January, February, March

Back to our own independent homeschooling - yeah!!!! I cannot believe how much happier I am than I was when we tried to do k12. We spent the last 3 months doing all of the things we would have done in the fall had we not tried k12.

We finished up SOTW 2 ( finally - it only took us 2 1/2 years..). We worked through the Real Science 4 Kids Biology book. I liked that it taught lots of scientific vocabulary, but it wasn't super exciting and as my oldest expressed, " The experiments didn't really work."

We went back to Singapore Math. Sierra was able to skip the fractions sections and is almost finished with 5B. Kali needed to get her multiplication facts down, so we worked on those and started back up where she left off. She is almost done with 3B. Arwen also picked up where she left off and is almost done with 1B.

We started using Growing with Grammar levels 4 and 6 with Sierra and Kali and are loving it. Well, I am loving it. It is pretty self teaching and doesn't take much time each day to complete. The girls kind of think it is boring, but it gets the job done. When they finish with their current levels I am going to skip Sierra to level 8 and Kali to level 6 since grammar curricula are often too repetitive. I am using First Language lessons for the Well Trained Child with Arwen and we are almost finished with the 1st grade section.

The older 2 did some spelling using Natural Speller. We began copywork again - 2 perfect lines in cursive - for both older girls. The older girls also did some writing assignments from K12. Kali did a poetry unit and a narrative essay. Sierra did a research paper on Kiwi birds complete with a bibliography. I also came up with a writing assignment for both girls to go with their literature reading -yeah me! We also returned to my girls favorite kind of writing - free writing.

Read alouds included The Number Devil and The Phantom Tollbooth. We tried The Second Mrs. Giaconda, but found it a bit boring. Sierra read Anne of Green Gables and Kali read Ballet Shoes for their independent reading.

We also worked through some of English From the Roots Up and a poetry curriculum that I have been beta testing for the last few years - ha!

Whew! It is also nice to record what we have done. Sometimes it feels like we have not done much, but when I type it all up, I realize we have accomplished quite a bit.

Originally, I had planned to continue our history and science studies (SOTW 3 and RS4k Chem) after the break we have been taking the past 2 weeks while Grandma and Grandpa visited. But then we visited the Bishop Museum and I decide we should do a unit on Hawaiian history. More on that later.