Learning with the Landes Family: Week Four

Emotions were running on all cylinders this week. Doesn't help that the prego hormones amplify an already stress ridden situation. But like always, we motored through and ended up having a much more pleasant end to our week than beginning. Things don't always go so dandy. I have come to accept that fact. I don't have to like it, but I do recognize the reality of it. Anyway, here are the more successful moments from our week.

Bible

This week we continued our study in the Book of Matthew. Our memory verse this week was Matthew 1:23 "The virgin Mary will be with child and will give birth to a son whose name will be Immanuel, which means God with us." Isaac and Julia had some good questions for discussion, like what does virgin mean. Never fear all you parents out there. I tackled this one! Actually, Gabe and I have already had our initial talks with the kids about sex. (if you are curious, we used these books as guides) So it was easy to explain what a virgin is and why Mary's pregnancy with Jesus was so spectacular and miraculous. We also spent time talking about Immanuel and the significance of God walking this Earth in human form. Wow! He didn't leave us. He came to rescue us. I love Him so.

We also read about Harriet Tubman in Hero Tales. This led to a lot of questions and discussions about slavery. After Harriet Tubman gained her freedom she continually went back to help others escape to their freedom through the Underground Railroad. One of the discussion questions was "Why do you think Harriet risked going back to help others once she had reached freedom?" We had a great discussion about how this is a wonderful example of how God wants us to view our freedom in Christ. We should want so badly for others to experience this same freedom that we would put ourselves in "uncomfortable" situations too. We also talked about the character traits of compassion, perseverance, and joy. Interesting that we discussed these three traits during a week full of strife. I love the way the Lord works!

compassion - bearing someone else's burden as if it were your own

joy - a gift from God, a taste of what it will be like in heaven

perseverance -continuing to do what is right, even when you get tired or run into problems

Geography

We are still studying North America and more specifically the U.S.A. The kids learned a lot about the states last year through the MFW Adventures curriculum. So this week as we reviewed state names and locations, it was fun. We read about the differing landscapes across America and the variety of animals that can be found in our country. We ended our week of study on the U.S.A. with an American feast.... grilled hamburgers, lemonade, and apple pie! I totally had the intentions of letting the kids make their own apple pie, but we ran out of time and went with a pre-made.It was so yummy!

Science

We continued our lessons on forests this week focusing on Temperate forests: deciduous and coniferous. We also learned more about the canopy and forest floor. This week I really wanted to incorporate the layers of a forest project that I mentioned last week, but alas we ran out of time and didn't get it done this week either. Slacker!!! Just kidding. Sometimes we can extend our learning through projects and sometimes it just doesn't work out. No worries!

Music/Art

This week's song is original to America, a well known children's song about a certain spider. Can you guess? Yes indeed it was the Eentsy Weensty Spider. You should have seen the embarrassed look on my 3rd grade son's face when I turned that song on. He is all about doing "grown up" things and this was definitely not that. My 3 year old joined us for music, so I just turned it into a time for my big kids to teach their little brother the movements to this song. That was okay with them. Teaching it is much more of a big kid thing to do. Ha!

We read about the Navajo Indians this week, so one of our art projects was to do a sand painting. It was a whole bunch of messy fun! The kids really enjoyed doing this.

Isaac made a desert scene

then he added his name in cursive

Julia made a rainbow

And Caleb made...??? He just had fun with it!!

We also got our our Draw Write Now books. I let the kids browse the books to find inspiration. They were to draw a picture and write a short story to go along with it on the back. They did a great job at this. I enjoyed their stories.

Read Aloud

Have I mentioned how much we are enjoying Kingdom Tales?We finished the first part this week and will take a break for a couple of weeks to read another read aloud. The kids do not want to take a break and neither do I. That's how fascinating the Kingdom Tales book is.

Poetry

We read and learned about the poem The Snake by Janet Lawler. Our discussion this week focused on alliteration and rhyme. The kids read this poem aloud Friday night during our weekly school presentation. If I had the energy to mess with getting the video from my phone to my laptop, I would post a video here of the kids reciting the poem. We talked about reading it with enthusiasm, in a way that would engage the listeners. Gabe, being the former communications teacher, was very impressed with how well they did.

Isaac

This week Isaac continued learning how to write book reports. This week's focus was character relationships and describing characters. In Language Arts, he learned about contractions and opposite meanings. Isaac is learning about adjectives and writing interesting sentences with Writing Strands. And in math he learned about multiplication by 2... again review! One of these days I am actually going to have to teach him something new in math!! This week I ordered The Life of Fred for elementary. A friend of mine had shared this book with me previously but not until recently did I know there was now an elementary version. So for fun, Isaac will work through this book on Fridays. I can't wait to get it in and take a look at it. I think Isaac will enjoy it.

Julia

Julia is finishing up her chapter book study of Andi's Lonely Little Foal. Circle C Rocks!!This makes her 5th book in this series. She has one more but says she wants to wait until right before Christmas to do it because the book is called Andi's Circle C Christmas. I can't wait until Susan Marlow releases her new series in which I think Isaac will equally enjoy. For math Julia is learning beginning/simple addition. SUPER EASY!!! In Language Arts, Julia learned about homophones, specifically to, too, and two. She also learned the correct usage of was and were.This week for writing, Julia is learning about paragraphs and pronouns.

I know this picture is not the best quality, but if you can read this journal entry from this past week. She wants to be in the ilmpicks (olympics) Cute, right?!

Caleb

Sickness has hit my poor little boy yet again. Monday afternoon he started running fevers. Poor lil' guy. However, we did manage to get a little bit of school in this week despite that. He is learning the nursery rhyme "Hickory Dickory Dock" He learned to recognize the number one, count one of things, and of course we had fun with the positional words like up, down, under, and over. He got to make a mouse craft as well. I also introduced circles to Caleb. He did circle printing, sorting, hunting, matching, etc. He also made a circle caterpillar. He is so fun! I love teaching my sweet little Caleb.