Unit 8 day 4-5

Due to a rain out at work, Dad was able to be home for our activities yesterday.

Cora and her dad used small "action figures" to act out the parting of the Red Sea.

Today we finished up Unit 8. Letter G

I went on-line and found a few fun letter G related worksheets. My daughter really seems to enjoy them.

The bible activity for today was kinda fun. We read how God provided food for the Israelites. So, to act it out I placed "manna from heaven" around the living room while the Israelites slept. When they "woke up" she went around putting the "manna" in her basket. It was fun.

Then during prayer time tonight, she said her prayer then stopped and asked us if she could pray again because she forgot something. Then she prayed and thanked God for all the wonderful food that he gives her to eat. Too sweet.

Next week is our scheduled week off and we will be taking a trip to visit family. Should be nice to have a break.

Unit 8 Day 1-3

Last week we finished up Unit 7: baby moses -first plague, letter F and the number 7.

Unit 8 covers the Passover and Exodus from Egypt, letter G, and the number 8.


I have been looking over my blog photos and saw how many of the photos are taken at the kitchen table. That has me thinking that it's time for a little change. Maybe soon we'll try to mix it up by moving to a new location. Though, there is something to be said for a good routine and stability.

This is what the daily lesson plans for Heart of Dakota, Little hands to Heaven look like.

They are very easy to follow. The introduction estimates that each square takes about 5 minutes to complete, giving you 30 minutes of material.

I have found that we spend more than 5 minutes on most sections.

Yet, the divisions make it easy to spread the lesson out through the entire day, or you can just sit down and do them all at once.

We typically split up our day, doing the bible story and bible activity in the morning and then the other activities in the afternoon.

I generally have the bible story CD playing while we do our afternoon activities.

At first I thought the music was pretty lame and hokey, but the kids like it.

Cora goes around singing the songs and when we read the bible story she stops me and tells me that this is like the one in her songs. It really does helps her to learn and remember the stories. As lame as the songs are, even I find myself humming them throughout the day.

Unit 6 day 5 and Unit 7 days 1-2

Heart of Dakota - Little Hands to Heaven

Last Friday, I had planned to finished off the last day of Unit 6, but I came down sick and we had to put it off until Monday.

So on Monday, we covered the last of the letter E and started on letter F.

We drew bricks on the count on me page to remind us that the Israelites had to use brick to build things for the Egyptians.
We do this same "Count On Me" activity every week. She draws two items in each square and then she draws the numbers 1-10 under the squares. We have done this 6 times now, so I was a little shocked when she had such a hard time with the number '5'. Even after I drew her an example, it still took her 4-5 tries before it was close to correct.

Poor thing found that very stressful and became angry.

So after the number '5' we took a break and colored a picture before continuing on with the activity. I am glad that homeschooling gives us the luxury to take as long as we want to do something and then to move on to something else when it just isn't enjoyable anymore.

After all, shouldn't learning be fun?!

Today we did our masking tape of the letter 'F.'

This was nice and easy because we just took the bottom leg off of the 'E' that we had down from last week.

Every week, we look at her toys for things that start with the letter of the week and use them to trace the letter on the floor. 'F' proved to be a lot of fun. She was a Feathered Fairy holding Flowers and a Fan while Flying on the letter 'F'.

Too cute.

I guess we could have just used a Fish, but that wouldn't have been as fun, now would it.

For our bible story, we read the story of Moses' mother placing him in a basket and putting him the river to save him from Pharaoh. After we read the story, we used one of her baby dolls, a basket, a blanket,and a blue nap mat (as the Nile river) to act out what we learned. She hid her baby and then prayed for his protection before placing him in the Nile.

She really enjoyed this activity. Except when her little brother kept dumping baby moses out of the basket and jumping on our river. It can be pretty stressful to attempt to do these activities while my 1 year old is running around. For that reason we usually wait until his nap to do our crafts.

Today for our craft project, she cut strips of green paper and glued them to a blue paper to make the basket floating in the grass of the river.

I know it is better for her to figure it out on her own, but I have a hard time not helping her on these projects.

So I find it is better that I start on another task instead of watching her do her craft.

Don't get me wrong, I stay close enough to make sure that she doesn't glue things on the carpet and windows or cut her self with the scissors, but that's it.

This not only allows her to learn, grow and gain confidence, plus also gives me time to get dinner started or do the dishes.

Win Win.

Unit 6 day 3-4

Unit 6 Day 3


On day 3, we used glue and sugar to make a picture of Joesph in the desert with the Egyptian Pyramids.


Then we also used some of her toys to act ouy the 10 brothers bowing down to Joseph.





Unit 6 Day 3

For our Bible Story today we read of how Joseph told his brother who he was and forgave them.


We then used a mirror to look closely at our faces and pointed out things that make us special. Just like the brothers had to look closely to see that it was indeed Joseph.


Next we read from our ABC, verses book and learned the verse for the letter E.
"Even a child is known by his deeds."



In our letter activity today we used puff balls to outline the letter 'E' and 'e'

Unit 6 Lesson 1

This week we are moving on to letter 'E' and the number 6, and learning more about Joseph in Egypt.

We kept our lesson confided to my youngest's nap time today, because this morning we visited a blueberry farm to pick fresh blueberries.

Flexibility...a continued blessing of road schooling.

Just like last week, we did not have the magazines to cut out 6 pillows, as per the instructions, so I had her draw 6 beds instead. The pillows/beds were to remind her that Pharaoh had a dream.

There is little emphasis on numbers in this curriculum. There is only one weekly activity which addresses the new number of the week. Though, once a week she does write all of her number from 1-10 an the Count On Me sheet.

I would like to see more use of numbers in the curriculum, but I know that there is so much time ahead for her to work on that.
So maybe it is better to be focused primarily on the letters now.

Unit 5 Lesson 4-5

Cora was feeling better today so we continued on with the story of Joseph U5 day 4 and day 5.

Day 5 didn't have too much to cover so we just combined it with day 4.

Today we learned how Joseph was obedient. We acted out being obedient with a stuffed animal, kinda like the game of Simon Says. Also played "Yes, Mommy" where she said "yes, Mommy" to everything I asked her to do, just like Joseph had to do as a servant and prisoner in Egypt.

Instead of just looking at the flash cards, I had her finger paint the letters A-D, then I gave her free time to paint anything she wanted.

Good Friday.

Unit 5 lesson 4

Had to take a sick day on Thursday.
My little girl was sick.

After a day of laying on the couch, in the evening she asked to do a school craft.
So we used some spices and glitter to outline our review letters.

Hopefully, we'll be able to do the rest of lesson 4 today.

Unit 5 Day 2-3 (Little Hands to Heaven)

Continued with our review week

and today we introduced

the number 5.

We were instructed to cut out 5 purses or wallets and glue them on the Number 5 page to remind her that the brothers sold Joseph, but instead we took the idea in the math activity and did color rubs of 5 coins.

I was surprised that she found this task difficult and got frustrated at her attempts to do it on her own. After I helped her hold the coins down, it was much easier for her. I should have taped the coins down under the paper to make it easier for her to do on her own.

I liked the Hide and Seek Review page today. She had to look for all the letters we have learned thus far as well as match the lower case with the upper case. She missed finding a few of the letter, but was able to point them out with a little help.

For the math activity, we took our cup of pocket change and she sorted them. She has a nice little cash register, so we used that, but you could just use cups or a muffin pan as the book suggests.

We also took a few minutes to look at the the coins. The quarters were especially fun with all the different state pictures on the back. There are a lot of activities you could do with the state quarters, math, geography, history, art.... could be very useful one of these days.

Unit 5 Day 1

I was surprised to find our week off of school to be such a nice break. It's not that this material is difficult or even too time consuming, but it was still nice to have a week off from "school."


so, after a week of vacation bible school and a long weekend of camping in Hot Springs, we started back into our school lessons today.

Unit 5 is a review week.

I thought this meant that we would be reviewing the bible stories as well as the letters, but turns out the material reviews the letters, but continues on in the bible material.

Today we started to story of Joseph.

For an added math activity, I had her draw one big person to be Jacob/Israel and then 12 smaller people to be his 12 sons. We counted the sons she drew and then she wrote the number '12.'

The bible activity for today had her act out Joseph getting his new colorful coat. Then we used paint and a coffee filter to make a colorful coat. While I was setting up the paints I asked her to draw Joseph's colorful coat on a stick figure man. This was not a scheduled activity, but it kept her busy while I got the craft supplies together.

For the letter activity, instead of simply reviewing the "flash cards," I made a little jumping game for her to do. This seemed like more fun and got her up and moving as well. Win Win.