April, May, June, July

Sheesh, I am not very good at this record keeping. I should probably get better at it since I will have a high schooler in 2 years - ack!

In April and May, we did school on the days that my hubby was gone.  He had classes to teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays and often went to his office to work on things on Mondays and Wednesdays, so most weeks we did school M-Th.

As planned, we did a Hawaiian history unit.  For science we did a bunch of experiments from kits I had purchased at the beginning of last year and we hadn't gotten around to using.  For math and grammar we continued working through Singapore and Growing with Grammar. Sierra and Kali did their usual did copywork, typing, and spelling.  They also memorized the states and capitals using this website. For composition, we continued to use ideas from K12.  Sierra did a how-to essay, an advertisement and presentation, and a book review.  Kali learned about different writing types - narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive. She wrote short essays using each type. Sierra read Alice in Wonderland.  Kali read several Magic Tree House books.  She is working on reading them all and I think she is to about #32. Arwen worked on becoming a more fluent reader and read several Dr. Seuss books and other easy readers.

Also, during April and May, we had the opportunity to participate in a furlough Friday co-op with some public schooled kids.  Because of lacking of money, the public schools in Hawaii had no school almost every Friday.  Some of the parents were concerned and decided to hold a co-op on the Fridays with no school.  The classes included reading, math games, science, poetry, sign language, music, and art history. It has been nice to be able to join the public schooled kids for activities like this since the are so few homeschoolers in our area.

We finished out the month of May with a choir and violin concert and seeing the campus play, Wizard of Oz. May 25th was the last day of school for the public school, so I decided to make that our last day of school, too.  Rand's semester ended around that time also and he had the next term off, so it made sense to take a break.

My sister came to visit in June.  We went to the Bishop Museum, Pearl Harbor, and Waimea Valley and, of course, the beach.  Our church had a ward camp in June.  The kids had a great time playing with all of the other kids.

Rand was out of town in July.  We attempted to do some school.  Sierra and Kali did some math and grammar and practiced their instruments.  Arwen did math and reading and writing.  Arwen has made a leap in her reading ability this summer, despite of, or maybe because of, our lacking of formal practice.  She read an entire Magic Tree House book on her own- yahoo!!

In July, we also went to the Bishop Museum for its Super Science Saturday.  The extra displays were kind of lame, but we also went to the volcano show and the planetarium show.  We hadn't been able to go to either of these before, so that was fun (and educational).

School starts back up for the public school kids on August 2nd. I figure we might as well get started, too.  It has been great to take a break from our formal studies. I am feeling much more motivated to start back up again now that we have had a little break. Rand only teaches Tuesdays and Thursdays again this term, so we may just do school on Tuesdays and Thursdays in August and then go back to a full schedule in September.