Month: March 2015

In the classroom:

Today Isabel had to make up her own Preamble to our house. She struggled with it a bit and after some help, she finally got the ball rolling on the assignment.

Preamble for the Espinoza house.

Today, we are adding 2 states to our states book and 1 of the states was one of the original 13 colonies (actually it was the first!). This state was added into statehood on March 3rd and it’s Florida (1845) and on December 7, 1787 Delaware entered the union. Delaware was actually the first state added to the United States of America!

Happy 228 years of statehood Delaware!

The state facts on Delaware.

Happy 170 years of statehood Florida!

State facts on Florida.

While I was reading “Carry on, Mr. Bowditch”, I had Isabel draw another photo from the book. She did a great job!

Her drawing of “The Henry” for the book.
Love the sea animals and things under the boat.

What a day! We had a rocky start but were able to work through it and get on with class. We didn’t get all our assignments completed but there is always tomorrow!

We are still working on Henry W. Longfellow’s, “Paul Revere’s Ride” that she is learning for the next 5 weeks. Today she worked on learning the new piece for this week and then tied the 2 pieces together. It’s coming along very well and I think she’ll have it all memorized in 5 weeks. Yesterday Daddy gave us a suggestion on how she should present her poem and I’m liking his suggestion! Can’t wait to hear it.

Yesterday we worked on the Preamble to the Constitution and today Isabel had to write one for our home.

Working on her Preamble for our house.
See below for what she wrote.

(insert photo of Preamble for home)

We worked heavily on multiplication tables. We went over 2’s and 3’s again and then mixed it up. I also adding simple regrouping and she caught on to that quickly. We also did some simple division problems, it was mixed but she had no problem working them out. We also did a few large number addition and subtraction with regrouping. Any problems that she missed we went back over them together. She did a fantastic job!

We did not get our 2 new states completed today, so we will just push them both out for tomorrow to do. Tomorrow we will be doing Vermont, so we can add those 2.

In Bible we continued the story of Solomon and Paul (night time devotions).

Coloring page for today.

Second coloring page.

I wanted to add Isabel’s spelling test today, to show how her cursive writing is coming along.

She missed 3 words today:

wouldn’t – she wrote woudn’t
Hoboken (New Jersey)- she wrote Hobokin
Julie – she wrote July (don’t know what she was thinking there!)

Her penmanship is beautiful!

I didn’t mark it against her for grammar errors like the apostrophe and not crossing her “t”. This is spelling, we discuss them and move on.

As we begin our 22nd week of school we are looking forward to spring, spring vacation (in a few weeks), the end of school and summer vacation! We have a lot to look forward to but we need to make it through this week first.

As I sat down over the past weekend to prepare for the week, I realize it’s a busy week ahead but not any busier than other weeks. It always seems like so much work and then the week ends and I think that we could have done something more… or maybe not. Let’s just see how this week goes..

In the classroom:

Last week we finished the life of King David and have begun a full week of new kings for Israel. We start off with King Solomon, David’s son, who had asked the Lord for wisdom, instead of riches or fame. That was surprising and yet it showed he already had a great deal of wisdom. Today we learned about Queen Sheba and how impressed she was with King Solomon. As we continue throughout the week, we learn that King Solomon isn’t so wise after all and he falls into temptation and sin.

Coloring page from Isabel’s follow-up Bible lesson.

In the New Testament, we are following along with Paul and his final trip to Jerusalem. People are so angry with him that he needs to have an armed guard accompany him. We will learn as the week progresses that God works in ways to protect us that we don’t understand, we just need to trust him and we should take every opportunity to tell others about Jesus.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

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Isabel is continuing to work on her memorization of Literature by Henry W. Longfellow. Below is “Paul Revere’s Ride” that she is learning for the next 5 weeks.

The yellow highlighted part was last week’s part to learn.

The green highlighted part is this week’s part to learn.
She’s doing a great job learning it .

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Last week we started lessons on the forming of our government and of states and their admittance into statehood. Isabel has started a “states” book. Each week she will have a state (or states) to learn about. She will fill out a page of information about that state (or states). We have gotten her a 3-ring binder and plastic protective sleeves to put the sheets in for future reference. We also added the Constitution (we worked on that last week) and other new nation facts and pages to the binder as well.

Last week, we added Pennsylvania and Massachusetts to her “states” binder. We started with those 2 because they are states that we’ve talked the most about in our History lessons (Boston Tea Party, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, etc.). We’ll work on the 13 original and then add more states as the country expanses westward in our history lessons.

Today however, we are adding 2 states that weren’t part of the original 13 colonies. These 2 were added into statehood on March 1st, they are Ohio (1803) and Nebraska (1867).

Happy 148 years of statehood Nebraska!

She really enjoys this lesson time and I enjoy doing it with her. While she is working on her state page, I am reading facts (from the internet) about the great seal, the flag or other important (or fun) facts about the state.

Happy 212 years of statehood Ohio!

When we got to the famous people of Ohio, we learned that 7 Presidents were born there and Guy Fieri! Isabel thought that was so cool, because he’s on T.V.!!

Tomorrow we will add Florida (statehood is March 3,  1845) and Delaware (December 7, 1787).

In math this week we are going over multiplication tables and division. She’s been struggling with these two, so we are heavily reviewing them this week.