Bigger Learning Moments {Units 5 & 6}

In Bigger Hearts for His Glory, Week 5, we read about the Pilgrims, the Mayflower voyage, Squanto, and Captain Standish. 

My camera is on the blitz, so I'm not taking the greatest pictures. Here are a few that I grabbed this week:

Art - Sand Painting with colored salt

Her finished picture (taken after it was dry). 

Bo making a picture too.


Plugging along nicely in All About Reading Level 2. I love when we get into a good rhythm! Once we do, lessons flow so smoothly and easily. 


Geography Activity - Day 2 
Learning about hemispheres. 

Vocabulary - Day 3


Science Exploration - Day 3

Elli and Bo learned how soap helps prevent the spread of germs and disease. Their hands are covered in lotion and glitter and they had to try to wash it off first with cold water, then warm water, then soap and warm water. This was a powerful lesson for Bo especially!

Learning about imagery in poetry. 

Science Exploration - Day 5 "How can sailors use the North Star to guide them as they sail?


Math Lessons - one lesson daily M-TH
Company (and a waffle with Nutella on it) makes math more fun. :) 

Notebooking the Mayflower voyage - Day 5

In Week 6, we read about William Penn and his Quaker life, the founding of the Pennsylvania colony, and the Quaker painter Benjamin West.

Harvesting "corn" in All About Reading

The kids have been dragging out our Draw Write Now books lately (Amazon affiliate link). These books are almost 10 years old and now well loved by the younger kids). 

Notebook pages for History and Vocabulary

and Poetry

Learning about how our body fights off infection in Science. 



For our Storytime "adventure" story, we read Island of the Blue Dolphins (Amazon affiliate link). I'm not good about pacing at all - we finished this in one week!

I'm also feeling like something is missing... and this is what I think it might be: I miss our read-alouds tying into our history like they do with Sonlight. The Teacher's Guide recommends that we choose a book based on the current Storytime theme - there are suggestions, but they don't tie into the History we are learning - I miss that!


Malachi is down to just one subject on the computer - Veritas Press American History. He is back into All About Reading 4 full swing and we are doing two lessons a day. I plan to pick up Level 4 Spelling when we finish AAR. He has also been doing Math Lessons for a Living Education Book 4 instead of Teaching Textbooks 5. I decided to take a step forward by taking a step back. I think Math Lessons is a more thorough program and MLLE Book 4 covers stuff not taught yet in TT5. MLLE 4 will also {hopefully} help him get those stubborn multiplication facts down! For those wondering what we will do after Book 5, I will probably start Malachi at Life of Fred Fractions. (He has already completed LOF Apples, Butterflies, Cats, Dogs, Edgewood, Farming, Goldfish, Honey and part of Ice Cream. It was in Ice Cream that I realized Malachi didn't do the Honey cards from Honey and I felt like the worse homeschool mom ever - I never checked his work - just made sure he was doing it and checking it himself, and missed the part about the Honey cards (to help him memorize math facts), hence why I made the decision to go with Teaching Textbooks (everything is done for me). Sigh. I'm checking his work DAILY now.  

And I'm sooo excited because Book 1 is now available! I'm printing it soon for Bo, but probably won't start until Fall. With nicer weather here, I don't think he'll want to do much school. 

Before these two weeks, we took a one week spring break, and jumped ahead to do Bigger science weeks 10-14, to cover John Audubon while we did "Birds of a Feather," a unit study we are reviewing for the Crew for Homeschool Legacy. We wrapped up this study during these two weeks of school. 

In my life...

I have 2013 in an album up to fall and am down to one stack of photos. 

I put all the photos in the album first, then I add the Project Life cards, then I journal. 

I haven't felt like working on it much, but really want to get that last stack of photos in! Looking at 2014, I have half the amount of pictures and about an equal amount of family life vs. Tot School with Bo photos. I might be able to get '14 and '15 in one album and that hasn't happened since I started Project Life!
Thanks for letting me share! 

6 comments

  1. I love seeing your weeks :) Your kids look like they are having lots of fun. I love Elli's look of concentration on the globe. So cute! I am hoping to work on some digital Project Life pages this summer. I would love to have a yearbook :)

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  2. Love! Just have to let you know... I'm now fully into HOD because of you... haha. Actually, it sounds accusing, but I really want to THANK YOU! I feel like HOD is what we've been searching for. I managed to get Little Hearts and Beyond second hand for a great price and we launched in this week with great success. :) Thanks for sharing your homeschool, Michelle, you are an inspiration and you have really helped my find what I so desperately needed! (hugs) Cass @ TheUnpluggedFamily

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  3. Oopps... I linked to your post! Here is my post about choosing HOD after reading all your lovely posts about Bigger! http://www.unplugyourfamily.blogspot.ca/2015/05/homeschool-ramblings-and-choosing-heart.html

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    1. Thanks for the link, Cass! So happy you were inspired and excited to see Heart of Dakota through your eyes!

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  4. Your homeschool posts are completely INSPIRING!!! Thank you for taking the time to be detailed and sharing your thoughts and beautiful pictures! I am also planning on switching from Sonlight to HOD...thanks to you! I ALWAYS look forward to reading your blog!

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  5. I'm looking forward to the structure of coming back to HOD after seeing your posts. Looks like you are all enjoying it, AND getting your Project Life books done, too!

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