Hands on Learning is time intensive

I’ve discovered something, or maybe I just really admitted it to myself.  Hands on learning is time intensive.

Very time intensive.  But worthwhile in the end.

Reading

Princess and Batman are continuing through All About Reading 3.  The picture is zoomed in, so you can’t see her sitting on a ridiculously huge exercise ball as she reads.  I’ve changed the lessons up slightly, so after we complete 1 lesson in AAR3, they go on to read to me from Indian in the Cupboard.

We’ve been using Lexia Reading for the past few weeks as a supplement to All About Reading, and it’s been helping with areas my kids aren’t that great at (cough spelling cough cough listening to ALL the directions cough).

I also gave the kids an independent assignment, they had to choose a fable from Aesop’s Fables and make their own project to present it.  They’re going to be showing me the final results in a few minutes, and I can’t wait to see them.  This project sucked up an hour or two of work for a couple of days as they happily constructed their ideas.

Books Read by me and the kids

{these are affiliate links}

The Indian in the Cupboard (linked to the whole series because I like the cover picture, and we bought the series)

Omnitopia Dawn (sigh, it looks like they’re never going to release the rest of the series)

The Zombie Zone (A to Z Mysteries) (Superman)

Aesop’s Fables (all 3)

The Son of Sobek (I just saw another short story is due out May 20….)

Balancing It All: My Story of Juggling Priorities and Purpose (really interesting read of her life and how she balances her priorities, I highly recommend it)

 

Math

The kids started on double digit multiplication, and they breezed through the first part that had no regrouping, and then got bogged down in double digit multiplication because they were struggling to remember some of the larger math facts.

It just emphasized for me the importance of having some kind of constant review, because they’d had those skills down a few weeks ago, and then we slipped on completing math while on vacation, so the facts they hadn’t been doing for weeks and weeks fell out of their head.

Princess endlessly building and rebuilding her math and then writing it on the dry erase board complete with poems on her feelings ensured math took up a fair amount of time this week.  I sewed a complete shirt, while she was doing this.

Science

We’ve been studying the nervous system and finished it all up with the exception of making a candy model of the spinal cord.  I keep forgetting to buy the final supplies for it.

So, I don’t have lots and lots of pictures because this week was mostly reading the text and writing notes.

This was probably the least time intensive class this week.

History and Geography

This would be a project where I wasn’t planning on doing it, but the kids all rebelled and said, “But Mommy, we need to build Nehemiah’s walls.”  I was planning on doing that activity in a few weeks when we study Nehemiah for Bible versus history…..  But NOOOOOO…..  They want to do it now.  So they spent awhile building some walls, and then a fort to represent the temple, and we completed the next history lesson in the tent.

YEAH that’s right, we completed 2 weeks of history lessons this week!  OH YEAH!  Now I could cheat a little because there were a couple of Bible lessons, and one of the lessons didn’t have anything that excited us to act out (Pericles the Greek statesman, and if I’m honest there’s not a lot hands on to do with Socrates, though we did discuss a lot, and that seemed appropriate for him).

My boys’ favorite history lesson this week?  Small arms combat.  Let’s discuss what a phalanx is and the advantages of different weapons and combat styles.  You’ve never seen a young boy gather his school supplies so fast when you say, “I need Lego men with swords, shields, and spears.”  They raced to get it all AND to clean the room.

Bible

 

We started our family Bible study this week using the Sword Study, and I’m loving it.  I’m not sure the rest of my family is quite as sold on it as I am, but I’m adoring all of the deep study, and seeing the kids dig into God’s Word.

As we’re going through our 2 year Family Bible study, we’ve finished up David, and have moved on to Solomon.  We took a few minutes to read some of his Proverbs and decorate them, today I’m planning a nature walk because Solomon studied nature.

Games

This Friday we cut our school day short to go have lunch with my cousin who comes through town about once a year, so we only played Lego Heroica (link to our review and tips).  I like Lego games because we can modify them to be as short or as long as we have time for.

  Life learning

For Ministry Appreciation this year our church took all of the volunteers out for a baseball game at our local minor league team.  We all sat out on the berm, and pretended to watch the game.  In reality the kids ran around, all those blurs you see up there are my kids running around like wild men for 4 hours.  The game started at 7 and ended at nearly 11.  And yet they didn’t really sleep in the next day.  It just doesn’t seem right, I was exhausted watching them.

Mother’s Day was special because the kids got a chance to hand out chocolates to honor the Mother’s (and all adult women) there.  It was very fun to see my kids happily handing out chocolates.  Second service I ended up with 3 bags of chocolate from kids (one of the advantages of teaching the class handing them out) as kids were looking for enough Moms to hand them to.  It rather amused me.

Monday we went to the Dollar Theater and saw the Lego Movie with my Mom, which of course led to large amounts of Lego building for my kids the rest of the week, and random Lego creations, it’s really cool to see.

Thursday night, Princess and I, had dinner with my Mom after her last AHG meeting for the year.  After American Heritage Girls we always go to dinner together to Fazzoli’s.  This time Mom decided to show me how I could keep my nice white shirt, nice and white by covering my shirt in napkins.  So Princess HAD to join in.  It was a lot of fun to see, and there was a lot of laughing all night long.

 

Go link up over at Homegrown Learners.