Seventh grade plans

I have loved reading the "Not Back to School" blog hop over the last week. In fact, that's one of the things that inspired me to get back to blogging. I'm a little late with my entries, but I'll link up if there's still time.

Without further ado, here are the plans for Z-Man's seventh grade year:

Bible:
TruthQuest Beginnings (which goes through the OT)
Because You Are Strong Bible Study from Doorposts - this is a wonderful resource that he will work on in the mornings with Dad.

Character:
Laying Down the Rails for Children - another wonderful resource! Can't wait to start using it.

Language Arts:
Understanding Writing - this is new to us this year. I really like the fact that it emphasizes the fact that any communication we do is for the purpose of honoring God. I also liked that I could use it for both kids, each on their own level. I'll let you know how it works out.
Growing with Grammar - A nice daily workbook that gets the job done.
Phonetic Zoo Spelling - this is an audio CD from IEW. Z-Man can do it independently with his cool red headphones while I work with Little Man.

Math:
A combination of Saxon and the Key to Decimals and Key to Percents books. We worked through the Key to Fractions books last year and they really promote mastery of the material. They did put us a little behind in the Saxon schedule though, so this year we'll try to alternate between the two.

History:
TruthQuest Beginnings
TruthQuest Ancient Greece - We LOVE TruthQuest! We've read so many wonderful books. Definitely the highlight of our day. For the most part, this covers all of our family read-alouds as well as both boys' individual reading.

Science:
Apologia General Science

Other:
Abeka Health
Download N Go Composer study
French in 10 Minutes a Day
Creating a Masterpiece DVDs
Mapping and timeline to go along with our history studies
Basketball and flag football leagues, gym at co-op

And there you have it. I think it will be a great year!

We're baaaaaack...

After a very extended blogging break, I'm going to try to get back into it. Life got busy, but I miss having an online "scrapbook" of our lives!

Here are a few things we've been up to this summer, in no particular order:

 Buds at basketball camp

 Yummy fruit pizza!

 Ice cream!

 Little Man's first fish

 Flag football tournaments

 Swim lessons

 Tennis lessons

 Mini golf

 Football in the pouring rain

 Exploring

 Sunsets at the beach with good friends

 Z-Man joined the swim team!

 So much beauty

Playing at Harvard

Oh, and trick shots with basketballs and footballs. Lots and lots of trick shots. Off the roof, the swing set, the trampoline... but that will have to be another post. Hopefully with a video.

It feels good to be back.

The Salamander Room

The first week of school! There were some bumps and snags, but it went pretty well overall. Although I don't think it will always be the case, this week Z-Man joined in on Little Man's Five in a Row studies. We started with a book Little Man requested, The Salamander Room. I so love this book about a boy who wants to transform his bedroom into a forest to accommodate a little salamander.

We learned about the food web and started coloring this poster. We'll leave it out on the desk and continue to work on it.

We read a great book on animal classification (taxonomy) What is the Animal Kingdom by Bobbie Kalman

  

and watched a very entertaining video from Moody Video called The Name Game:

Then we tried our hand at classifying LOTS of animals. Little Man loved this!

These animal cards were FREE printables at Homeschool Creations!

Little Man was inspired to create a Salamander Room in his bedroom. Z-Man came through with the necessary "moss" for the salamander's pillow by plucking the stuffing out of a couch cushion that I've been meaning to mend. 

We'll read one more book, One Rainy Night, about a boy and his mom collecting creatures for their nature center. 

And that will wrap up our first week! 

Little Man's First Grade Curriculum

Can I just tell you right now how happy I am to be able to do Five in a Row with Little Man?

This year, for the first time, I took Z-Man with me to the homeschool convention. (He loved it!) When we visited one vendor that carried a lot of the FIAR titles, they were like old friends to him. We both have such wonderful memories of learning with those great books. I'm delighted to be able to make some of those memories with Little Man this year.

Five in a Row covers art, geography, social studies, science and even a little bit of math.



Math
Life of Fred - do you ever remember laughing while reading a math book? These are genius.
Living Math books - there's a good list here.

Phonics
We'll continue to use Explode the Code and our Bob Books.

Little Man has made tremendous progress learning to read, especially given that we just found out this summer that the vision in his right eye is 20/200. Basically, that means that he can see the huge E on the top of the eye chart. He's been wearing glasses all summer and may get an eye patch on the good eye in the middle of September, which will force the right eye to work. So it's hard to know what to expect, really. We'll just keep plugging away. Say a prayer for him if you would.

The following subjects will be done together with Z-Man:

Bible
We'll be going through the TruthQuest Beginnings guide, memorizing scripture and also working on character.

Art
Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes
Artist studies, including Frederick Remington and Winslow Homer

Music
Composer studies, including Haydn and Aaron Copeland
We'll attempt to learn to play the recorder. WAY out of my comfort zone here!

History
Z-Man is going through TruthQuest American History for Young Students III, which covers the Civil War to 2000. Little Man will snuggle on the couch for picture books, so I order plenty from the library. He usually wanders off for the chapter books and says, "tell me when there's a picture." Still, it's pretty amazing what he retained from last year and he'll be going over these time periods again later.

Science
Most of Little Man's science will come from our FIAR books, but he will be welcome to participate in Z-Man's earth science and creation science also.

So there you have it! We're looking forward to getting started next week. I wish you all a wonderful school year!

2012-2013 Curriculum for sixth grade!

Wow! I don't think I've ever taken such an extended blog break since I started this blog but, thankfully, it's just because we've been busy having a great summer! I hope all of you have enjoyed this beautiful summer as much as our family has.

I'll try to post some of our summer fun pictures soon, but today I want to talk about our plans for the upcoming school year, since I'm knee-deep in planning, as I'm sure many of you are.

Z-Man will be entering sixth grade. I know I talked last year about how much we love TruthQuest History. It's simple, uses living books and points out God's hand in history. Well, listen to this: about three weeks ago, Z-Man asked me if we could start our history reading early. Start a "school" subject early. Like, in the middle of summer. Just because he likes it! Isn't that the best thing you've ever heard?!

"Yes, Honey, if you're very, very good and do all your chores without complaining, I guess we can start history early." Oh my goodness.

History:
So we've been reading pioneer stories and will be moving on to the Wild West soon with TruthQuest American History for Young Students III, which goes from the end of the Civil War to 2000.

Bible:
We will also, in our Bible time, start TruthQuest Beginnings and go through that very slowly. If we don't finish this year, no big deal.

We'll continue to work on character using a lot of resources. That might have to be a separate post.

Science:
Creation or Evolution: A Home Study Curriculum. Very excited to start this!
The Earth: Its Structure and Its Changes. We did Forces and Motion last year and I really like this series. Very hands-on.

Art:
Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes

 Draw and Write Through History: The 20th Century
Artist Study - Frederick Remington, Winslow Homer, John James Audubon and several others.

Language Arts:
Rockets, Radar and Robotics: Technology-Based Writing Lessons from IEW. Somebody gets it at IEW, that's all I can say.
Take Five Minutes: A History Fact a Day for Editing. A cool fact every single day, written by some poor soul who can't spell, punctuate or capitalize. I do believe we can help them.

Geography:
Map Skills. A very simple workbook that gets the job done.

Math:
Saxon. It works for Z-Man and we're sticking with it. There were no tears over math last year. Could just be his age but I'm not taking any chances.

Music:
Composer studies, starting with Haydn so we can listen to "Creation" while we're studying creation. I love it when things go together.
In what I'm hoping was NOT a super-collosal mistake, I bought all of us soprano recorders. We'll see how that goes. I can always put my hair over my ears to hide those little squishy earplugs.


Stay tuned for Little Man's First Grade curriculum choices very soon!

Our Kindergarten Graduate!

Congratulations, Little Man! We are so proud of you!

Louis Comfort Tiffany

It's taken me a little longer than I anticipated to get back to that post about the Tiffany stained glass that I promised you. Sorry about that! Life got a little busy. 

But without further ado, here are our pictures of the Willard Memorial Chapel in Auburn, NY. It is the only existing chapel in the world that was completely decorated by Louis Comfort Tiffany. 

He designed not only the stained glass windows, but the tile mosaic floors, the pulpit, the gold leaf stenciled ceiling and even the pews. It is stunning! Two sisters originally commissioned it in 1892 to honor their deceased father.

The chapel is now open to the public and is used for concerts and weddings as well. It was sold to a NYC antiques dealer in the 1980's and he planned to sell off all the stained glass and then turn it into a nightclub! Thankfully, a group of citizens joined together to raise enough money to buy it from him. Whew!

This is the glass tile mosaic side panel of the 

gilt bronze relief in the picture just above it.

The enormous pipe organ

Our tour guide said, "how would you boys like to see what's underneath this pipe organ?" 

She even let them preach!

This is a close-up of the front of the pulpit.

And when it was time to go, our guide let the boys find the secret panel where the light switches are hidden and turn off the lights. 

We all agreed that it was definitely worth the trip!