adding in online games and reviews (telling time) from mathplayground.com, splashmath.com and ixl.com. We also got out our little “Judy” clock to do some practice.
Literature: As I mentioned in previous posts, the HOD recommendations for literature (both read alouds and student reading) were not received well. I’ve found a way to get the emerging readers in here and there, however, I’ve not been able to make the books from the Storytime box work. Here are the books I checked out to cover our storytime time for a few weeks (from Memoria Press suggestions):
- Johnny Appleseed by Reeve Lindbergh
- McElligot’s Pool by Dr. Seuss
- The Monkey and the Crocodile by Paul Galdone
- The Ant and the Elephant by Bill Peet
- One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey
- Cinderella by Marcia Brown
- A Picture Book of Amelia Earhart by David A. Adler
- Wee Gillis by Munro Leaf
