Week In Review: Weeks 3 and 4

Well here I am again sharing a Week In Review post, but really it's  Two Weeks In Review!  HA!  Oh well, life has been hectic lately!  I was doing so well the last few weeks of summer with getting my cleaning schedule under control, and a life schedule under control, and then BAM school started! I feel like school is taking up my whole day, having a 5th grader is really different than having a preschooler or even early elementary.

Language Arts:

What I have found out from the past few weeks is that 5th grade is going to be a tough year for us.  I have realized that we are really lacking in the English Grammar department.  For the past few years we really just focused more on literature and reading, and only a slight portion was grammar related.  He is really struggling with the added expectations I have put on him this year.  I am so happy with the curriculum I chose to use and think he will get up to where he needs to be.  As a reminder we are using Learning Language Arts though Literature the purple book and Wordly Wise 3000 grade 5 book.  I realize I said that we were lacking in grammar and then we are using a literature based program, seems contradictory in a way.  In actuality though, I think with using this program, he is reading passages from books he likes and then applying grammar rules.  I have never used this program before and I am so happy that we chose it.  It, so far, is a good fit for our needs at this time.

Bible:

We have begun our Bible curriculum, which is Apologia's Who Is God?, and I love it!  The boys are doing well, and learning to dig deeper into what they think and feel about certain topics.  We have been talking a lot about how we can know if something is true or not.  This has been wonderful for them, especially the 5th grader who is at that age where he is trying to figure some things out for himself.  I am happy that they both seem to know that the Bible is true, and what God says in the Bible is truth.

History:

These past two weeks we have also done some digging deeper into History.  We have learned about Stonehenge, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Early Egypt, the Sumerians, and the Minoans.  We had fun wrapping Noah up like a Mummy!

Read Aloud:

For our read aloud time, we just finished up reading the Christian Heroes then and Now book on Jim Elliot, and we have begun reading The Golden Goblet.  The Golden Goblet I think might be a bit over their heads, so I'm not sure we will continue with it or not, we are currently on chapter 3.  On Friday instead of reading The Golden Goblet, we read The Magic Treehouse book Mummies in the Morning.  They both really liked that one and thought it was funny that we read the whole book in one sitting.  They make me laugh, because its only like a 60 page book.  Silly kids!

Preschool:

In preschool we began our Letter of the Week curriculum and have done letters A and E.  We will be working through the vowels first and then move into the consonants.  I really am impressed with how well my little 4 year old is handling school this year.  Not to say that we don't still struggle, but for the most part he knows what is going to happen and is happy to do his "numbers" (that's what he calls his workboxes).

Field Trips:

Last Friday, we took a field trip to the local Apple Orchard, that was a great time!  We were hoping to get to pick some apples but found out that they were not open for picking until Labor Day.  We might go back after Labor Day just to pick some apples.  On the upside though the playground was open and the kids were able to play.  There is usually a cost but since it was early in the season it was free.  My kids were super excited for that part!   We also picked up some yummy apple cider doughnuts, apple cider raisin bread, apple cider, and of course a few apples!

I really do plan on taking more photos of our school days, but like I said at the beginning it's been crazy!  I really do love this homeschooling journey that we are on, and am so excited to have the opportunity to be with my children everyday and see them learn!

Back To School Boot Camp Day 2

Yesterday I shared how we get in gear for the up coming school year.  Today I will share what we accomplished on Day 2 of our Back to School Book Camp week.

Today we worked on our morning routine, along with the few things that we worked on yesterday.  So here is a little glimpse as to how our morning went.

The kids got up and actually made their beds, which means no quarters were lost!  Whoo Hoo!!  They then ate breakfast and watched some TV, which is a summer privilege.  After I finished breakfast I worked on our daily chore, which is cleaning the kitchen today, I will normally expect them to help with the daily chore but did it myself today.  Once I had finished that I told the kids to get dressed and to meet me on the couch.  After about 20 minutes they all finally made it to the couch!  Yes that's right, 20 minutes!  The older two do great getting dressed but that little almost 4 year old, still struggles.  He is perfectly capably of dressing himself but refuses.  He finally did get dressed and we were able to carry on with our meeting.

During our meeting this morning, I told the kids that we would be working on our morning school routine today.  I explained that during our normal school days they would be expected to get up, make their beds, get dressed and then eat breakfast.  Once breakfast has been consumed, we will then move onto our daily chore.  When we have finished that it will be time to begin our school day.

We went through our morning exercises, which is basically dancing around and doing jumping jacks to music.  I have a few YouTube exercising videos that we will rotate in as well.  Having a very active 7 year old and a 4 year old, makes me realize how important movement is before starting a school day!

After our exercising we will move into our calendar time.  For calendar time this year we are using the calendar notebooks from Homeschool Creations, I chose to do the elementary manuscript version for Noah, the cursive version for Elijah.  For Zach he will be using some of her pages and some that I created.  During our calendar time we will work on the day, month and year, the season, and weather.  They will take turns placing things on our wall charts and then move onto fill out their notebooks.  I learned this morning that Zach will take a bit of training to get used to doing this part of school with us.  I also learned that it will take a bit of patience on my part!

This was Zach from last school year.  We tried to include him then but he
just wasn't ready.  Hopefully this year he will catch one quickly.

Once our calendar time is finished we will move right into our devotion/Bible time.  For Bible this year we are using Apologia's Worldview program beginning in the Who is God?  book.  We will do that 3 days a week and the other 2 days will be a devotion from one of our children's devotional books.  During this time we will also review any Bible verses we are working on and have a time of prayer.

After all this has been completed we will move into our subject areas.  I will work with Zach first on his preschool work, while the other two begin some independent subjects.

So far this week has been going well, and I am so glad we take this time to get back into the swing of things.

Our All Together Curriculum Choices

Its curriculum choice time!  This year we will be doing a few subjects all together.  We will also be branching out from our previous curriculum that we have used for the past few years.  I am excited about these new choices and have high hopes that it will be a great fit for our family.

Along with the changes this year we will also be doing a co-op that my kids are really excited about.  Our co-op classes will be Science, Art, Music, Spanish, and a Lego Club.  Zach will also get to participate in this co-op, and he will be doing Science, Art, and a general preschool readiness class.

For History this year we will be using The Mystery of History.  I had considered this for last year but decided to stick with My Fathers World.  But since we are doing a co-op this year that includes Science I really wanted to branch out.   I love the way The Mystery of History teaches history in a chronological order.  When I was a kid I did not make the connection that the history that I was learning in school was happening at the same time that the Bible was being written!  How amazing that I get to teach this to my kids!  My hope is that they can make that connection a lot sooner than I did!  I am also hoping that I will learn a bit this year as well. I purchased the textbook, the audio CD's, timeline figures, and the reproducible download for use along with Volume 1.

Science this year will be Apologia's Astronomy.  For co-op we were able to pick which one we wanted to do, and they will all three be working through this one.  Since we had studied animals the past few years we chose to do space this year.  We have never used Apologia before but it has been on my radar for a few years and I am so excited to actually get to use it this year.






We also chose to do Apologia's Worldview curriculum for our Bible studies this year.  We will be using Who is God?  I bought the textbook, note booking journal, the Jr. Journal and the coloring book to use this year.  The coloring book will be for Zach, not sure how he will like it but I thought that he would need something to work in along with the older boys.




I will also be sharing our 5th Grade, 2nd Grade and Pre-K 4 homeschooling choices, so stay tuned to see what we will be using for those.

UPDATE:

Sorry I forgot to add what our read aloud books would be!  Whoops!!

We will be doing a reading list to go along with our Mystery of History Volume 1 studies.  Those will include:

• The Golden Goblet
• The Cat of Bubastes
• Hittite Warrior
• The Children's Homer
• God King
• Aesop's Fables
• Victory on the Walls
• The Young Carthaginian
• The Bronze Bow

Most of these we own, some will be checked out from the library, and the others I have on my Kindle.

We also really enjoyed reading the Christian Hero's Then and Now books last year, so I picked some that I thought we would enjoy reading this year.  These are the ones that we will be reading this year:

• Jim Elliot
• C.S. Lewis
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Eric Liddell
• Francis Asbury
• Brother Andrew
• Hudson Taylor

I might be a bit ambitious that we can finish all of these, but with some planning I have the schedule all made out and hopefully we will accomplish it!

**This post does contain my Amazon affiliate link.**

A Peek into Our Curriculum for Next Year

I have been very busy the last few months planning what we will be using next year.  We are going to be taking a step away from what we have been using, which is My Fathers World.  For no other reason than we will be joining a Co Op that contains a lot of the some things that are in My Fathers World.  So rather than spend a bunch of money on that curriculum to just use one component of it, we decided to try something different!  I am so excited to see how this will work!

Here is a rundown of what we will be using for each subject and each child.

All Together Subjects:
History:
The Mystery of History Vol. 1

Science:
Apologia Astronomy (This is a Co-Op subject)
Elijah will use the Notebooking Journal
Noah will use the Jr. Notebooking Journal

Bible:
Apologia Who Is God?
Elijah will use the Notebooking Journal
Noah will use the Jr. Notebooking Journal
Zach will use the Coloring Book

Elijah:
English- Learning Language Arts Through Literature the Purple Book
               Contains: Reading,  Book Studies, Spelling, Grammar, and Writing, I am trying to simplify         this for him next year by using an all in one language arts curriculum.
Math- Teaching Textbooks 5 We are switching from Math U See to get him more independent in his work. 
Spanish- (Will be done at Co-Op not too sure what book he will be using yet)
Typing- Typing Instructor, unless I find something different.
Computer Programming using online sites
Possibly he will be learning to play an instrument,  we haven't decided quite yet though, this would be done at Co-Op as well.

Noah:
All About Reading Level 2
All About Spelling Level 1
Handwriting-  A Reason For Handwriting Book B
Math- Math U See Beta
Spanish- (Will be done at Co-Op not too sure what book will be used yet)
Typing- Typing Instructor
Computer Programming using online sites
Music Class- (Will be done at Co-Op, using the recorder)

Zach:
Literature Based Units
Alphabet Based Units
Handwriting Without Tears- My First School Book

At Co-Op they will have the opportunity to be in a Lego Club.  I am also looking into some sort of physical education program or something that I could use to get them moving more.  Stay tuned for more information about what our school year will look like next year!  I am working on improving our schedule and streamlining our day a bit.