Poetry Memorization

I have been reading about poetry memorization for a while now and I finally decided to start it with Juliet. I am going to purchase IEW's poetry memorizatiion cd's for next year, but for the remainder of this year I decided to just pick out the poems myself.

Juliet started a poetry notebook. We are just using a sketch book. If you open it up to a two page spread, we typed up the poem on computer paper and cut it out and pasted it on the left side, the page on the right side is reserved for her to draw a picture to illustrate the poem.

We just started this last week. On day one we looked over the poem and I read it to her. We glued it into her notebook. I recorded the poem into our voice recorder for Juliet to listen to everyday. This is really helping her to memorize the poem. She listens to the recorder once to twice a day. After she listens, she repeats as much as she can to me out loud. I then work with her for a couple of minutes, making sure she is memorizing more of it each day or so.

It only took her about 5 days and she memorized her first poem! I decided to take two weeks for each poem, letting her illustrate it on the last day.

We started out with "The Lord's Prayer." I am putting together our list of poems for the remainder of the year. I will post the entire list when it's finished.

My son is also memorizing the poem. I didn't intend for him to start this year, he just picked up it from hearing his sister and he wanted to listed to the recording. I am not starting this formally with him until next year, but I have a feeling he already likes it!

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What's with the Attitude?

I am really having a hard time with my 7 yo son. His attitude is so difficult right now. He complains about doing everything and this is really making my life hard right now. It is affecting my daughter too because we do many subjects together. He stops our reading with complaining and when asked to do a notebooking page he will say his hand hurts too bad to finish. This week has been the worst. He had me in tears on Tuesday, I just couldn't take it anymore.

I want to be a good mom to him. I just don't know how much more of this I can take. The only thing I know to do is to pray for the situation...I mean really pray. I am also going to start punishing him by giving him extra chores to do when he just refuses to mind during school for absolutely no reason. I have asked my husband to help me out. We decided that during school time he is the principal. If Evan can't send him to the principal (dad), and then dad will decide what is wrong, and what, if any, the punishment should be. This way I don't have to completely stop school work with my daughter to deal with my son.

We are going to try this out and see how it works. I desperately need something to give with him. He really is such a sweet boy with a good heart. I definitely believe that he wants to behave, he is just going through something right now.

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Thoughtful Thursdays January 29, 2009

Today's date is...

January 22,2009

This week my greatest challenges have been...

my son's bad attitude toward doing anything

Things I wanted to do this week but didn't get around to doing...

cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning

Our favorite thing we did in school this week was...

learning about Daniel Boone and the wilderness road

Our least favorite thing we did in school this week was...

spelling

My biggest accomplishments this week were...

just getting through the week

The biggest thing I need to work on doing better is...

not stressing over the little things

I feel I need the Lord to help me...

learn how to better deal with my children right now, especially my son

I am most thankful this week for...

my loving husband

One word to sum up my week...

difficult




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Today's date is...

This week my greatest challenges have been...

Things I wanted to do this week but didn't get around to doing...

Our favorite thing we did in school this week was...

Our least favorite thing we did in school this week was...

My biggest accomplishments this week were...

The biggest thing I need to work on doing better is...

I feel I need the Lord to help me...

I am most thankful this week for...

One word to sum up my week...



Just copy this into your blog page and then fill it in. I ask that as you read others entries, you would pray for one another using the information that others put after "I feel I need the Lord to help me..."


if you are participating in this and have written your entry, please come back here and put a link to the exact page where your entry is located. Make sure it is the exact page your journal entry is on rather than your home page so that others can find your post easily. This way we can all share what we are going through together. I encourage you to invite others to join in with us! DO NOT put a link here if you haven't written a journal entry for this!! Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

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Thoughtful Thursdays January 22, 2009

Today's date is...January 22,2009

This week my greatest challenges have been...trying to battle my kids bad attitudes

Things I wanted to do this week but didn't get around to doing...too much to mention...mostly things related to my homeschool website

Our favorite thing we did in school this week was...Our state notebooking sheets. Both kids love to learn about a new state

Our least favorite thing we did in school this week was...spelling and math

My biggest accomplishments this week were...starting out the week on a bad note but finishing it up on a good one. I had to readjust my attitude A LOT to get through this week!

The biggest thing I need to work on doing better is...delegating more chores to the kids. They are getting bigger now and I think they should be expected to do a little more than what they do. I need to find bigger chores and follow through with making sure they get accompolished

I feel I need the Lord to help me...study his word more diligently

I am most thankful this week for...being a homemaker

One word to sum up my week...introspective




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Today's date is...

This week my greatest challenges have been...

Things I wanted to do this week but didn't get around to doing...

Our favorite thing we did in school this week was...

Our least favorite thing we did in school this week was...

My biggest accomplishments this week were...

The biggest thing I need to work on doing better is...

I feel I need the Lord to help me...

I am most thankful this week for...

One word to sum up my week...



Just copy this into your blog page and then fill it in. I ask that as you read others entries, you would pray for one another using the information that others put after "I feel I need the Lord to help me..."


if you are participating in this and have written your entry, please come back here and put a link to the exact page where your entry is located. Make sure it is the exact page your journal entry is on rather than your home page so that others can find your post easily. This way we can all share what we are going through together. I encourage you to invite others to join in with us! DO NOT put a link here if you haven't written a journal entry for this!! Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

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Thoughtful Thursdays January 15, 2009

Today's date is... January 15,2009

This week my greatest challenges have been...getting organized

Things I wanted to do this week but didn't get around to doing...lots of stuff on line like ordering books from amazon and looking at some curriculum for next year

Our favorite thing we did in school this week was...build a model volcano

Our least favorite thing we did in school this week was...writing

My biggest accomplishments this week were...getting all of our school assignments finished even though we were behind from last week...we got all caught up

The biggest thing I need to work on doing better is...staying cool and calm when my daughter refuses to do her writing assignments

I feel I need the Lord to help me...be the mother he wants me to be, even when my kids don't appreciate me...(which seems like always!)

I am most thankful this week for...my salvation, and my alarm clock

One word to sum up my week...fast




If you would like to participate in this just put the image above on your blog with a link that redirects back to this page. Use the setup below each time you post.



Today's date is...

This week my greatest challenges have been...

Things I wanted to do this week but didn't get around to doing...

Our favorite thing we did in school this week was...

Our least favorite thing we did in school this week was...

My biggest accomplishments this week were...

The biggest thing I need to work on doing better is...

I feel I need the Lord to help me...

I am most thankful this week for...

One word to sum up my week...



Just copy this into your blog page and then fill it in. I ask that as you read others entries, you would pray for one another using the information that others put after "I feel I need the Lord to help me..."


if you are participating in this and have written your entry, please come back here and put a link to the exact page where your entry is located. Make sure it is the exact page your journal entry is on rather than your home page so that others can find your post easily. This way we can all share what we are going through together. I encourage you to invite others to join in with us! DO NOT put a link here if you haven't written a journal entry for this!! Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

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My kids can say all the books of the bible!

We have been working on memorizing all the books of the bible since last year and we finally have learned them all. I am so proud of Juliet and Evan. They have worked really hard and they are so proud of themselves. I have memorized them too! Praise the Lord.

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Choosing Curriculum

I must admit I am struggling a bit right now with choosing our curriculum for next year. I am a little torn about what to use for history. I am still going back and forth between using "My Father's World" again or changing over to "TOG." I am leaning more toward My Father's World because I have been using it and I really like it. Also, I think it is a lot cheaper than TOG( if you buy all of the books for reading).

Also, we will be finishing up My Father's World first grade in two months. We have been using this for our bible studies. I have been searching for a replacement bible study to use once we finish up in March. Well, I found what we will start using. It looks really awesome and I think it will provide Juliet with a chance to do some independent study. I really like that fact. She is getting older now and we still do everything except spelling together. I want her to have something she does kind of on her own and I think this will be perfect. We will start using Explorer's bible study: Discovery Genesis and Keepers of the faith character traits study (still deciding on which character trait to study). We will of course review everything together, but she will do the reading and the questions on her own.

I think Evan will start using the Explorers bible study for first grade too.

So much to think about. I feel like this year is going by so fast and I want to be prepared for next year... early.


I am still undecided about grammar too. I really don't like the fact that Shirley Grammar takes so much time to do. It seems to be a really good curriculum but it just takes so much of our time. If I do change it I will probably switch to something like easy grammar.

I will stick with math on the level, we really like it. Science is pretty much unit studies for us right now. I ordered Considering God's Creation and am excited about looking it over. We have also used Noeo science and apologia, but we haven't stuck with a single curriculum through the entire year. We just skip around and use what we like from each of them. We will probably keep to this same system

Writing is definitely staying the same! We use Institute for excellence in writing and I wouldn't change it for the world. I am excited about starting it with Evan next year.

I still have a lot to think about. Thank goodness I still have time to decide.

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School This Week: January 5-9

Bible


This week we started the New Testament in "My Father's World" curriculum. We read:

An angel speaks to Mary
Jesus is born
When Jesus grows up

we read the story and then completed a notebooking page for what we read about.


Math

Juliet is reviewing her times tables 2-7. We just started with 3 digit multiplication (327 x 763) and she picked up on that right away.

Evan is still working on subtraction with regrouping. He tends to get a little sloppy with it so we will probably be working on this for a while to come.


Science

We started our Rocks and Minerals unit study. We read about the layers of the earth, igneous rocks, and volcanoes. We completed a notebooking page after we read and also did a couple of flip books and a worksheet to go into our notebook.



history

Continueing on with our state studies, we completed a notebooking page for Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina. We are working on remembering the capitols. I recorded the names of the states and capitols that we have learned so far into our voice recorder. We have only learned 6 so far. Every day both kids listen to recording for 2 minutes 2-3 times a day. I got this idea from this website. I plan on doing this with poetry and other things that we will be memorizing. Our spelling curriculum(phonetic Zoo) is setup on cd's and follows the same system...it has worked really well for us.

Handwriting, cursive,spelling,and personal bible reading are also done every day of the week except Friday.

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Thoughtful Thursdays January 1, 2009

Today's date is...January 1, 2009

This week my greatest challenges have been...tackling a large amount of things on my to do list that I have putting off until after Christmas

Things I wanted to do this week but didn't get around to doing...so far I can't think of anything

Our favorite thing we did in school this week was.. well, since there was no school this week I have to say that the "no school" part was the best, although I must admit I am ready to start back

Our least favorite thing we did in school this week was...since there was no school I can't say

My biggest accomplishments this week were...staying strong and on top of things while entertaining business partners of my husbands this week, and still tackling my heavy to do list

The biggest thing I need to work on doing better is...getting up earlier...haven't I said this one before .)


I feel I need the Lord to help me...stay committed to my new year's resolutions and see them through. I really want to do them, I just need the Lord to provide me with the strength to maintain once the new has worn off.


I am most thankful this week for... the copy and paste application on my computer

One word to sum up my week...busy!



If you would like to participate in this just put the image above on your blog with a link that redirects back to this page. Use the setup below each time you post.



Today's date is...

This week my greatest challenges have been...

Things I wanted to do this week but didn't get around to doing...

Our favorite thing we did in school this week was...

Our least favorite thing we did in school this week was...

My biggest accomplishments this week were...

The biggest thing I need to work on doing better is...

I feel I need the Lord to help me...

I am most thankful this week for...

One word to sum up my week...



Just copy this into your blog page and then fill it in. I ask that as you read others entries, you would pray for one another using the information that others put after "I feel I need the Lord to help me..."


if you are participating in this and have written your entry, please come back here and put a link to the exact page where your entry is located. Make sure it is the exact page your journal entry is on rather than your home page so that others can find your post easily. This way we can all share what we are going through together. I encourage you to invite others to join in with us! DO NOT put a link here if you haven't written a journal entry for this!! Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Continue Reading...