Heart of Dakota: Bigger Week 26

This week we finally were able to learn about one of most beloved Presidents, Abraham Lincoln. I happen to have a few books at home specifically about him so I had my son read these out loud to us. He was really a very incredible President and Man!

Anyhow, this week was as good as the 25 weeks we are following behind. One of the books we are reading is "By the Great Horn Spoon". I can not say enough of how much we are enjoying this book. We are a little behind the schedule for reading it, but we are loving it. I am loving it even more because I get to put on my southern accent when I read it! LOL! For those of you studying the California Gold Rush, I truly think you would like this book and get a better idea of how these men lived as they went to the diggins.

For our Character Study this week we are learning how to forgive. I can not think of one person anywhere who does not needs to learn a little more forgiveness.  As usual, we learned something new about how to forgive and we were able to TRY to put it into action this week!

Our History Activity this week was learning more about the stars and how people from the Pioneer Days  were able to tell which way they were going. I happen to have a star map that we used to learn more about that and we even picked up a few extra books on the subject. This was really a review for my son since we had learned about the solar system last year. My daughter sat in on those lesson last year too, but not much stuck. I think it will stick much more this year.

Even though I felt our History Activity was more like science, in the Science portion of our week we  learned about  cutting hay and what they used and how they went about bundling etc. Here was the real cool part. The day we learned about the cradle and scythe and sickle we went shopping at Sprouts. Guess what we saw on the wall of this store? You guessed it ! All the farming tools we had talked about plus some. So our shopping trip turned into a lesson too. Funny thing, we had two people comment to me in the store about how I was such a good mom for even noticing these things and then teaching them to my children in the middle of shopping. Needless to say, I beamed! OK, so I didn't tell either one I homeschool. Is that a crime? LOL!!!

Also in Science we learned about weather prediction. It was such a wonderful day out to look at clouds. We had the dark grey sky a coming, the beautiful streaks, the puffy white clouds. I think we had all the different clouds! It was nice to have so many. We actually were able to tell that it was going to rain that night. When we got to church that evening so many people were surprised that it was raining, but not us!

Learning about the Civil War has been heart breaking for mostly me, but even my children just can not understand why?!?!  As we continue with Geography we still are learning about all 50 states and where they are. This week we learned which states were Confederate and which were Union. Sure glad the Union won and Forgiveness was set in motion!

Of course our last thing each week is our timeline and our notebook pages which this week was going over the different Generals, Presidents etc for the Union and Confederate as well as drawing the flags. I think I'll rent Gone with the Wind this weekend! Anyway, we had another good week and we are now off to week 27.