Heart of Dakota: Bigger, Week 9 Update

So I know most of you who may have gotten this post a few days ago are saying where is the actual blog post? Well, I am on vacation and so far until this very moment I have not had a chance to sit down and write. So I thought I will just post the pictures which would tell the story.

Anyway, now I have time so here we go. Week 9 went well. The first day, Monday, my poor little boy was sick. He was hugging a trash can all day. So my daughter and I had fun doing school together. I forgot what it was like to school just one child. It sure is a lot easier, but not as much fun.

So our first project was to make a wharf kinda like the one that Ben made. We got out our play dough and of course she wanted pink. Hmmm, I do not think I have ever see neon pink rocks before. But it went well, and you can see by the picture she had her dolly try it out. Of course we do not want dolly to get muddy shoes! LOL.

Then like a very good sister my daughter made a get well card for her brother. Everyone say...Awwww! You can see how cute it turned out. My son did not appreciate it as much as I had hoped, but could be that he was just too sick. The next day he did thank her and giver her hugs for the card and her math sheet and her stuffed animal she gave him.

OK, so for those of you who have not done unit 9 yet in Bigger, let me just say that when you do the potato printing, remember to write the letter backwards on the potato before you carve it out. I just did not think about it with my daughters name (R) and her first print came out backwards. My son (V) made no difference. Anyway, they had a great time doing this project and wanted to save the potato. I can not imagine what it would be like by now. YUCK!!

Of course we did our history notebooking pages. My son drew Ben Franklin's battery. It was really a good rendition of the picture in the book. Now I have to tell you on Thursday and Friday I had my girlfriends children all day. Yes from 7:00am till late and three of them. I have to admit that I thought about scraping school those two days, but decided to try it. She gave me a few things for them to do on their own while I schooled my two. Guess what, I am lucky to have a girlfriend that raises really great kids. We got school done. OK, well, we skipped a couple things...spelling and english!

Anyway, back to notebooking. One of the kids I was babysitting asked to see our history notebook. Hmmm, made an impression. They liked it. Made me feel real good and my kids feel good to show off their work..

Our science project was a blast. Again it is hard to take pictures in complete dark. First let me say it really took a lot of work to get that spark. I finally remembered that my husbands old Army coat was made of wool so I got that and sure enough after rubbing it we got a spark. COOL. My kids enjoyed this one. But it was a lot of work to get that one spark. I love my daughter's drawing of it on the science sheet. The wiggly lines are the electricity on the balloons. Cute.

Now, if you all have not figured out by now that I love to change things up a bit now and then, well, I am sure you figured it out with the mapping project. I loved Carries idea, but we took it a step farther. I actually had them measure the large pieces of furniture in our class room and them put them on their map. It turned out pretty good. My daughter was getting a little tired by this time and wanted to play with her friend so I wrote the words on her map for her, but she did the actual mapping.

We had a great week again. Oh, I almost forgot, "Ben and Me" is a great book, I read it to the kids I was babysitting and they liked it too, even thought they came into it a couple chapters later. It is a very cute book. I highly recommend.

Well, I hope you all enjoy you week, and sorry for getting this post out so late. Kinda hard to get 4 people ready for vacation, clean a house before you go, get all your animals ready, leave and blog. But here it is. I will still post over the next two weeks, but obviously not about HOD. My HOD updates will be back in 2 weeks. Have a fantastic Thanksgiving!

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David and Goliath

I think all children know the story of David and Goliath and how David won the battle against Goliath for the Israelites. Well, Vincent and Raquel asked how this could really be possible, so we made an ancient sling and had some dirt clog flinging around in the back yard. Anyway, they were very simple to do made with felt and string. I know, I know! they were made out of leather and a leather cord back then, but come on, this is now and I (mom) certainly do not want broken windows. LOL! Anyway here it is!

Vincent's First Book

Well, Vincent worked for months on a book. It was one of those books that gives you a starting word or two and then the child finishes it off with 2 or 3 sentences. In this one he also had a chance to incorporate his artwork into it. The book turned out wonderful. He gave a copy to Great Grandma (my Grandma), Grape Grandma (Tony's mom) Nanny (my mom), Barbara and Mark (family friends he calls grandma/pa), Uncle Tim and Aunt Diane (Tony's brother) and one to his sister Raquel for Christmas. there was not one person who did not absolutely enjoy this book to its fullest.

Now my son when he made a mistake as he was writing this book over the course of several months, wanted to see the corrections on the paper. So that meant there were a few red marks in his book where he actually spelled a few things wrong etc. But this really challenged him not to make as many mistakes and therefore made for a better book. I was going to have him redo the pages he made mistakes on but he wanted to give everyone the book the way it was so they could see how he improved just in a few short months. How smart is he!

I am going to try and scan it and put it into an adobe file and then post the file here. So, come back in a week or so and see if I have it up yet so you can see the fantastic work he did.