OM Gosh, was it hard to get back into the swing of thing. I was kind of talked into taking 3 weeks off for the holiday season. Well, both choirs I teach were taking three weeks off from the program and several of my friends were doing the same, so after a few people saying oh come on why not, I decided to do so. Now let me say that it was well worth it. I really enjoyed the time I had with my kids and my husband took several of those day s off too, so that made it nice to be with him too. But, whew Monday was really hard. Not just for me but the kids too. However, as the week progressed onward, it was not so hard. By Wed, we were in full swing and it had felt as if we had not even taken a day off. I will interject here that the really good thing about taking that time off is the fact that we are really into school right now. The last couple weeks before Winter break we were all feeling DONE! Now we are really inspired again. I think next year we will do just 2 weeks. We’ll see.
Anyway, we are back into our history. We are learning about how the Babylonians took over once again and about Nebuchadnezzar never was really able to take over Egypt, but his goal was to re-build Assyria into Babylon and make it beautiful once more. Ahh, but his passion to make peace with Persia I think really helped to beautify Babylon, considering that his wife was so home sick that he ended up building her a mountain and a beautiful garden. Man I would have loved to see that. I had the kids draw what their hanging garden of Babylon would look like if they built one. They turned out great.
For our Bible lesson we learned about Saul and how he was chosen to be the King by Samuel. Oh, but that turned out to be a mistake. He was a selfish man. A great example of that is the fact that when Samuel was going to anoint him as King he hid. And then he was impatient which was displayed in his lack of patience to wait for Samuel to light the fire for the sacrifice. Well, next week we will learn about David and his appointment and how he and Saul get along. Should be good.
In Science we have taken the next step forward and are learning about leaves. We read that leaves actually have mouths. Well, Stomata and how they take in Carbon dioxide and leave us with wonderful air. I have always told my kids when we go to parks and hike not to pull tons of leaves off trees and pick all the flowers. Not only does it hurt the plant but if there are 300 hikers this week and every one of them do that what will be left of the tree. Well, our science book this week just proved me RIGHT! However, one of our projects for this weekend when we go on our hike is to collect leaves. Figures! LOL
In math this week my son had an “Aha “moment. He broke through his block for counting back change. Yee Haw! This has been a yearlong + battle to get him to understand that. He got it. Well, to make sure he got it we tried it again today, guess what? He remembered. OMGosh! Yea! I am so excited. I think holding him back a ½ year was well worth it. The things that he did not understand last year are finally clicking for him.
My daughter has been reading everyday at night to herself. Yes, I do mean reading. I hear her reading aloud. Sometimes I can tell she does not know the word, but she is really progressing very well on her own.
Well, that’s about it for this week. We will write to you next week. Have a great weekend!
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