Gutierrez This Week!!

God's hands hold the earth's waters by Big Boy age 9

Hello from Ecuador!! 

Our boys finished their first unit of homeschool last week.  We are using some fantastic material, which we would like to share with you.  A Child's Geography by Ann Voskamp is a great book that lays out the basics of the earth.  Last week we were studying the earth's oceans and the boys drew pictures of God holding the earth's oceans in their hands with the chalkboard program on their tablets.

God's hands hold the earth's waters by Big Boy age 7

 We have been using a downloadable Math book called "Ray's Practical Mathmatics".  So far it has been a good review and helped them to be able to write big numbers well.  They also enjoyed studying roman numerals.

We finished a Language Arts unit on the "Boxcar Children" using "Learning Language through Literature: The Orange Book".  They really enjoyed this especially hearing the book for the 2nd time outloud.

Explorer lap books

In Social Studies we are studying North American history.  We finished our unit about New World Explorers.  We read quite a few books out loud and the one they liked the best was "Captain John Smith".  They made lapbooks to keep their work in, a timeline and quite a few crafts.  The ideas came from "Explorers" from Homeschool in the Woods, a CD full of resources and projects. 

Baby girl has been very busy as well.  She loves to be outside and below is a picture of her having some water time outside on a warm day as well as learning to make her little car go.

Explorer time line

On the school administration front, Robin had a really good trainer come from Quito and present some new curriculum for math and the preschool level.  The man has had a Christian school for about 20 years and began making curriculum about 5 years ago.  This was very exciting because his curriculum is getting full approval from the Ecuadorian government, while still incorporating Biblical values.  There are many details at the beginning of the year in school administration and Robin finds himself in meeting after meeting problem solving and helping to start the school year off well.  Our 6 English teachers will be starting an afterschool enrichment program 2 afternoons a week beginning next week.  It is great to have such a hard working staff who cares about the kids so much!!  

In 10 weeks time we will be in the US.  We are looking forward to the trip!!  Thanks for stopping by!!

Incan artifact made by big boy age 7

Afternoon water play!!

Learning to make the car go...