Heart of Dakota: Bigger week 23

Well, I have to say this week was not the most fun week. I guess because I was coming off of being very sick last week and having to push our Easter break back a couple weeks. And to top it all off, I did not prepare for this week. You see I usually on Sunday, Saturday or even Friday just skim over the week and see if there are any supplies I need for the week that I may not have on hand. I did not do that this week. SO I was missing the cotton for spinning and I was missing the food color for dyeing the paper towels. Oh well, I did a few things this week that I thought were still along the lines of learning about the Pioneers.

This week learning about Horace Greeley was actually a great way to express what I have been trying to get across to my kids.  He was a very diligent boy/man who learned everything he needed to know not from a school teacher but form pursuing reading on his own. My son was particularly interested in the fact that at 12 years old he did not have to go to school anymore due to his face always being in some sort of book learning new things. Needless to say, my son did spend this week with his nose a bit more into some of the King Fisher encyclopedias we have around the house.

Our character trait this week was disciplined. Oooo, I like this one a ton. Once again, I brought up Horace who was disciplined to learn all the things he had to learn. He did not pay attention to the children around him teasing him, or to the toys calling his name. He kept focused (something my son has a hard time doing) on the task at hand. We worked on this character trait all week in our chore time, but even in our free time. I told both my children I wanted to see them looking at books more and working at something other then just playing with simple toys. They built a castle out of everyday items and played Barbie and Bioncles etc in the castle. These were things that were out of the ordinary and took more imagination and discipline to put together then the norm.

The History activity was soooo much fun this week. I could not find my scrabble set so I just cut a whole bunch of 1×1 pieces of paper out and wrote the letters on each piece. I loved the fact that they had to be very disciplined to be able to set the type on the table. If they were not it would get all mixed up and not look good. My daughter's dexterity is not the same as my 10 year old son. So this was a little more difficult for her, but she did a great job too.

Now this week we are finishing up our pottery form our art class. I will take pictures when they are done painting and post them next week. But I did do a sort of version of HOD's art. I typed out the poem by Louisa May Allcot and I just had them draw a picture of a clothesline and had them hand clothing etc on it. They turned out real cute. And I think the first time I read the poem, it went over their heads. But when they learned they had to draw a picture that goes with the poem, they put on a more disciplined ear to listening.

Science, as always, is interesting. Once again the character trait of disciplined comes to mind when we learn about the pioneers and how they had to make things work for them. We learned about sheep shearing, how they dyed the wool, how they spun the wool and how they weaved it into fabric or knit it into whatever they needed. We realized that doing all these things was time consuming and very tedious. One of the projects we were suppose to do was actually try spinning wool. Well, like I said earlier, I was not prepared and so we did not get to do this one. The other project was to dye paper towels. Well, once again, Mom was not disciplined in my duties as teacher this week and the only food coloring I had was a gel based one, and trust me, it does not work. I tried!

So you may ask what I did for science this week other then read the assigned pages?!? We weaved. After reading day 5 reading pages I thought it would be the perfect thing to do. We took red, white and blue card stock and cut it into 1/4 inch strips. This is how they learned to weave cloth. They did a great job of weaving and making sure everything was straight and tight. My son actually cut his square into to two pennant flags for his bike and for his scooter. Now I just need to get a dowel to finish it. They both had a ton of fun doing it and they realized the discipline it took to weave a huge coverlet or dress or whatever the weavers would weave for the people. (notice all the references to the character trait his week?)

Of course we did our timeline today too and our History page. OK, do not laugh. Well, go ahead, cause it is rather funny and cute. When we read about William Cullen Bryant the children had such a laugh at the fact that his father use to dunk his head in ice water to shrink it and to make it stop growing. They both drew a picture of what they thought William might look like as a baby. They are funny and of course very cartoonish. But they had fun using their imagination for this. As far as the History notebook page, you will notice that each line is written in a different hand. It is time to push my daughter a bit more with her writing. So I gave them each every other sentence to write. Yea, I had one in there too. I think it turned out pretty good and I was very proud of my daughter, because that was a lot of copy work for a 6 year old. But she did it as you see!

And in the middle of all the work with school this week, we had a friend from out of town come and visit. We have been friends since her daughter and my son were 3 months old! I kept it a surprise from my kids for over a month. Do you know how hard that was????? It was extremely hard. Thursday morning when I went into my sons room, I found several pairs of under ware on the floor. Uugghh! I was all over him telling him he had to get his room cleaned up. He could not understand why I was acting so overboard about it. Well, after they came and went, I asked him if he was glad I was so hard on him about getting the clothing off his bedroom floor. He answered "YES Mommy, thank you!!"

Well, that is about it for this week. Onto week 24. I am going to look through the upcoming week and see what I need for it right now. I do not want to have another week of un-preparedness again. Not that there is much that needs to be purchased for HOD, but it figures the ONE week I don't look, is the week I need two things. Just Figures!!! Catch you all next week!