HoD BLHFHG Unit 18

What a fun week with Heart of Dakota!  Have I told you how happy I am with this curriculum? It is such a blessing to our family. 

Our poem this week was Jesus Bids Us Shine by Susan Warner.  Here is the first page of the Copywork for my 6yo.  She decided to draw a candle burning on her paper. 

Here is my ds cursive Copywork.  I love his effort and enjoy seeing his improvement.  He has been doing so much better just getting the copy work completed.  I'm so very proud of him lately!

Continuing with the Stories of the Pilgrims, we read about Joseph and Isaac being followed and tracked by dogs. We talked about how dogs are able to follow scents. We did a science discovery and tried to follow scents with cotton balls, vanilla and peppermint oil.  The kids were able to follow the scent to the water. 

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We read more from the Stories of the Pilgrims and learned about a widow who lived in the pilgrim village with her children, Benjamin & Mary. The widow was very kind and the Indians adored her.  She often served them food & cider.  One Indian, Warmsly  particularly liked the hard cider and the widow soon realized he liked it because it made him drunk. Warmsly became upset when the widow would no longer give him the hard cider he demanded.  He barged into the widows house during a party the children were having. 

The pilgrim children, Benjamin & Mary made a sparkler candle with a quill feather, gun powder and wax for special fun at their party.  They lit it and when it went off, it exploded and frightened the Indian away. 

We acted out the scene with a flashlight as recommended and while the kids were enjoying their 'fruit party', I remembered that we had real sparklers! The kids ran around the circle and then said their verse once they got back to their spot. They loved the sparklers of course!  Lots of giggles with this one for sure! 

Our art project was to make a sparkler candle.  I will say this was a definite parent help ... must! The kids really thought this was neat after it was all finished.  The kids ended up drawing the parts they wanted me to cut out and I used a knife/cutting board to cut out the pieces for them.  We then placed aluminum foil behind the colored paper to make their sparkler candle shine! 

Our next story was about a maid that was at a pilgrims house watching the babies while the parents went to a meeting. As the maid admired the beautiful butterflies fluttering in the summer sun she saw an Indian outside the house with a gun and she feared for their safety. She quickly hid the babies in brass pots to get them out of sight and then she ran upstairs to get a gun.  The babies were crying in the pots and it made a loud, strange noise. The Indian looked into the house to find the awful screeching sound and he saw the brass pots shaking & coming towards him.  He fired his gun at the pots and to his surprise it did no harm. The pots with the babies inside kept coming towards the Indian and he thought it was a terrible monster. He was frightened and ran away. 

We learned that the pilgrims had great faith in God despite their trials with the Indians.  They cast their cares and worries on God and knew he would keep them safe.  1Peter 5:7

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We talked about the stages of a butterfly and are looking forward to ordering our baby monarchs soon!  In the meantime, we cut out tissue paper butterflies and hid them around the room. The children had to hunt and find them as they were camoflauged and disguised by their surroundings. Of course, they hid them many times and searched for them!  They learned that it was harder to see the butterflies that were on the same color object and easier to find them when they were on something of contrasting color. 

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We finished reading the Emerging Reader level 4 First Flight; The Story of Tom Tate and the Wright Brothers.  I think both kids are reading at this level well and have enjoyed the book. I honestly would love to take a weekend trip to Kitty Hawk area to spike the kids interest and since my hubby is a pilot. Any one else visit or enjoy a field trip to the area? 

We are still working on Encyclopedia Brown in the mystery genre. The kids are really enjoy helping to solve each of the mini mysteries! 

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We talked about and located the next few states Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado & Connecticut!  

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The kiddos worked their spelling lists & flash cards with these awesome play doh letters! 

It definitely makes studying for our spelling tests less painful with play doh!  ;) 

Although, we started the week at the park enjoying the beautiful sunshine, we finished it off playing in the snow! Gotta love Virginia weather! 

We did have a homeschool snow day and it was great motivation to get them moving on their school work so they could get back outside in the snow!  We were fortunate enough to spend the day sledding with friends. It was super cold and we did have to take a few breaks to warm up with some hot chocolate but, we all had so much fun! 

I hope you are staying warm, healthy and enjoying  HoD as much as we are. You can also follow our daily homeschooling journey by liking our new Facebook page: 

 Taking Off with Homeschool Facebook Page

Enjoy your weekend!  

Be blessed! 

HoD BLHFHG - Unit 17

A fresh new start in a brand new year!  One of my goals this year is to create a Facebook page where you can follow more of our daily journey.  

Please like and share our new Facebook page:

  Taking Off with Homeschool!

Our memory verse this week was 1 Peter 5:7.  We talked about giving God all of our worries and concerns because He cares for us. 

We picked right up where we left off in the Stories of the Pilgrims book.  We read about two young boys, Isaac & Joseph who were working in the fields. They decided to stop to rest and drink from a nearby stream when they were captured by Indians. The Indians kidnapped the boys and had planned to sell them to the French in Canada! The boys trusted God, were brave and eventually they escaped from the village.

On their journey, Isaac & Joseph noticed a beautiful sunset reflecting on a lake.   Our art project this week was for the kids to paint a sunset with watercolors, cut out silhouettes of the trees, and add an aluminum foil reflection of the water at the bottom.  

The kids both did a wonderful job on their art project and it just so happened that driving in the car one evening the kids pointed out that we were getting to see the real thing!

We talked about how God made fish scales to be reflective to help camoflauge them in their surroundings to keep them safe from their predators. To demonstrate, we cut out an aluminum foil fish and held it up to different items.  The kids loved holding their fish up and seeing their fish change different colors.

My dd princess wanted her fish to be pink and ds wanted a blue fish... so this actually worked out rather well!  

In geography, we talked about rivers and learned about the different parts of a river; source, bank, bed and mouth. We made a clay model, labeled the different parts, and the kids enjoyed pouring in the water. 

We also talked about how things appear bigger when they are close and smaller farther away.  Much like the sun, we know that the size doesn't change but, seems smaller than it is to us because it is so far away.  

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We are beginning to learn about the 50 states! This isn't covered in HoD just yet but, my kids were craving something new and this is what we decided to go with.  There is a lot of state info and lap books on Pinterest but, we decided to use these state coloring pages I found free on the Crayola website. They also both enjoyed working on the US floor puzzle together.  We started talking about each state individually using the coloring sheets that show the state flags and other fun fact information about the state. 

You guessed it... I introduced them to the Fifty Nifty song and they loved it! You can listen to it too by clicking here:  Fifty Nifty United States Song


-AR-  Spelling word practice! The kids did great this week with their spelling word lists.

They also are loving this spelling monster app for iPad!  It is a great way to get them playing practicing their words without them realizing it! 

Also, we invested this week in reading rods with a learning phonics activity set.  I think this will be a fun way to get the kids thinking about the parts of sentences and learning to build sentences. We worked on it some and they were challenged at being creative and coming up with sentences on their own.  This is definitely something we will be working on more and I think we will use it often. 

You can find the reading rods here if you are interested in purchasing them or learning more about them:  Reading Rods on Amazon

We finished out the week with a beginner gymnastics class! We found a great one hour weekly homeschool group that is perfect for getting these kiddos moving! They really enjoyed their first class and it will fit in perfect between their other activities. 

It's been an incredible week and getting back into our routine hasn't nearly been as tough as I thought  as long as I had coffee in my cup!  I hope everyone is having a great start to the new year.  Comment below and tell me about your week! 

Be blessed!