And school is a go

It’s mid September and I, like most homeschool parents, am counting down to the first break which cannot come soon enough.

Our schedule is exhausting right now, although I know we just need to get into the swing of things.

We’ve been doing stretches and strengthening in the mornings before breakfast. A good start for our days and a way to wake ourselves up.

Merry likes to do school with me so most of her subjects include reading out loud (and showing me the pictures.)

Charry prefers to work alone but to make sure she is staying on track we have a review/summarize time after each lesson.

Latin is my favorite but not my kid’s. Merry is doing alright but it is taking longer than I had hoped to get through each lesson.

We are making an effort to do every experiment this year, I bought the kits so there would be no excuse not to do them, and they are the girls’ favorite part of science.

Charry is hard to get a picture of. She enjoys finding cozy places to hunker down and do her school.

After school activities have started. Clogging is the only one I have a picture of. Unfortunately dance goes until 9 most nights, which is our main reason for being tired. But we’ll adjust soon.

And three weeks in, we are staying on schedule in all the classes. So I’m happy. (I’m also happy we have a mini vacation next week, yay school break!)

Curriculum choices for 2019-2020 school year

It’s that time again, I finally have all the materials I need to start the school year! And since we got our last package less than a week before we are planning to start, I may have cut it a bit close this year. But huzzah, the carts are all loaded up and we are ready!

Now I am sure you are all very curious about our plans for the year.  Here is a basic break down of each girls class load:

Merry will be in eighth grade and has three classes which will give her highschool credit.  

Math, Life of Fred Advanced Algebra 

Latin, Latin Alive Book 2

Science, Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Physical Science (this year I bought lab kits to insure we are able to do all the labs)

Her other three subjects will be at grade level

History, Oregon History (most area school teach state history in elementary but I think waiting gives a chance for her to understand some of the political aspects of our history, and the only text book I could find was for middle school so I waited to use that.)

English, which will include both Lightning Literature grade 8 as well as Life of Fred’s Language Arts series. 

Health, this is our first year doing a formal health class and Merry’s will be a hodgepodge. We will start with “Girling Up” then go through Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology, and finish using the FDA’s “my plate” unit from online.

Charry’s curriculum is a mix of old favorites and new adventures.

Three of her classes will just be the next level up from last year.

Math, Life of Fred Trigonometry 

Science, Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Physics

History, Notgrass’ Exploring America 

The other four will be new although I’m familiar with most of the publishers.

Health, Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Health and Nutrition 

Literature, Lightning Literature American Literature Early-Mid 19th Century and Lightning Literature American Literature Mid-Late 19th Century

Writing, the One Year Adventure Novel (both girls have done the one year magazine and Charry picked this as one of her two electives this year)

Economics, (Charry’s second elective) this class will be a bit of a hodgepodge. We will start with Money Matters for Teen which should give basics life writing checks and balancing a budget, then Economic Comics, finishing the year with Life of Fred Financial Choices.

Besides their individual classes we will be doing morning time again this year. I really enjoyed daily picture books last year so those will be back, although this year the girls will be reading out loud as well. Morning time will also be including math vocabulary, work roots, maps, sentence diagraming, and flash cards, but not all on the same day.

So there you have it a quick look at our plans for next year. I’m excited!

“Insta”-replay; summer time fun

I’ve felt rather lazy this summer so in an effort to remind myself of how busy we have actually been, here is a look back at our summer... so far.

We went camping with the Woodburn Church family. It was a great time spent with friends!

Afterwards we stumbled on a kite festival! The kites were huge! And some of them did stunts, although not the big ones.

We went to see Toy Story 4.

And we went to see Spiderman Far from Home.

We got our free slurpees during 7/11.

Monday’s lunch with Aunt Coral was a fun summer schedule change.

We had family time, putting together a puzzle one weekend.

Charry got her hair cut, although that she did on her own.  I didn’t even walk to the hair cutting shop with her. 

So I haven’t been completely lazy, I’ve just been very relaxed despite keeping myself somewhat busy. I’m sure things will get even busier as we try to cram as much vacationing as possible into the final weeks before school starts (completely).

Who starts school in August?

Homeschooling moms on Facebook: We are starting school August 1st, so we can take more breaks during the school year.

Me: That’s nuts it is way too early to start school!

Also Me: Hey Merry I forgot to schedule you days off for your trip with your aunts so you need to start early.

So I realized I had forgotten to schedule merry’s vacation and as a result she is doing one lesson a day (of just one subject). She gets to ease into school.

As you can see she is thrilled to be starting a little early. Some teenagers would roll their eyes and glare but not Merry. Although she may have felt a little betrayed since I brought up the idea by saying, “Hey, want to do a fun experiment”. And then after we started setting up told her we would need to read the lesson and answer a few questions first.

The experiment itself was fun, so I didn’t lie. And it involved playing with electricity.

Merry surprised me with her intense observations.

She was less enthusiastic about writing the lab report but she didn’t complain.

A single lesson isn’t really starting, right?

“Insta”-replay, spring is coming!

So I have been remiss in both posting on my blog and picture taking in general.

But here is a snap shot of the last month or so:

We had dance observation week, which meant seeing how much my kids are improving, or trying to improve.

Ballet class is especially nice, since the teacher has the best music selection. A friend of hers plays the piano beautifully and does covers of pop songs as well as television show themes, like the “Cheers” song. I enjoy the music almost as much as I enjoy the dancing.

Ballet is also nice because it was the class Charry “let” me visit.

Besides dancing we also spent time going to movies, captain marvel was definitely a girls night out kind of movie!

Merry celebrated her birthday in teenage style, getting free drinks from Dutch Brothers.

I had nails long enough to paint for a while, sadly they are short again now, sigh.

We babysat for a friend, it was nice to have little kids around again.  It made me miss all the cousins!

And we continued to have crazy winter weather.  We never got a lot of snow but the snow we got spread itself out so it was starting to feel like winter would never end.

The weather is nice again today, maybe spring is finally here? If so it is just in time for spring break!

“Insta”-replay, winter can’t last forever

Winter can’t last forever, right? We just had groundhogs day and punxsutawney phil promised spring would be early!

In the mean time here is a look at our last of winter fun.

I started decorating for valentines, but still need to undecorate Christmas.

We had a fun movie day with Aunt Coral!

Spiderverse was a great film, I recommend it for children of all ages.

We had some fun science experiments. Any excuse to use the phone microscope, is a good excuse.

Merry’s started doing school curled up on the couch, usually in a blanket.

And we got a dusting of snow! More is actually in the forecast, although I’m not convinced.

January seemed to drag on for a long time.  But now February is finally starting! And with crazy weather (and a few exciting events scheduled) it looks like this month will be a memorable one!

"Insta"-replay: A good way to start the year!

Happy New Year! We are off to a good start, enjoying the new year.

 The girls stayed up until midnight to toast the new year with us.  A first for them, and to be honest it has been a while since Jon And I actually stayed up until midnight either.

 

We started a new theme for daily picture books, STEM books.  It was interesting to see which books promoted science and which simply featured characters who liked science.   

 Merry has started factoring in Math, it's the area of Algebra which I really loved.  I'm hopeful that she will enjoy it as well, or at least not dislike it as much as her sister did.

Charry is starting the year strong as well, I'm trying to work a little more with her, having her do Latin translations on the white board rather than just checking her notebook later.

 Proud mom post: Charry got to set up the new display at the library, they let her pick out some of the books and arrange them on the cart.

 We aren't spending all our time at schooling.  We are also enjoying treats with Grandma Kelly.

 Family game nights, where we try out some of the new games we got for Christmas.

 And movies! We've already seen one as a family.

And one as a date night!

So we are off to a good start, having fun, and being productive!

New Year resolutions

This year I am resolving to start back to schooling strong! Although looking at the school supplies I’m not sure how well I am keeping that resolution.

As you can see it is a bit discombobulated. But the school room is on my list to clean tomorrow, so maybe.

One part of school that has been going well is our group time.  Since Charry and Merry have no classes together we try to have a small group time where they have to take turns sharing ideas and listen to what the other is saying.  I’m hoping it will help them communicate with other people.

The main part of group time is a picture book, which leads to discussions of literary concepts, art styles, or social issues.  We started with just some of our favorites, then spent November reading biographies, December was Christmas books, and now we are reading STEM books.

I’ve also figured out how to put books on hold from my phone app, which kind of goes with the month’s theme.

Along with the books, we also do flash cards and make charts, maps, or diagrams. I find working on something together can help to make information stick.

Happy New Years!