March

First I was going to update this blog daily, then weekly and now it's monthly...

Is is just me or does it seem like it is almost the end of the school year when March rolls around? We took at trip to visit my family in Ohio in the middle of the month , so that kind of threw us off schedule and even though the weather hasn't really warmed up, I feel a bit of spring fever starting. Along with this, I am feeling (self imposed) pressure to get everything from this school year's list of goals done.

During the first week of March I didn't want to start anything new because of our trip to Ohio the following week, so we read some random books. This may have been the week we read about John James Audubon. I had been wanting to read The Boy who Drew birds for a while and I found it and another picture book biography at the library. We have also been continuing to work on a poetry curriculum that I am beta testing.

The second week we were in Ohio. The third week we got back on Monday evening and I had intentions of getting right back into school mode, but it didn't happen. "the best laid plans..."

On Monday of the fourth week we finally got around to the puberty/reproduction lesson that I had been planning to for a while. I had been waiting for a book from the library, but when I finally got it I decided not to use it. I ended up using Usborne's "What's Happening to Me?" girl's book. We had a lovely discussion using the book as a guide and we even went into the bathroom and checked out my tampons and pads just for fun. This lesson was mostly for my 10 year old, but the 8 year old participated, too. The 6 year old didn't seem to be paying much attention.

I can't remember what we did the rest of the week. We may have worked more on the Poetry curriculum. I didn't start it until January and we intending to use it as a unit study even though it was designed to be used a few times a week for the whole school year, but it didn't really work out. We are about halfway through the 72 lessons.

We have continued with the daily schedule. Reading, writing/copywork, math, instruments, typing, and spelling. This month the local water park had a reading incentive program. If the kids read 500 mintues in the month of March, they got a free day pass. The older 2 girls were especially motivated and I was impressed when I found out that they both read around 900 minutes in March.

We also had choir on Thursdays and that will continue until the beginning of June. Our middle ages group met and we focuses on Russia. We ate borsch, learned a Russian dance, made painted eggs, and looked at items for Russia.