Monday, March 28, 2011

Little Hearts For His Glory - Week 6

I can't believe we are through week 6 already!  We are enjoying Little Hearts For His Glory.  The girls have gone from "No.... I don't want to do school." back to "Yeah, I love school, Mommy!".  Julia (3) enjoys  jumping in right along with us.  She doesn't do workbook type things or any phonics yet, but loves the read alouds and any activities.  I love that she doesn't have to feel excluded from school time any more.  

I was telling a friend that we are enjoying all of the activities in LHFHG, when she started to sigh and say "Oh, I end up not ever getting to the activities!".  I agreed that with our other curriculum we struggled to get the activities done, but these are just so easy and so much fun that its different.  Its hard to skip them!  I haven't had to scrounge for strange materials or even plan much ahead.  I can see the girls really learning the concepts and I think the simple activities are really helping to reinforce things.  Lucy enjoys having Julia doing schoolwork along with us and that seems to help the learning dynamic as well.

Without giving too much of the curriculum away, recently we've had fun:

punching our names in black paper and then holding it up to the light to see the results

making Egyptian collars

smelling different spices (Lucy liked peppermint and Julia's favorite was cinnamon)

We are almost finished with My Father's World phonics (the blue notebook)!  Lucy is reading very well now and its so much fun to see her pick up a book and read to Julia or Esther.  We are working through an Explode The Code workbook and she enjoys that.  MFW moved pretty quickly through the phonics rules, so I want to keep reviewing for a while.  I did purchase the Emerging Readers' Set and the teachers manual (Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory).  We just started this week.  I feel like it is right on level for Lucy.  She does well reading and is challenged by the questions.  She dislikes answering comprehension questions about reading so we are working on this.

Math is still super easy for her.  I like that it includes so much hands on work and hope it picks up a bit as we go along.  There were a couple of challenging lessons for her last week with learning more than and less than.  (5 is 2 more than 3, 4 is 3 less than 7, etc)

Science... I should probably look ahead more and then try and find some extra books or activities having to do with what we are studying.  The girls like to watch You Tube videos on the computer, so we've done that a few times.  (This week I think we looked up quail, railroad worms, and tap dancing.)  The activities in LHFHG have been great, but I feel like we could expand on them a bit more.

This week was review week for the memory verses and Lucy is working hard at being able to say all five verses for Daddy.  (Yes, I bribed her with getting to pick a prize from my little stash of stickers, etc.)

This past week I was honestly surprised that we were already though week six, we're having so much fun.  I used to add up in my head how many weeks or lessons we had left until finishing a curriculum.  With Little Hearts For His Glory I haven't done that at all.  I am content with knowing we are having fun and it is right on my kids level.  It is such a blessing to see them growing and developing so much.

I sound like an ad for Heart of Dakota, don't I?  I am not affiliated with them.  Maybe I'll have to think really hard and come up with something I don't like next time.  ;)

7 comments:

  1. It sounds .Ike you have found a curriculum that is a great fit for your family.

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  2. I'm so glad your family is enjoying "Little Hearts for His Glory" as much as we are! I loved seeing you little girls in action- what a blessing to be able to get the activities done, as they really help our little ones learn! :)
    Have a great week! More fun is to come!
    Jessica

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  3. Thanks for the continued review on this! We are definitely still enjoying Little Hands to Heaven and I am almost 100% positive we will go on next year with Little Hearts for His Glory. It's great to hear you are having such a good experience. Thanks! :)

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  4. I can't wait for fall when we start Little Hearts! We are having fun with LHTH still - it will take us through summer. You made a good point about not giving away too much of the curriculum on your blog post. I never really thought of that. Hmmmm...that's something to consider next time I'm posting about LHTH.

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  5. So good to hear how you are enjoying your curriculum. I added HOD because I was having such a hard time gathering resources and planning out each activity. I am hopeful that this year will be fun for the boys and easier on me.

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  6. What you said about the activities being so easy to do and requiring such common items was one of the biggest draws for me as a teacher. Until I had the guide in my hands, I remained skeptical that it could truly be as easy as it seemed, but it so is! I can also relate to sounding like an advertisement for HOD. :D Although life forced us to take a break from HOD for a while, I continued to tell people about it every chance I got and I can't wait to get my eldest son back into LHFHG. We've done all the lessons you pictured and looking at them brought back such happy memories!

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