Heart of Dakota: Bigger week 22

Boy this week went fast. It seemed like I woke up and it was Friday. This week seemed that it was an easier week for school. Hmmm, well, easier may not be the right word. More like a simple than normal week.

Our week started with learning more information about John Audubon. Most of the stuff we had learned already from reading the extension book in earlier units, but it was nice to touch on it again and relive the information we had learned.

Our character trait this week was diligence. Hmmm, this made me think of all us homeschool moms and dads. We are very diligent in what we do, otherwise we would either give up with the thought of it being too hard or our kids would not learn a thing. I like this trait a lot. I was able to use it in their chores and show them what diligence means when doing your chores to completion or leaving just a little bit left over because you decided to cut corners to make it go faster. They realize they have to do the chore all over again and that corner cutting was not worth it in the end.

Geography was interesting. We took a map and divided it into the first states owned by Americans and then the states purchased from France in the Louisiana Purchase. You know what, Mommy learned a lot from this too. You can see in the picture that we even divided it with different colors. I think that will stick a while for them.

Oh, but our History activity was so much fun. We did it in the house, and nothing got broken. Yippee! I had them get a couple of hats and we happen to have 2 bean bags and played target practice. I did not do the candle, well, frankly because I did not have either a candle that was not used or a candle that was not in a jar. Just take a look at the pictures. You can tell they had a great time.

OK, I have to tell you, my husband is actually just outside of the pictures. He watched patiently at them laughing and having fun then he asked, “What does this have to do with history?” Oh that was great. I plainly said to the children, “What are we learning here?” And they explained everything they had learned about John Audubon. My husband asked nothing more! Now I want you all to understand that my husband’s question was NOT a derogatory question nor is he against having fun in school, just was curious how this all fit in. Don’t you just love it when the kids can answer those types of questions for you?!?!

As far as art this week, we did not have our art class nor did we do the art in the lesson. I felt it was very much like the art we did for the Indian sand art and decided to not do it this week. Next week we are making rolled pots for our art class. I cannot wait to see how that all turns out. And we are having it here at my house…OUTSIDE! It has been raining the last 2 days, so if it continues we are not having 15 children with clay all over in my home! Yuck!

Have I mentioned I really love the Pioneer Sampler book? This is such a great book and this week’s science was FANTASTIC! We learned how a boat can stay a-float. How air is trapped to keep it dry and floating. I loved this experiment and the kids were wowed by it!

Oh, but nothing beats the butter making. OK, my hubby got involved with this one. So we took the buttermilk and shook it and shook it and shook it. When it turned into whipped cream, I opened the jar and had everyone take a little lick. Yea, I know there was no sugar added, but they got to see the first stage of butter making. Whipped cream. My husband was actually shaking it when it turned into butter. He said that it was light and felt as if there was nothing in the jar and then all of the sudden it went thump in his hands. The children were in AWWW! We shook for a bit longer and then poured it out. My son was grossed out by it, but once I added a tiny bit of salt and squeezed the buttermilk out he loved the flavor. OMGosh, DO NOT skimp of this science experiment when you get to it. It was so much fun, a lot of work, and worth every WOW moment the kids had throughout the experiment.

Of course we have our Notebook page. Nothing exciting to tell about there. We just wrote out Henry Longfellow’s poem. Good practice for handwriting for my son and daughter. And of course we have out timelines which we added too. All in all it was another fantastic week. I really enjoyed the ending to the week with our science experiment. So now, as I told you, next Thursday we are having art class at my house and the kids want to make mini Johnny Cakes and homemade butter for everyone. So we will be cooking on Wed.

Have a great week and see you for week 23. Only 11 more weeks of HOD Bigger. God Bless!

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger week 21

OK, you all know what my first words are going to be. This was a great week as usual. We started off learning about our 7th President, Andrew Jackson. So one of the things I did was to do flash cards for the first 5 Presidents. I happen to have had these for some years now and so before we start our History reading I run through the first 7 Presidents of the USA. Hey I finally know then…I think?!?!? LOL.

Anyway, Geography is always interesting with HOD. I love how Carrie makes it fun and yet correlates it nicely with the history reading as well and correlates it with real life circumstances. And that is exactly what she did. You know when I was a kid, I do not think I could tell you the street names around my street (we happen to be living in the house I grew up in), but after this weeks assignment, my kids know exactly the streets around us. Good Geo lesson.

Our character study this week was decisiveness. I have to admit, I would have NEVER chosen this as a character trait. But it was actually really good decision to do this trait. He he. See how I worked that word into my sentence. LOL! There were many instances that I was actually able to bring up the word decisive over this week.

Art class this week was SO fun! OMGosh. I, personally, really wanted to do this weeks art, but I held back. Anyway, the idea was to draw out a picture and then cut fabric pieces into the shapes of your picture. We were suppose to incorporate different textures, colors etc. Both my kids turned out great. Actually, I wish now I would have taken a picture of everyone’s work at art class. They all turned out fantastic.

Can I just say that Science is wonderful we are having a blast with the book Pioneer Sampler. This really is a fun book to read and the experiments have been a blast. This week we did a few things for Science. We learned the different tracks for foxes, weasels and skunks. Well, we already knew skunks because we have them in our yard all the time and when our Dog was young and spry he use to kill them. And yes he did it without ever getting sprayed. Amazing isn’t it? Anyway, all these animals love eggs and we know that too because we also have ducks and before we started putting them in a huge Dog house at night the skunks would steal their eggs. So real life learning!

We also learned about how they use to plant the seeds in the Pioneer days. Oh my, can you imagine how hard it was for them just to grow a few little sprigs of lettuce? It was fun learning all the different ways they would use all the parts of the corn they grew! Except the toilet part. OUCH! Oh, and we absolutely enjoyed making the Johnny Cakes. I had no idea what a Johnny Cake was until I started to read the ingredients. Then I figured that they were Corn bread. Mmmmm, Yum! They were so good. The kids want to make some for our Art group next week. So hopefully we have time on Sunday to make some for Mondays Art.

Our last thing we did other then of course our Time line and Notebook Page was to do our History activity. Building the boats and trying to sink them was SO much fun! The kids did it over and over and over again! Each time it took a ton of pennies to sink the ship and, well we sunk our ketch a couple times too. Not sure there was much remembering why we were doing it, but they had fun either way and they know what a ketch is now!

Overall, again this week was fun. We did an extra day from last week because we had cut our week short. I went ahead and added the photos for that to week 20. I figure I will keep it all together. So go and take a quick look at them It was all about fence building. We used the Lincoln Logs as well as popsicle sticks. It turned out pretty cool!

I am looking forward to next week and unit 22. Hmmm, as I write this I cannot believe we only have 12 more units left before school is done. Oh Boy, I guess I have to start thinking about what we are going to do during summer. Yes, we school year round, but summer months are only 3 days a week with only 2 of those days being fulltime and the third day is usually fun stuff like science experiments and art etc.

Well, I will catch you all next week for unit 22. Have a great week!

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Heart of Dakota: Bigger week 20

This week was cut a bit short. Yesterday afternoon both my kids and the entire household came down with fevers. So needless to say we only completed 4 days of the 5 days for week 20. That is OK, we will just do Friday on Monday and then combine unit 21 day 5 to day 4 next week.

So far this week we did learn a ton of stuff. I loved our character study this week of loyalty. We actually had a great example of this on Thursday where the children were not loyal to me and the instructions I give them on how to behave inside the home. I am glad that each week we learn a new character study, but sometimes I wish it would go 2 weeks long on each character trait! This one would be one of them. As far as the hymn this week…well, this one was not for me. I know we will be on this same hymn for a few weeks, but I may change it to something else. We shall see.

I loved our geography this week. Mapping was always a hard thing for me until I got into my late 20’s and my husband actually taught me how to use a map. So this activity with the grid was fantastic for us to experiment with. However, I did things a bit different. I did not explain what we were doing. I had the kids lay down the grid and mark the numbers and letters. I knew my son understood right away what we were doing so I had my daughter go first. It only took her about 2 tries to get it without any instruction. The kids were having fun doing this project and so did I.

Learning about the war of 1812 has been very interesting. OK, call me dumb or whatever, but I had no idea. I know, I know, I probably did learn this stuff in elementary school, but I did not remember ANY of it until this week. I was learning 100% right along with the kids. I really enjoyed playing the card game WAR with the kids. We have not played that game for a while so it was a lot of fun to do it over, over, over, over and over again. Yes, we played 5 times. LOL. It gave the kids a different perspective on war. Red cards were the Indians and black cards were the settlers.

This Pioneer Science is very fun and interesting. It has given the kids a great perspective on how EASY our lives really are. Yea, we may have all these chores we have to do and learning in school etc, but it is NOTHING compared to what they had to do in the pioneer days. This week we once again learned the layers of the tree so we could better understand tapping into a tree for maple syrup/sugar. I promised the kids that Friday we could go and buy TRUE/REAL maple syrup not the fake stuff we get at the grocery. But we are all sick and it will have to wait till next week.

We also learned how the pioneers measured things. In most cases they really had no real means of a measuring stick of sorts. They had to use their bodies as some sort of measurement. My kids hit that straight on. They knew from me using body parts over the years to measure. The tip of my thumb=1inch, my two arms =2 yards, my foot as almost = 12 inches etc. But we still had fun measuring each other’s body parts!

I really wanted to do the art expression this week, but as we kept going on the kids were getting tired and at this point I realized that no one was feeling good, so we may go ahead and do it on Monday with day 5 of unit 20. We shall see, especially since we do not have our art class this week and next.


Well, as I write this I am praying that I feel better by Sunday and the kids do too. My children’s choir, MERGE, which I direct, is singing for our Missions conference this Sunday morning. I and the kids need enough strength for about 30 minutes! Anyway, we are off to sleepy land for a while and then Monday morning back to finish week 20 and on the week 21. Have a great week ya all and we’ll write to you next week!

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