Homeschool Discoveries

After a quiet Thanksgiving at home, we enjoyed plenty of fun family time last weekend playing games, doing crafts, watching movies and a local Christmas parade on TV, and getting a bit more decorating done.  We also took the kids to an indoor play area (but I was too busy keeping track of them to take any pictures!).

On Monday it was back to school-days-as-usual.  Even though it was only a five day break, it was still hard to get everyone moving on Monday.  That made me reconsider taking a full three weeks off at Christmas!  😉  Overall it was a pretty quiet week with school in the mornings and plenty of time to enjoy Christmas activities in the afternoons:

1. Without really planning on it, we finished a lot of math lessons this week for both Miss M and Mr E.  Mr. E completed lessons 55-60 and started lesson 61 in Right Start B (though we skipped the midterm test — no need for a test for a Kindergartener).   We worked on telling time, adding coins, adding 9 by completing the 10, and he played his first game of corners.  The Corners game was definitely the highlight.   Unless something very surprising happens, we’ll finish B before the end of the year.  I’m not sure exactly what we’ll do after that — maybe some Singapore or Life of Fred?  Just play games? I just don’t think I want to start level C with a K’er!

2. Miss M worked on pages from early in the RightStart D workbook that she could work through on her own as review, plus we went through about 8 lessons together from the middle-ish portion of the book (starting with lesson 47, ending with lesson 68, and skipping a bunch in between).  We did some really interesting stuff, like learning about check numbers and “Terry’s Method” of subtraction.  We also got to assemble those “thousands cubes” to start talking about numbers in the ten thousands up to the millions.  Even the lessons we are covering together are pretty easy for Miss M so far (yea for easy math!), hence why we are able to cover so many lessons without a lot of effort.  We’ll start the section of Level D that’s all new in a week or two (but I’ll still be having her go back and do earlier pages for review and practice).  Now I’m starting to think that we may finish level D as well before the end of the year unless I significantly slow things down.   But I am not going to really “worry” about that at this point!!!

Academic Subjects Not Pictured:

• Spelling/Phonics:  Mr. E read to me every day as usual, working a bit more on Danny and the Dinosaur as well as reading a few “I See Sam” books.  He also worked on lesson 6 in Logic of English.  Miss M did lesson 17 in Logic of English, and we were both proud that she scored 100% when tested at the end of the lesson!  I went the “lazy” route with spelling practice this week and just let them play Spelling City games for their respective lists instead of playing LOE games together.  😉
• History:  We’ve “officially” moved on from the Revolutionary War in our American History studies and started studying the “new nation” period — with reading lots of living books it’s hard to keep things in a precise order, so I am considering events including the writing of the Constitution, the Louisiana Purchase and the War of 1812 to be all topics that are fair game right now!
• Science:  Once again, no other science other than what Miss M is doing independently with Sassafras Science Adventures.  I think I’ll make it one of my New Year’s resolutions to get back on track with doing more science study as a family.

3.  Mr K randomly found a fun CD at the library: Kids Meet Composers by Wendy Rollin.  Kids are introduced to 10 composers with a short track giving a brief bio of each composer, plus a famous tune from each composer set to new words that again teach something about the composer and his/her music.  The kids all enjoyed listening to the CD and dancing or marching around the living room!

4-6: I started pulling out our fun Christmas “stuff” this week.  The kids enjoyed spending a few afternoons making Christmas crafts, using the Christmas play-doh set, and playing with the Playmobil Nativity set.

I’m linking up with Collage Friday and the Weekly Wrap-Up!:

1. We celebrated Leap Day with a “fun school” day.  Despite my previous aspirations, we did not do a 100 days celebration as well.  Between the amount of time I was able to find to prepare, and remembering how busy our fun school Valentines day was, I decided we would shelve the 100 days celebration for this year and plan for it next year (since we will, of course, have to wait another four years to celebrate Leap Day!).  In the picture, the kids are playing leaping lilly pad games inspired by this post at Toddler Approved.

2. Also inspired by Toddler Approved, we read Frog and Toad stories on Leap Day — including the story about cookies and willpower.  Then of course we had to make some cookies.  Peanut Butter kiss cookies are a favorite here…and who says they are only a Christmas cookie? Not us!  It was fun to talk about willpower and if there is any difference between willpower and self-control.  (The kids said “no” initially, but I tried to make the case that willpower is something of our own effort, while self-control is a fruit of the Spirit).

3.  Miss M helped daddy to make our second-ever batch of homemade rootbeer! I jumped the gun on opening the first 2 liter of homemade rootbeer, and it was not very fizzy.  We’ll open batch number two tonight!

4.  While getting out some science and geography worksheets for Miss M (she really likes these, and she is probably learning at least a little bit from them), I remembered I had a Kumon cutting and pasting book for the boys we hadn’t gotten out at all this school year.

5. and 6.  With completion of lesson 81 on Tessellations, Miss M has made it through the big section of geometry/drawing lessons in the middle of RightStart C.  We had a review day yesterday and a games day today.  Miss M was not pleased to hear that we are back to “regular” lessons after this involving mostly adding, subtracting and multiplying.  She really likes the drawing and geometry!

7. Mr. E wrote a star wars story inspired by a book we read together.  I printed it out on a few sheets of paper, and he enjoyed cutting out and pasting on pictures to illustrate it from the Star Wars preschool pack at homeschool creations and from printables found on the Star Wars website.  We even bound it together with my new ProClick binding machine.  He told me, “this is a real book now!”

8. Miss M has her own cutting and pasting project — she is working on the Horse lapbook from Hands of a Child.  She has chosen horses as the subject for her “Expert Day” project for our homeschool co-op.  More on expert day in coming weeks!

9. Aren’t Baby J and Mr. E cute in their almost-matching shirts? One was a hand-me-down and one was from the thrift store — they have the same picture but different words! It’s not the best picture of the two of them, but every picture I tried to take where the boys were looking at me, Baby J’s hands were blocking his shirt! Baby J turned 4 months old this week and is now 15lbs and 12 oz!

Have a wonderful weekend!

I’m linking up with:

Collage Friday @ Homegrown Learners and the Weekly Wrap-Up @ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!