Dopp Family Homeschool

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!  We hosted all of my family which included over 40 people!!!  It was a wonderful time visiting, playing and eating delicious food!  Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday simply because it involves lots of family and lots of food lol!  My grandma Starshine flew in from Montana... she turned 90 this summer!  Also, my little sister Lana has been sober for 9 months and it was so wonderful to catch up with her.  The kids had fun playing outside and in the basement with their cousins.  Ivy made up some skits with her cousins, which was fun! We managed to get in a couple of days of school during Thanksgiving week and then we got a few days in the following week as well, although sickness has hit us pretty hard so the last couple of days have been very laid back! Language Arts - Eli worked on his Writing & Rhetoric book this week.  He wrote a fun story titled "The Mouse and the Fly."  It was a spin off o...

We started off this week doing our Kiwi, Koala and Tinker Crates.  Eli hadn't quite finished the bottom swivel portion of his Planetarium so we worked on that instead of starting his new Tinker Crate. Ivy and Emmitt worked on theirs which was a little launcher device with the theme "Investigating Inertia."  Erik tie dyed his bag. Language Arts - Ivy reviewed lessons 23 and 24 in her All About Learning this week.  I decided to review those two again as I felt like she didn't fully grasp the new concepts and I wanted to make sure she reviewed them before we moved on to lesson 25.   Eli worked on his handwriting, dictation and reading.  He's finished up his last language arts book so we've just ordered the next level.  For Emmitt, we put papers on the wall with big letters and he had to take his little dart gun and shoot the letters that he called out.  He also practiced writing letters and doing picture finds. History -...

This week turned out to be a little short and pretty busy!!  I got home from San Antonio late Monday so we didn't get much done that day as far as school goes. Then, Tuesday was Ivy's birthday so it was pretty relaxed...we played games, read books and went to gym class.  Friday was our commonwealth and then we had Ivy's party at GJ Gym (LOL...we like that place).  Anyway, it was a great week, but I'll look forward to getting back to schedule next week ;). Math - Eli worked on his math book doing some basic financial math equations.  He and Ivy and I all did math games and logic problems this week.  Definitely something I want to continue working on as they didn't catch on very easily.   Emmitt did a couple of math puzzles with me too and did math on Starfall. Language Arts - Ivy worked on her All About Reading this week and finished through lesson 24.  She also practiced and practiced a little talk that she gave at her church!  She read t...

History - This week for history, we started reading the book "The Courage of Sarah Noble."   Eli   and Ivy also attended two classes at their commonwealth and both were history related.  The first was on Lewis & Clark.  My mom actually taught the class for me since I went to San Antonio, woot woot!  They went over why Thomas Jefferson wanted the expedition in the first place and then they talked about botany, since that was a big part of the Corps of Discovery.  They looked at various leaves and reviewed what the difference were, etc.  The other class was reading Little House in the Big Woods and then doing some activities that related back to that time period. Math - Eli worked on adding business numbers.  He started a little book store and priced the book.  Then, I came and purchased books from him so he'd have to give me a total and then give me change once I gave him money.  It was pretty informal, but fu...

This week started off with a bang since we are getting over sickness and Dirk was gone for most of the weekend.  Also, all the other kids are on fall break so we've had a lot visitors ;). Language Arts - ELI  started reading "The Little Prince" on his own this week!  I was so glad to see him take the initiative and decide to start reading this without any push from me.  He usually only will listen to audiobooks.  He also worked on some sentence structuring (coordinating conjunctions), dictation and his handwriting.  He's doing cursive this year and it's not really his thing ha!  He does better when I sit by him.  When he was doing his dictation I really had him focus on writing his letters on the line and wow, he did so much better!  I'm going to make a point to do that more.   IVY continued her All About Reading and got through lesson 20.  She is picking up things very quickly!  She did her handwriting this week too and it ...

Dirk went up to help at a conference in Pocatello last week for Healer's Library.  He drove up to Provo to pick up our new dining table and then dropped his truck at Carmon's house and rode with his co-worker David to the Airport.  Brad and Jean were there and Brad flew them all up to Pocatello!  They went out to sushi and and stayed at a nice hotel.  Dirk had a great time!!!  Sure wish I could've gone with him haha... another time I suppose.  It's so so cool that Uncle Brad has his own plane and can fly around wherever he needs to go!  Dirk sat up front in on there way to Pocatello and said it looked so complex... I don't think either of us will ever be pilots!  Kudos to him and my brother John!⇦

We had a pretty full week this week with Ivy and Emmitt continuing their swim lessons!  They are doing so great at swimming!!  I'm so excited for them! Language Arts - Eli worked on his handwriting, dictation and worked on narration as well.  We read together the Lion and the Mouse and Eli had to record himself retelling the story.  He really liked this activity, which didn't surprise me since he's such a communicator ;).  Ivy worked on her All about Reading and her handwriting.  She completed lessons 17&18 this week - she did lesson 18 twice, but I switched it up the second time.  Emmitt played a lot of Starfall this week and did some letter practice and picture finds in his Kindergarten book. Math - Eli worked on adding and subtracting large numbers this week and on rounding numbers.  He doesn't care too much for math, but he does a good job.  I'm looking into playing more math games with him and the other kids to make ma...