May

We traveled a bit this month and were busy with lots of moving stuff, but I managed to stay motivated to do school mostly because we are learning about places that we are planning to visit on our way to visit family on our way to Hawaii in August.

We finished chapter 21 in SOTW and will stop there until fall.

We learned about Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Louisiana, Georgia.

Our trip to Florida was really fun. The learning highlight of the trip was going to the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. We read about Dali before the trip. It is amazing how much more interesting art is when you have a little background on the artist.

Our middle ages group when to the Crandall Historical Printing Museum for our final activity of the year. It was very fun and interesting.

In choir, the girls prepared for their Jr Seussical performance, which was last night and turned out really cute.

The final Interactive Storytelling was in May and the focus was Asian tales. Thank goodness it wasn't my turn to tell the stories.

At the end of the month went went to Grand Teton and Yellowstone, so much fun... and educational!

Some pics from our visti to the printing museum:

April

Where is the time going? Sierra and Kali went to a self defense class on Mondays in April leaving us with 3 days of school since they already have choir on Thursdays. The month just seemed to fly by. I guess it didn't help that we left for a trip to LA on the 22nd and then had 3 days home before we left for Florida the first weekend in May. We actually did do school during those three days. It is so nice that the older 2 can do most of their stuff on their own (math, spelling, writing, reading, typing, instruments) and then I just do some read aloud and call school done for the day.

What else did we accomplish this month? The problem with posting monthly is that I forget what we did. Let see, we finished reading the Math and Grammar readers, worked through some SOTW2 chapters. One more chapter and we will be half way through. Then I will call it good for the year. One fun thing we did this month was read a book about and listen to Carnival of the Animals. I had bought this book at some used sale a while back and had forgotten about it. It was great. The girls loved it and continued to listen to the CD and make up dances for the songs for several days after. Sierra recently made up a song on the piano where different parts represent different animals. I wonder where she got the inspiration to do that? What else? We may have worked more on the Poetry Curriculum. We are about half way through it and I am calling that good for the year as well. With our move coming sooner and sooner, I am really losing motivation. It is so nice that we can just pick up where we left off in the Fall. We also had Math Club. The last of the year. I had planned to do one more in May, but again the motivation is gone... We also had our Middle Ages group. The focus was China this time.

Our trip to LA was fabulous. In addition to getting to visit my friends we also went to the La Brea Tar Pits and the LA Art Museum. My friend kept commenting on how impressed she was with my kids. How well behaved they were and how excited and interested they were about topics that she always felt like she had to tried hard to convince her 4th grade students to be interested in. I guess I must be doing something right :)

I still worry that I am not requiring enough of them, especially Sierra. And I worry that their "skills" are not where they should or could be, but as far as instilling a love of learning and raising children that are kind and curious, I think we are doing well.

Goals for May:

Chapter 21 of SOTW2

Learn about states we will be traveling through this summer:
Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio I am skipping the states that we will just be driving through because I don't think we will have time.

Learn about Georgia O'Keefe since we will go to the Georgia O'Keefe Museum in Santa Fe

Ideally, I would like to be done by the end of May. I leave for Girl's Camp on June 16th, so I definitely have to be done by then. After Girl's Camp, my in laws will be visiting, then my friend Ann and her kids will be here and then we will have 3 weeks until moving day. I may have the older girls do a bit of reading and math and maybe writing each morning on days we are not too busy just to keep their little brains working. And I need to keep working with Arwen on her reading. The month of August we will spend traveling which will be its own learning adventure and then we will be living in Hawaii!!!

End of the Year goals

Although I'd like to do year round school it has never really worked out, I usually lose motivation by the beginning of July. I have a feeling it will be that way this year, too. And then we have our road trip and move in August. Hawaii has year round school. I am curious whether having the public schooled kids in school all year will encourage us to to the same. I am also wondering about staying motivated when the weather is summer-like all year round. I used to be opposed to year round school because I think kids should have time to run around and play outdoors when the weather is nice. But if the weather is nice all year round... Also, will I feel the same motivation to hunker down and do school in the Fall and winter when the weather is not cooling off???

Here are the things left on my list that I wanted to accomplish this year.

finish SOTW2 - ha, ha, ha, ha!!! We are halfway through. I can't believe that we have been working on this level for 2 years now I we are still not done. I am actually OK with it. We have been learning about other things and we stop by history every now and then. and the kids like history, so that is what is important.

finish poetry curriculum - maybe, we'll see.

enjoy some math and grammar readers - almost done. We read a bunch last week and will finish the rest on Monday.

start learning about the 50 states - spending time learning about all 50 states was my goal for this year, but I think it will be an ongoing process. I just really want to learn a little bit about each state that we will travel through on our road trip this summer.

preparedness unit - I got some preparedness activity books at a fair I went to and thought it might be good to learn a bit about things we can do to be prepared in an emergency. I may do this, just spend one day on it, but I also may postpone this until next year when we can learn about preparedness issues specific to Hawaii.

electricity unit - this was left over from last year... I don't know if we will get to it again. I recently bought Real Science 4 Kids and plan to do Biology next year, then Chemistry, and then Physics. So we won't get to electricity for several years. And I have an electricity kit that I bought last year that gives me a guilt trip every time I see it in the cabinet. We'll see, I may get to it and I may not.

I actually feel pretty good about where we are academically. The girls are plugging along with their skills, math, writing, spelling, reading; thanks to our wonderful new schedule. Arwen is improving with her reading. We still have a ways to go before she will be reading independently, but I see progress and spurts of understanding. And everything else is the fun stuff. We learn about history, science, music, art, etc. Sometimes I make a plan and we carry it out and sometimes we just learn things in our regular life. We don't learn everything every year. We have until they are 18 to impart knowledge to them. And really what I want is to give them a love of learning, so that they know that they can learn anything they want to if they put their mind to it.

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.

2/9 - 2/27

Oops, I got a little behind updating this blog. Things have been going really smoothly with the new schedule. I guess we just got chugging along and I forgot about keeping track on this blog.

Every day (that we didn't have a morning activity) the older 2 girls started their "morning school" around 10 am. They read a chapter from whatever book they are working on, did some writing (copywork or free write), 4 pages of math (Singapore), studied their spelling words, practiced typing (Typing Instructor), and practiced their instruments. Then supposedly around 11am, but usually closer to noon, we had group school time. In February we got through chapter 17 in SOTW 2 and have been working on a poetry curriculum that I am Beta testing. I also went crazy and got a bunch of French learning CD's from the library and we have been listening to those. After lunch I worked with Arwen on her math and reading and worked individually with Sierra and Kali usually working on math, spelling or grammar. I really would like to be done by 2pm, but so far it has been closer to 3pm. I really need to find a way to shorten MY morning routine. Spend less time on the computer... One nice thing about the older girls getting started with school on their own is that even if I am "running late" in the mornings I still have time to exercise. I can't use the "I need to get started with school" excuse. And I am telling you I need to exercise. I have noticed in the last year if I don't exercise I start packing on the pounds. Getting older is really a pain sometimes.

Other fun activities in February included:

Math Club
A Homeschool Valentine's Day Roller Skating Party
Storytelling - Russian Tales
Reciting at the Roney's - kids took turns reciting memorized poems.

2/2 -2/6

This week was a stay at home week. This doesn't happen very often, so it was kind of nice. The car was broken down the first half of the week and all of our activities were having the week off, so it worked out well. By Friday we were ready to get out, so we did go to park day at the mall, which was really fun.

We did all of our regular school things - math, practicing instruments, writing (print and cursive copywork and freewriting), typing, reading. Our topic this week was the Middle Ages. we are finally to the part in SOTW2 that covers what you typically think of when you think of the Middle Ages - knights and such...

I finally came up with a plan for spelling. On Wednesday I went through the older girl's freewriting with them and found 10 words that they had misspelled and those were ther words for the week. Then I added "study your spelling words" to their list of morning school work. Sierra ended up making up a game and of course, Kali wanted to play it with her words, too. I haven't figured out what the game is , but they seem to enjoy it. I tested them the following Wednesday and Sierra got all of her words correct and Kali only missed 2 or 3. Then we added new words until they had ten more to study the next week. So far so good.

I am wanting to add Foreign Language back into our routine. We used to do Rosetta Stone when we got it free through our one day a week homeschool program through the public school. I was hoping to be able to continue this year using the online library version of Rosetta Stone, but they pulled it from the library a few months ago - ugh! I found a new program called Tell Me More that you can get through the Arlington Library, but I need to get motivated to set it up...

I did pick up a bunch of Cd's from the library the other day. We are trying French this year. I wanted to do Spanish because I think it would be more useful, but the girls prefer French, so... They are enjoying the Cd's so far.

And so we keep plugging along.

1/26 - 1/30

New schedule is still work in great. It was a short week because the girls had choir on Thursday and Sierra was sick on Friday. Of course, when Sierra is sick she likes to lay on the couch and watch Magic School Bus for hours, so I guess we did science:) We learned about Vikings on M, T and W. I haven't figured out what we are going to do for spelling. We did fit grammar back in for Sierra and Kali during our one on one time. It was very nice to have individual time with each of the girls without interruptions.

We had our Medieval Dinner on Saturday. It turned out really well.