Weekly Wrap-Up–March 8–Unit Celebration 3

I have been focusing more on keeping us on schedule with our schoolwork, which has taken a lot of time and left not much for blogging. Add to that the quantity of books that I’m reading right now plus trying to be more intentional about being a better housekeeper, and that really doesn’t leave much for blogging!

Anyway…we have been doing great with keeping on track and having a good routine since January at the beginning of this “semester”. Also, I had been thinking a lot about schooling year round, and then I had a chat with my friend that I co-op with, and we both agreed that we’re going to do a modified year round schedule. That has really freed up my attitude about finishing everything that we’re “supposed” to do by the end of May, which in turn frees up my week to do other things, like skip school for a day at the park (or a day of heart training instead, which happens more often).

A few things that we decided to change at the beginning of the year:

* We started and breezed through All About Spelling Level 1. It was basic for her since she’s been reading for awhile and loves to write, but I wanted to start there to give her the spelling rules before we moved on. We’re now starting level 2 and will finish before starting 2nd grade. We also started All About Reading Level 2 and are really hoping that Level 3 will be available for next year!

* We have picked up our Artistic Pursuits book again. Now that I have us on a tighter schedule, we have time to do this, which we’re both happy about. She tells me she’s going to be an artist when she grows up, so I’m glad we have something to help her with that goal.

I also posted our current curriculum choices and what I’m thinking of for next year, which you can also get to under the “Tots and Homeschooling” tab at the top of the blog.

Okay, so what have we been up to?

A month ago, we celebrated finishing Tapestry of Grace Year 1 Unit 3 by having a mini Olympics and a Greek-inspired lunch. The kids got dressed up in their Chitons and away we went!

The horse race

The discus throwThe javelin throw

The foot race

Cheering on the last place finishers

Tasty lunch of English muffin pizzas, olives, oranges, sesame bread, and grape juice.

Can’t forget the littles!

Her display board from this unit’s projects. Not all-inclusive, for sure!

All crowned as winners with their laurel crowns (they were tired from running, and ready for lunch. Really, they had a great time!)

I have so many more pictures, but we’ll call that good. Now to not wait another 5 months before posting another weekly wrap-up!!

~S

Also linked up at

Kindergarten with Kahlen–Thanksgiving and more

Four weeks later…Oh well, I guess I’m not perfect after all ;)

Here’s a little recap of what we’ve been doing. Make sure you check out our fun Thanksgiving activities at the bottom.

Our main curriculum - Tapestry of Grace Year 1:

We’ve been moving forward from Creation through Noah’s Ark. For this activity, I printed two sets of animals. Kahlen cut out one while Nate glued the other one on. Then she had to find the matching one and glue hers near his. Simple for her, but a good way for them to work together.

Then we discussed the Tower of Babel and made a Ziggurat with paperboard boxes

(The finished product)

We moved on to the patriarchs after that, but I don’t have very many pictures. We made a travelling table and then had an indoor picnic co-op. We’re also working on an ancient Israelite costume for our end of the unit party in January.

Fun Stuff:

On a whim two weeks ago, we went to the Butterfly Pavilion. I have a membership good through January. It’s about an hour from our house, and we were only there for about 2 hours, but it was still worth it. The kids had fun and so did I. Nate was not happy that he didn’t get to hold the tarantula that they have there, but you have to be three, and he’s definitely not.

Thanksgiving:

We’ve done a few fun crafts related to Thanksgiving. We’re having a co-op feast on Monday and will have a little lesson about why we celebrate Thanksgiving. To prepare, we made woven placemats (which I don’t have any pictures of, oops) and bonnets/headbands

One of my friends posted this cute turkey craft, which we did yesterday. Turned out pretty cute, I must say :

We’re also starting a thankful book. I took a basic composition book and mod podged a piece of fall-ish paper to the front along with their handprints. We’ll write some things we are thankful for inside and then pass it around during our Thanksgiving feast on Thursday and Friday with family. It will be a neat record of what we are thankful for right now. Then we’ll pull it out every year and continue to write things in it. I’ll have to add the baby’s handprint next year, probably on the back cover.

We’re still plugging through Math U See Primer, First Step Reading, and Handwriting Without Tears without incident. In math, we’ve started actual addition, which she was very ready for, it’s almost to easy for her :) She’s getting more interested in reading, which I love love love. I’ve gotten her a couple beginning readers from the library which she’s been able to read almost by herself, hooray! We haven’t been stressing the handwriting as much because she gets lots of practice in other places, like her reading book, but that’s going pretty good too. I’m trying to get her to write her name in proper case more often, but she forgets a lot and just writes it in all caps.

I’d love to hear what’s been working and not working for you! Leave me a comment or come link up with me at HomeSchool Creations!

Also, anyone have any great ideas for Christmas Advent? This is what we did last year, and I’m thinking of something similar, but not exactly the same for this year. I got sucked into Pinterest, so you can check out my current ideas there if you feel so inclined. Once I get everything all finalized, I’ll try to blog it in hopes that someone else can use it too :)

~S

Linking up at:

Kindergarten with Kahlen–Creation (ToG Week 4a)

My poor neglected blog…I really want to be posting a recap of our school week every week, but so far it hasn’t happened. I have all the pictures taken and ready, but the blogging just has been a low priority lately.

School has been going really well for the most part. We’ve been able to keep on schedule (a tad modified because of vacation) and have enjoyed the challenges of kindergarten while trying to keep the tot busy. Good thing he’s a sleepy head and I can usually just put him down for a short morning nap while we focus on school. If that doesn’t work, then we do some school while he naps in the afternoon. She doesn’t really need a nap anymore the majority of the days. I can still get away with having her do room time for up to two hours if I need a nap (growing a baby is tiring!), but we can also just do school for that time if we choose.

As we progress into “real” school instead of the preschool that we’ve been doing, I am more and more pleased with my choice to homeschool and the methods that we’re using. I realize that when I was homeschooled, we did so much that was not “normal” even in homeschooling circles. It never felt like public school recreated at home. It was school, sure, but not some rigid, overly structured thing that took over our lives instead of being part of our lives…okay, more on that in my Educating the WholeHearted Child review.Enjoying the zoo on a "school" day.

Anyway, here’s a peek into our schooling so far. Some of this is actually from this week and some is from weeks prior.

Our main curriculum - Tapestry of Grace Year 1:

We are sticking with the plan of using Tapestry of Grace at half speed. So far, we’ve mostly been talking about Ancient Egypt, but we have just moved into Creation and will move through Genesis from here. Year 1 focuses on the books of Moses.

One of the projects we did for our creation week was to make a creation book. I actually don’t have as many pictures as I though for this week. Here’s the first day:

For each day, she had to copy my words as well as glue something down like this light/dark or for day 4, we had a bunch of clipart of birds and fish as well as a large blue paper for the water. (I’ll look for my documents and hopefully post them…I think they’re on my old drive that was starting to crash so I replaced it)

It was a big task, but she did great. It did take us all week, though.

We’ve also mummified apples:

Made a salt dough map illustrating different land forms:

Made a salt dough map of Egypt:

And excavated a pyramid:

Reading/Phonics:

We started out using Explode the Code and The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, and it was working okay, but then I got a product for review from TOS which I like much much better. It’s called First Start Reading, and I’ll be posting my full review soon. In the meantime, know that we have really been enjoying it and will continue to use this as our primary reading/phonics curriculum for this year.

Math – Math U See:

We whizzed through the first 8 lessons of MUS, but we did every worksheet anyway, just so she would get the practice writing her numbers and doing as the paper asked her to do. We’ve now completed lesson 9, which was about place value of tens and units. This one was challenging for her, and we spent a long time on it, but I feel like she finally got it and it was worth it to spend this time since so much depends on her really understanding this concept.

Handwriting – Handwriting without Tears:

Overall, we’ve been liking this program. This is definitely the part she likes the least, but I feel very strongly about her having good handwriting, so she just has to do it. Because she doesn’t enjoy it, we’re not very far into the book. But I don’t have a schedule or a specific goal in mind, we’re just going to work on it and get where we get. She was going to do it with daddy every evening, but that wasn’t working for a variety of reasons, the biggest one being she wasn’t in school mode by that time of day and it was extremely hard for her to concentrate. So, we’ve incorporated it back into the main part of the day, and it works great. The other thing that I’ve found that works for her is to give star stickers for the ones on each page that are perfect. Depending on her mood and level of frustration with that letter, I sometimes will give her stickers for ones that she tried hard on but are not very pretty.

Other Stuff:

We still haven’t found a good Spanish program or rhythm for piano lessons, but with the work that we are doing and life circumstances what they are, I’m okay with that. I will be reviewing a Spanish Jr. program soon as well, so if I like that, we’ll go with it.

That’s all I’ve got right now, I’m really going to try and be more faithful about posting a recap of our week going forward. It’s fun to be able to look back and see what we did, so it’s just as much for me as anything!

~S

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