Jacks Academy: Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory Unit 1

What a fun week we had with unit 1. We are very pleased with this curriculum so far. So here are some highlights.

Reading/Literature:

The first reader that Christopher is working through is The Early Readers Bible. He surprised me with how well he did with the weeks reading. One evening he read the story of Noah’s Ark for our family devotion time. It made me cry. (in a good way)

For literature (Story Time) we focused on learning about different Genre’s. Unit 1 focused on Biography. We are reading Gladys Aylward. We completed a fun activity to start our conversation about biography’s. I gave Christopher 2 minutes to gather 5 items that tell something about him. Then I had him show me the items and tell me what they said about him. Then I told him that a biography is a true story about someone told by someone else. We learn all about someone just as we learned about him as he told us about the items he chose.

Bible Memory/Study/Music:

Psalms 4:8 “I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, keep me safe”.

We talked a lot this week about how God keeps us safe, and that we do not need to worry.

Christopher is loving the Hide ‘Em in Your Heart CD that goes with the scripture. We listen to one track each week to help him memorize his scripture. He always wants to do this first.

Math:

This week in math he had several new concepts.

*Half Past, 15 after

*Pints, Gallons, Cups, Quarts, and how many of each equal the other.

*Half a dozen

*Two digit multiplication

Language Arts:

This week Christopher worked to complete his Explode the Code book 2. He was so excited about it. At the end of the book they get a little certificate and he was thrilled. He also worked on his spelling words using several multi sensory outlets. Music, Jumping Jacks, push ups, trampoline, chalk, dry erase board.

Geography:

We stepped outside and he drew the earth with chalk. I then helped him locate where the seven continents were and he placed a card with the name in that area. We then did a little Simon Says game to help him learn the continents. “Simon says, jump up and down on Asia”, “Simon says, put one foot on Africa, and one foot on Europe”.

He along with his sister open up a Little passports package from South Africa. We talked about this being one of the seven continents.

Science:

We talked about how God made the seas and that the earth has five oceans. He located those on the map in his book. We talked about how the ocean has currents. I do not have photo’s but we filled a bucket with water, and put his little toy canoe in the water, then I had fill a squirty toy with water and hold it under the surface of the water behind the canoe and squeeze to create a current.

We talked about some of God’s amazing sea creatures and how some sea creatures like the dolphin have blubber to help keep them warm. I filled two small ziplock bags with vegetable oil and then put those two bags inside one bag. He put one hand in the bag with the oil the oil bags fit like a glove of sorts. He stuck the “gloved” hand and the free hand in a bowl of ice water to see which hand got cold. Naturally within seconds he removed his free hand from the water. So we talked about how blubber works.

History:

We read some great stories from American Pioneers and Patriots this week. We started a timeline which I do not have photo’s of. on the timeline we added St. Augistine 1565, and Columbus 1492.

Art: