We are currently visiting family this week so we will be taking the week off from blogging about HOD but if you have something to blog about feel free to link up as usual!
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It is so good to get back to our Heart of Dakota work! We enjoyed our Columbus Unit Study but our family is just so in love with all that Carrie Austin has put together for theBeyond manual!
This week we learned a little about what it was like on the Santa Fe Trail. This is the trail that many pioneers took heading west from Independence Missouri. We rode with a fictional young boy named Nick who was traveling with his father. We learned of how hard it was at times on the trail. Can you imagine having to get out and pull your wagon up a steep hill or use it as a boat to cross a river? And not just that but the fear of Indians, animals and getting lost.
We talked a lot about the trust in God that many of these pioneers had to have in God. What a great example they are of not worrying about tomorrow but trusting in the God of today.
Our poem this week was such a fun one entitled Weather, I'll type it for you since it was so catchy I think you'll like it too.
Whether the weather be fine
Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold
Or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather
Whatever the weather
Whether we like it or not.
Anonymous
This poem ended up being another one of our favorites! I gotta get these girls to color their pictures for you! They just aren't the same in black and white!
I uploaded our work to Scribid so that you could see some of what we did.
We did some map work on the Santa Fe using a printout that I found here. One day for science we learned about mosquitos. We learned that they are bothersome little bugs that can carry some mean diseases. We talked about the three parts of an insect and read a portion of our science text that goes along with Beyond.
I decided (after becoming reaquainted to these little bugs) to take the kids outside and turn over any place that might be perfect for mosquito breeding. Unfortunately we found a number of perfect places.
Because I thought that the girls could handle going a little deeper I printed out these worksheets from Enchanted Learning. I also had the girls reread on their own the portion about mosquitos from the Christian Liberty Nature Reader Book 1.
Since Nick, his father and the other pioneers had chosen to head to Santa Fe we were given a small glimpse into what that town was like way back then. Of course there was much Spanish influence so one of the scheduled activities was to dance the Mexican hat dance. We had a blast doing our version of it. Check 'em out! I found the music here on Jan Brett's site.
We also completed the notebook page for this unit made by a fellow HOD mom and available on the Yahoo group boards. (You can see that up with the other embeded work from Scribd.)
During Bible time we talked about where God wants our treasures to be. We used the following verse from Luke to remind ourselves that whatever we set our heart on (whatever we value and hold dear) is where our treasures will be. Do we want them to be set on this earth where moth and rust doth corrupt or in Heaven where all things are eternal?
"For where your treasure is there will your heart be also."
I didn't have all the items recommended in the manual for the treasure chest craft (and I was bummed because it sounded so neat...) but I found this treasure chest, printed it out and had the kids decorate it. Then we followed the plans as outlined in the manual and wrote Luke 12:34 on it and dropped it into the treasure chest. After doing this and having the talk with the girls I could see a lightbulb go on inside of them. This simple craft gave them the understanding they needed to realized that just like that paper heart inside of that small treasure chest our hearts will be kept by what we hold dear.
This was a great week for us! We have had fun with Heart of Dakota! Now, click on the button below to see how much fun everyone else had!! Thanks for stopping by...
This unit was all about life in the wagon trail! The kids said often that they wished that they would have been alive during those times. They think that it would have been neat to experience what the pioneers did. As for me, I'm not sure I'm brave enough to say that I would have loved it! It would be neat to take a real glimpse at what life was like but to actually expierence all of it-first hand-I'm just not sure!! If the Lord ever calls this family to the mission field I'd have a lot of praying to do huh?!!
Anyway, here are some glimpses at a little of their work:
Big Sis with her poem. They love doing these things because they love to draw!!!
Adding the Orgeon Trail to our timeline. It's different than the plans in the HOD guide but it allows us to add information from all of our studies to the timeline. I plan to post more on it when I get a chance!!
An official Ruby Slipper's replica of a Pioneer home from the 1800's!!! Isn't it cute?!!
This is one of the many things that she does while we are doing school work with the girls! She wants to be a big girl too!!
I am going to be taking the next two weeks off HOD work as we will be doing a Christopher Columbus unit study in honor of Columbus day. The Mr. Linky's will still be open for all of you though!! I'm truly enjoying your experiences! Thanks for sharing them with us!!
I did not get to post last week because we had the opportunity to have a missionary family stay in our home. Time was very limited from Friday until Tuesday while they were here so I apologize for not getting anything up for the blog roll. And since I messed up the linky tool, fixed it, reset it, then ended up MISSING the time frame completely (don't ask me how! I don't even know how I did that one!) I am posting last week's post this week and will get this week's post up this weekend. Ugh, forgive me ladies, forgive me!!
Our kiddos with the Rodriguez children
Things have still been crazy this week so I am going to post on how things went last week. Does that make any sense?!
The time that we spend on our HOD activities is certainly the highlight of our days. The girls absolutely LOVE this program!!
We spent our week traveling with the fictional O'Neil family as they made their way west. We read about their encounter with Johnny Appleseed and Indians. We learned of the work required to build their log house and what the girls thought of the school house. They went home and begged their parents to let them stay home and do school there instead! (Smart girls!)
Our poem for the week was "The Planting of the Apple-Tree" verse 2 by William Cullen Bryant.
There were some great science exploration and art activities scheduled for this week but unfortunatley we were only able to get to one of them.
We talked about the phases of the moon and made cards to go along with each of them. Mrs. Austin actully had the activity set up so that we use something edible and round (such as cookis or oranges) but we didn't have anything that fit the bill so I just made up the cards. I'm really glad that I did because now we can hang these in our school room and refer to them whenever we want.
We also did the activity laid out in the science text God's Wonderful Work.
I said that I would share some of our DITHOR experience so I'll do that now. We just finished up our unit on Biography. I couldn't find a copy of the Amelia Earhart book so I just used on biography book that I had on hand. Biggest read through Tom Jefferson the Third US President; it's part of the Childhood of Famous Americans series.
To be honest with you I had high hopes for this program but Biggest didn't really care for it at all. I don't know if she is still too young but she pretty much complained about almost every activity we did.
We did some vocabulary work where she found an unfamiliar word from the day's reading, looked it up in the dictionary and then wrote down the word's meaning.
She did some character trait work, comparing the main character with a Bible character and other such work.
The end of the unit activity was a Story Quilt taken from the Book Projects to Take Home book that HOD also sells as well. (I cannot find her project now, she showed it to her Grandparents on Skype this week and cannot remember what she did with it. As soon as I find it I'll post a picture!)
I'm not sure if we will continue with this program or wait a few weeks and pick it up again or maybe come back to it in a year or so.
Biggest doesn't really like the writing involved or the critical thinking...laziness, I don't know, just not ready yet, maybe but whatever the case we are going to put this up for a while.
Well, that is our week in a nutshell. Now, I'm off to see what others have done, click on the button to join me!
This has been a very fun week of history here at our house! We've learned about Daniel Boone and how hard he and others worked to literaly create the Wilderness Road, a path basically, that led from Virginia, through the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky, a then new and fertile land.
We also have been journeying with a fictional family who were preparing to travel to Kentucky by way of the Wilderness Road. We've learned of the steps it takes to make a new dress for the daughter of the family and deerskin clothing for the boys.
We did go out one day and create a Wilderness Trail all of our own. Big Sis and Brother chose to mark their path with sticks and branches.
I also found a neat map outlining the Wilderness Road so I printed it off and we did some map work with it. I also had the girls narrate a little about what they knew about the Road as I wrote it down for them. (Writing is not so loved in our home so I will do some of it for both of them so that they can still have the opportunity to narrate as fully as they want.)
We've learned and colored a picture to go a long with the poem Farewell to the Farm by Robert Louis Stevenson as well. This poem is one of our favorites!
I don't have them set out to memorize the poems intentionally but do have the sheets that I've made up in their workboxes and they read through them daily. It is this simple task that actually does cause them to memorize much of the poem. I'm honestly amazed that it happens so easily!
And at their request I printed off two color sheets; one of Daniel Boone and one of an Indian girl.
So I meant to have this posted earlier this afternoon as I am hosting the Blog Roll but, we had an emergency and I am just now getting to it. Please forgive me!! But, without further delay...
Our week in HOD has been a good one. We've been learning about George Washington and mainly focusing on how he took care of his home at Mt. Vernon. It didn't surprise me at all to find out that he was a very orderly, organized and thoughtful man. This made for great converstation opportunities with my children.
One of the activities for the week was to make a map of the land at Mt. Vernon. The girls were to follow my instructions as I verbally gave directions on where to place each farm on the map. These are some pictures.
Biggest's Map of Mt. Vernon
Big Sis's Map of Mt. Vernon
Diligently working on her map.
As with many HOD activities I wasn't sure that the girls would enjoy this map making and almost skipped it but and am glad that I (once again) trusted Mrs. Carrie Austin's judgement and knowledge and went ahead and tried it. This will be a great keepsake.
I was going to post some videos but I can't get them loaded so I will have to add them later.
Because it's so late and has been a crazy day I am going to leave our first blog roll post at that. Not really what I imagined/planned it to be but then again that's homeschool isn't it!!
