Our Little School at Home: Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory Unit 22

Another week passes with the little guy. He is a crack up!

"Mom, sometimes I do not like school!" little one cries to me.

"Why is that dear?" I innocently ask.

"Cause it gets in my way of playing."

Yep. I get it. But seriously, just gotta love his honesty! Even so, he really does enjoy school...even if it does get in his way occasionally. :)

This week, we completed Unit 22. Finally, Jake learned to skip..physically skip! Hooray!! He was supposed to skip in between reciting his memory verse...not the first time he has tried, but the first time he has succeeded! His big brother taught him, skipped step by step with him. Nothing brings as much joy to this mama's heart as seeing her 6 foot 6 inch teen teaching the 6 year old to skip...hop by hop. And as for encouraging, "You are doing great. I don't think I could skip until I was 8! So proud of you!" big brother whispers to little guy thinking mama doesn't hear. :) I love these guys!

For reading, we began the emerging readers sometime before Christmas. We started rather slowly, but I am just amazed at Jake's fluency. He is reading the Early Reader's Bible, answering the questions easily and rarely stumbling over words. He picks up other books and reads on his own, still surprising himself.

In history we learned about the kindness of Benjamin Franklin and his inventions - from stoves and spectacles to lightning rods. We studied the building of Feneuil Hall in Boston and how there came to be a copper grasshopper as the weather vane. Of course, our assigned readings would not have been complete if we did not pull up pictures of lightning rods, the stove, the hall and the copper grasshopper weather vane on line...and read more information about each. For science, we studied insects and made models of grasshoppers (why wouldn't you study a grasshopper when you learn about a copper grasshopper?). We also studied lightning (what else would you study when you are studying Franklin's invention of a lightning rod??). Love how HOD ties everything together.

Spelling is so easy and Jake is having such an easy time with it - thanking our gracious God for this gift! He is also progressing nicely in copying and handwriting skills. Poetry is one of Jake's favorite things. He thinks it is so fun on day one when he is asked to "guess" what the name of the poem is.

Math this week introduced multiplication. Jake was so excited to finally get there, since he has been doing it on his own for months. Filling "donut boxes" with sets of five pieces of cereals was such an effective way to demonstrate the problems. I almost enjoy teaching math as much as my son enjoys learning it with the hands on lessons provided in Beyond! And, his question everyday, "So, Mom, do I get to eat my math lesson today?" And, quite often, the answer is "YES!" :)