First of all, I will explain a little about HOD Preparing. This is a curriculum based on Charlotte Mason methods, which includes short lessons, living books, narration, dictation and quick hands on activities. The author of HOD, Carrie Austin, has created a wonderfully laid out programme that means the children get to do their math, grammar, reading, poetry, creative writing, narration, dictation, history, science, art projects, drawing and a multitude of other things sprinkled throughout the year.
I haven't taken as many photos as I would like but I hope over the course of the year the different aspects of what they are doing will be photographed and blogged about.
HOD Preparing covers History from Creation through to about the 1970's. It is designed to just be an overview, as the next four guides, each covering a year, do a more indepth study of the different time periods. We are planning to move Shakayla to the second guide out of those four in the middle of this year as this is where her skills place her best, but due to finances we have had to delay till then.
UNIT 1
So our first unit involved reading some passages from Genesis along with the beginning of a wonderful book called Grandpa's Box. We really enjoyed the readings from these. We learnt how the bible is demonstrating the war between God and Satan, and are looking forward to learning more about this from this book. It is amazing how someone else's perspective on something we already know about has changed the way we are viewing the bible. From this the girls made a shield of faith as we were discussing armour and protection during war times.
The girls also did science independently. Currently they are reading One Small Square: Artic Tundra and they either do an oral narration, a notebook page, answer a series of five questions or do a science experiment. It is great learning for them, as it is in lovely small bits.
Overall it was a great first week, full of hard work, fun and laughter. Here are a few photos of the children dying after being hurt during a sword fight. This happened during the time the girls were doing their vocabulary words, and rival I think was one of the words, which sparked this display off.
Yes, we are slightly mad and a little dramatic at times.
UNIT 2
Well, our second week didn't start quite the way we had hoped. I became sick on Saturday night and was still not right by Monday morning. By Thursday I decided to head to the dr, which was quite a good thing as what I thought it was, it wasn't. It is something else which will quite likely result in surgery in the near future.
Anyway, at the end of Unit 1, we started reading a book called The True Story of Noah's Ark and so we finished that during Unit 2. What a beautiful story. The author really captures what it must have been like for Noah and his family. It was a very eye opening story for the girls.
We began reading LIfe in the Great Ice Age, which is the story of a young boy of cave man times. It is very interesting reading how the people possibly lived back then. We are really enjoying all the books that have been selected for this programme. It is truely bringing history alive for us.
The girls project this week involved two activities. One was doing a collage of warm and cool colours and the other was a two day event with painting either a cool or a warm background. The following day they had to mix colours to paint a rainbow over their backgrounds. James also joined in on this activity which was great. He loved it.
 |
| Bethany's collage |
 |
| Shakayla still working away |
 | ||||||
| Shakayla's finished collage |
 |
| Such diligent workers |
 |
| Bethany hiding, but a beautiful painting none the less |
 |
| James very proud of his effort |
We really enjoyed this week, and the girls are really loving singing along to their CD with Psalm 1 on it. Here they are doing some actions to it. They have memorised Psalm 1:1-3 so far and when they have memorised all six verses they are going to perform their dance for Dad.
 |
| Such concentration on what they are doing |
Stopping in from the HOD boards. It looks like your kids are having a great time! They seem to be very artistic, too. :) I like to see what we have to look forward to in future HOD guides.
ReplyDelete