Our 1st Week With Heart of Dakota

Our first week of school went off without a hitch.  We opened up the guide to Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory and jumped right in!  It was such a relief to know that I had before me a well-organized, Christ-centered, complete plan for teaching.  

Here are some of the highlights of our week with 

Unit 1:  Pioneers From Spain Settle St. Augustine.

History:  Old Crow and I read about life and struggles aboard ships headed for Florida.  We learned what trials the pioneers faced and how, like them, we can also rely on God during times of uncertainty.  He began a timeline.  Throughout the year, we will continue to add important events in early American history.

At the end of the week, he completed a notebooking page to review what we learned during the week.  We will compile all the notebooking pages together in a History folder.  This is something extra we added to the guide.  You can find these pages here.

Old Crow is drawing the path the pioneers took from Spain to St. Augustine.  

Science:  Old Crow experimented with a boat, turkey baster, and a tub of water.  He learned about ocean currents and visually recognized how a boat can move through water due to currents.

We also discussed blubber in whales, sharks, and other ocean life.  Old Crow coated one hand in Crisco (blubber) and the other remained blubber free. He then placed both hands in ice cold water.  He described what occurred to his hands.  "The blubber is a little cold.  But my other hand is FREEZING!!!!"  This one didn't last long because he wasn't about to leave his hand in the ice water any longer than necessary.  :)

Bible:  We memorized Psalm 4:8 "I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety."  Old Crow enjoyed thinking of hand motions to go along with the scripture and here he is reciting it.

Each week I will write the Bible verse on sentence strips and place in this pocket chart.  We read it together and create hand motions.  It also allows us to manipulate the pieces to help him put the verse in order.  He loves for me to hide them around the room...he searches for them and then puts it into the correct order.

Poetry and Writing:  Our poem for this week was "The Storm."  It went perfectly with our history readings and our current weather.  I am surprised how much Old Crow enjoys the poetry section.  He likes reading it aloud with me, acting it out, and creating his own poems.  Each day he copied a portion of the poem and then drew an illustration.

 Art:  He created a shield with symbols representing Psalm 18.  We read this scripture together and discussed how the pioneers may have experienced similar feelings as King David.  His shield has a star, fort, and a rock.

"The Lord is my rock and fortress, and my deliverer;

my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,

my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold."

Reading/Language Arts:  Old Crow read aloud from his Early Reader's Bible.  I highly recommend this children's Bible.  Each Bible story is 3-4 pages and then discussion questions and applications follow.  Awesome!

We also began All About Spelling, which practices both phonics and spelling skills.

For storytime, I began our genre of biography, and we are reading William Henry Harrison.  Storytime incorporates many important skills:  story elements, narration, and character education.  This week we focused on main characters and our Godly character trait was responsibility.

For grammar, we discussed the difference between a sentence and a fragment.  

Math:  We are using Singapore Math this year (it is recommended by Heart of Dakota).  It is a change for us, but so far so good.  It is a review for Old Crow at this point, but new skills will begin soon.

And that is an overview of our 1st week with Heart of Dakota.  Our "school day" goes by quickly which allows us to have time for PE, nature studies, and free time. :)

We are off to a great start!  

Jenny