Our Week in Review

All winter long son C has been playing both indoor soccer (shorter field, ball can be played off the walls) and winter soccer (large field, outdoor rules, under a dome), which means many watching of games for Little Man.  Little Man recently got glasses, so when we said he could watch half the game and read the other half, he didn't mind coming along so much.  Right now, any excuse to wear his glasses is a good excuse! :)

Little Man is working through Algebra 1 and doing well.  He is currently learning how to multiply equations that contain exponents.  The Math U See blocks that we have used so well for so many years, can even be used to build these types of equations, so they are still being used!

In history right now we are learning about the civil war.  We are watching selections from the Ken Burns "Civil War" documentary series, and they are SO excellent!  I snapped this photo of all of the boys doing history in their pajamas.  Reason #87 we love homeschooling!

Brothers collaborating over science.

Little Man is working through the Apologia General Science book, and recently made this terrarium as part of module 9.  He has been taking care of this as if it were a baby - watching carefully to make sure it doesn't create *too* much water on the inside, and if it does, taking the lid off to let some of the water evaporate.  It has been such a good learning experience!

I am so thankful for the joys of homeschooling, and that I get to spend my days with my children!

Our Week in Review

This is a bit of a photo dump, as it includes highlights from the last three weeks.  We were thrilled to have daughter G home from  college for fall break, and she brought her room-mate with her!  We had a fun and delightful weekend together.  While she was home we did our annual family tradition of painting little pumpkins for Halloween.

Daughter G is in the house!!

Her room-mate (in red shirt) is a sweet heart.

The finished pumpkins!  Don't we have a great variety?

Little Man did an impromptu science experiment when he found a caterpillar in the folds of some corn leaves, when shucking corn on the cob for supper one night.  He asked if he could create a habitat for the caterpillar and watch it turn into a chrysalis and then a butterfly.  We weren't sure if it was a butterfly caterpillar or some other type, but we were excited for Little Man to try.  In fact, in the pumpkin photo above you can see his caterpillar habitat in the jar behind the pumpkins.  He put fresh leaves in the jar each day for the caterpillar to eat, and we tried a variety of other food scraps as well.  We put water on a cotton ball for it to drink.  Not sure it ever used that, but we wanted to cover all our bases!

I wasn't sure what was going to happen to this little caterpillar, but lo and behold, after about three weeks it turned into a chrysalis!  And then one day about a week later we suddenly realized there was a little moth in the jar!  It successfully "hatched in captivity!"

Little Man watched it for another day and then let it free in our back yard.

Sons G and L, with another friend, have formed a band, and they practice in our music room every week.  So here it is, getting used!!  I love that our music room gets used so much.

We have been having such lovely fall weather.....this has been a common sight the last couple of weeks!

On November 11 we went to our local Veterans Day Memorial Service.  We were the only school aged kids there, since it was during the day.  I am so glad for the flexibility of homeschooling!

And last but not least, we packed an Operation Christmas Child shoe box this week.  Other years we have been able to pack more, but I'm thankful that we could do ONE this year!  One box is all it takes to make one child somewhere in the world supremely happy.  (our main gift was a deflated soccer ball and a ball pump).

We finished reading The Sign of the Beaver and started The Witch of Blackbird Pond this week.  The usual math and science and grammar and composition happened.   In history we are wrapping up our study of the origins of the original thirteen colonies and about to begin the lead up to the Revolutionary War.

Our Week in Review

Last week wrapped up our study of the Civil War.  The middle schoolers and high schooler learned about the final battles of the war, the surrender, and how Lincoln's assassination set a different stage for reconstruction.  Our younger two boys finished reading in depth about Abraham Lincoln.  We recorded a great docu-drama off the National Geographic channel called "Killing Lincoln" and watched that as a family.  (Disclaimer:  one rather violent stabbing scene, and another graphic barn fire and shoot out during which Booth is killed.)  Very, very well done.

Son G (8th grade) is writing a 5 paragraph essay on the Battle of Gettysburg,  Son L (7th grade) is writing a 5 paragraph essay on Robert E. Lee, and son C (fifth grade) is writing a 3 paragraph report on Abraham Lincoln.  Those papers will all be finished and turned in this week.

New daughter H has been formally withdrawn from her public school and is officially a homeschooler now!  She received her new Math U See Pre Algebra book in the mail this week and has been very excited to start that.  As excited as I have ever seen her about math!! :-)  I have been working on a school plan for her that will fill in the gaps she has, while allowing her to learn at her own pace and in the manner that best fits her style.  It's a work in progress, but we are slowly getting there.  It is quite a thing to take a middle schooler out of public school mid-year, unexpectedly, and plop her into a homeschooling family!  By God's grace we are all doing pretty well with the adjustments, but the flow and rhythm of school is not yet what I would like it to be.

We took a fantastic field trip this past week to a special presentation by our symphony orchestra!  It was specially designed for students, and was masterfully m.c.'d by the conductor.  We all enjoyed it immensely, but probably me the most!!  Symphony orchestra has always been one of my dearest loves....I do not think my sweet husband knows how deeply orchestra music resonates with me.  If he gave me nothing but orchestra tickets every birthday and Christmas for the rest of my life, I would die a happy woman!   (local friends, hint, hint)

(a note to Grandma...Little Man has since had a hair cut and looks quite snazzy now!)

We had a girls night out this week, and stamped home-made cards!  Great fun, and lots of beautiful cards to show for our effort.

I'm not a huge fan of grades, as they are often an artificial representation of what the student actually knows, but if you will allow me a proud mom moment regarding grades...daughter G received an A as her mid term grade in chemistry!  She worked HARD for that grade, and I am pleased that the letter grade shows how her hard work is paying off.  Her chemistry teacher is fairly tough (and it's NOT me!), so it was definitely an earned grade.  Great job G!!  We are proud of your work ethic!

First Day of our New Co-op!

What a great first day!

I am so impressed with this co-op ~ how it is organized and administered, the caliber of teachers, and the class offerings.  We even made new friends on our very first day!

Daughter G has Apologia chemistry with labs, spanish 2, and a watercolor art class.

Son G has Apologia physical science, inventors and inventions, and a class about persecuted Christian children in other countries (today they sat in a dark storage room to simulate being in prison, while eating rice pudding from Vietnam).

Son L has Apologia general science, a class studying the book Pilgrim's Progress in depth, and the same class about persecuted Christians.

Son C is in the same inventors and inventions class as his brother G, and the same class about persecuted Christians.  He is also in a lego class, where they have a building challenge each week and learn to manipulate the pieces in new ways, a self defense class (basically beginning karate), and a chess class.  He is THRILLED with his schedule!

Little Man is also in the persecuted Christians class, a beginning science class, a Five in a Row literature class, and the self defense class with his brother C.

I am the chemistry class helper, so I spent two hours today helping supervise a couple of experiments (non bunsen burner, so no flames yet), learning the names of the 14 high schoolers in the class, and trying to remember how to convert metric measurements.  I am doing the reading each week along with our daughter, and having to brush up on my algebra.  This class will definitely stretch me!

We have in between hours at co-op, that can be used for getting other work done.  So we packed our backpacks last night with math and history books, and I stayed up late making lunches for everyone.  How do you building school parents do this every night????  (and how do your poor kids not have back aches every day?!)

Thankful.  Very tired (note to local friends ~ don't expect me to answer calls or be able to do much on Tuesday evenings).  But overwhelmingly thankful!

Our Week In Review - Biology

Our ninth grader started the year doing Apologia Biology on her own at home. By Christmas it was apparent to me that we needed some outside accountability, and some help with the lab work. I looked around and was able to enroll daughter G in a biology class for second semester. They recently began a series of dissections, and so far they have done a worm (pictures below), a crayfish, a perch, and last Friday a frog! (I watched, and it was super cool!)


Besides the frog, the worm was surprisingly the most interesting! There is an incredible amount of stuff inside a worm, and it is easily identifiable which makes the students feel like they are doing it right. :0) The crayfish's parts were very hard to identify.



So thankful for this outside class, and the opportunity G has to do labs with other homeschoolers!

Our Week In Review

What did we do in school this week? Well, some of us got to ride the bright yellow school bus!


Inside the bus, son C read a history book to Little Man. We learned about the Vikings this week. Very exciting reading!


Little Man took his first "official" math TEST!


As part of the test he had to build the number "390" and show that he understood place value.


As a class, science happened naturally for us this week. During recess one day a praying mantis was discovered.


It was fairly large.


We found a small grasshopper and fed it to the mantis. In this picture, we're looking at the mantis's belly (he's upside down) and he's holding the yellow grasshopper in his grip, eating it.


We watched him eat the whole thing, talked about life cycles and the food chain, and called it good!

Son G, however, began Apologia General Science this week, and did his first experiment. I remembered from when daughter G did this course that the first experiment was a dramatic one, and I was excited for son G to get to do it.

It involved pouring oil, water, and maple syrup into a glass and then adding 4 different objects. The objects either sank to the bottom or floated on the top of one of the liquids. This demonstrated the existence of atoms, because some liquids and objects have atoms that are less dense than others, allowing other objects/liquids to squeeze through. He had a lot of fun with this, and enjoyed drawing a diagram of it in his lab book.

Our Week In Review - Ancient Israel

It's been a while since I've posted about school. After our very relaxing Christmas break, we eased back in to our school routine with a couple of half days. We have 30 minutes of book time every day (pleasure reading, and everyone reads, even me!) but on those half days we spent even more time with our beloved books.


We spent the first two weeks back at school finishing up Unit two of Tapestry of Grace Year 1, which took us through the period of the judges in Ancient Israel, and into Saul's kingship. We spent a lot of time reading I Samuel and talking about Saul's shift from predominately good to predominately bad. So many interesting stories and concepts ~ such as the Lord himself sending a "troubling" spirit (some versions say "evil" spirit) upon Saul, after he had disobeyed and ceased to find favor in the eyes of the Lord.

This is son C's Saul booklet.




In case you can't read the words below, C thought that Saul's positive traits were: he was impressive, God changed his heart, God's Spirit was upon him, he prophesied, he was a good fighter. His negative traits were: disobedient, proud, impatient, foolish.



We have found a new morning routine that is working pretty well and allows me to spend time with Little Man doing kindergarten work every day. We got to the point in his math book where he needed to review the concepts each day (rather than doing a week's worth of work in one day as we did for a while last fall). He spent two weeks learning the number value of each of the colored blocks/rods, and now is working on addition!


Snuggling together and watching a science video.


Daughter G is plugging away in her physical science book, and if she stays on track she is set to finish by the end of May. She did a super cool experiment this week involving air pressure. First she lit a candle that was set in the middle of some colored water (colored just so we could see the water better).


Then she covered the candle with a glass. As the candle used up the oxygen inside the glass, water from outside the glass was "sucked" in to fill the void.


Just before the candle burned out, nearly all the water was inside the glass. Can you see the difference in the outside water level vs. the inside water level? It was really cool to watch, and she explained the process very well to the rest of the family.


At the end of the week, body paint during bath time!


Also this week, I cooked an entire five pound bag of dry black beans, which made the equivalent of 12 cans! I will use them in recipes for the next several weeks.

We made some plans for our Unit 2 unit celebration, but I think we will need to hold off on having it until after daddy gets a new job, so we will probably end up combining our unit 2 celebration and our unit 3 celebration into one.

Last week was a week off of history studies (we did all other schoolwork) while we played a little catch up. Now we are looking forward to starting unit 3 tomorrow!