A lovely performance

Elijah is teaching himself to play the piano. He learned Baa Baa Black Sheep, which was our Little Hands time theme this week. He invited us all in to sing along while he played. My camera ran out of memory, but this gives you an idea of the cuteness of it all.

The adventure begins...again.

So, here we are in our 10th year of home educating and I am glad that each year keeps getting better and better. New ideas, new opportunities, new materials, it is just all so fulfilling. We always start our year when daddy heads back to work in the middle of August. It allows us to start earlier than most and we usually wind up finishing before he is off for the summer.

I won't go into all of the details of what "curriculum" we are using, but I will share what has proven ultra beneficial over the past year. I spend the majority of our morning pouring pouring pouring into the littler children. We have devotions at breakfast and spend the next chunk of time doing chores together. We then have Little Hands time, which is when the little ones sing songs, do a craft, listen to a story, and have a snack. It fills them up for the remainder of the morning and frees me up to work with the older children later.

Dante has picked up quite an academic load this year that will take quite a bit of readjusting. We are working through a writing program to get him ready for the high school years. He is also starting a foreign language through the library. He is switching Math programs to Pre Algebra Teaching Textbooks, which we have heard fabulous things about. Of course, being at home allows him to lots of time to practice his music. He is still playing the guitar, but has just now started making some serious progress. He spends quite a bit of time practicing. He has even starting messing around on the piano a little. I love having our home filled with the joyful sounds of my childrens' music.

I have also scheduled one activity each afternoon to help in structuring the second half of the day. This holds me accountable and also gives the kids some constructive time before the evening craziness without daddy around begins. Mondays and Wednesdays we are doing an outloud reading time. Tuesdays we are learning to play the recorder. Thursday is a day to take a nature walk around the property and draw in our Nature Notebooks. We are leaving Fridays open for our errand day.

I am looking forward to some great time with my children at home.

Totally Irresponsible Science

The second half of our school year has been running surprisingly smooth. I have continued to do an organized Little Hands Time that we all seem to really enjoy. The past couple of months I have been gathering ideas from a book I checked out from the library called Story Theme-a-saurus. It presents a number of different children's classics and then follows with quite a few different activities that relate to the story. We have read City Mouse Country Mouse, The Little Red Hen, The Tortoise and the Hare, and Henny Penny. It is a great way to give the girls a good dose of intentional organized attention. They ask to do Little Hands Time even on the weekends. I am excited that there are quite a few other similar books that our local library carries. I will continue to use them until something else comes along. Free and fun. You can't get any better than that.

The boys do the bulk of their academic time in the afternoon. All 3 boys continue to amaze me with their Math abilities. Dante has started working with decimals and some Pre Algebra. We are looking into getting him started taking some classes that will count towards his High School Diploma. Did I just say that? I remember Dante's first day of homeschooling at 3 years old. I had him sit at his little table (which we still have) and do little mini lessons. Goodness, how our style has changed. Elijah has started carrying with 3 digit addition problems. His mind is crazy intelligent, so sometimes the simpliest of things will challenge him and the complex are easy as pie. Justus loves loves loves doing Math. He is a natural at it and flies through lesson after lesson.

We studying different subjects each afternoon. Our schedule looks a bit like this.

Mondays and Wednesday ~ History and Geography. We are using the Beautiful Feet Early American History Book list and Timeline. We are currently studying the American Revolution. The kids are enjoying listening to a cd from the library about the life of George Washington. Nana also bought them the Liberty Kids PBS television series on DVD, which is an absolutely fabulous way to study this time period. For our geography studies we are again enjoying the God's World News monthly magazine publications. We will use the World Map to identify the different areas we are reading about.

Tuesdays~ Sketch Tuesdays has been a great addition to our Art studies. Each week the children will watch the previous weeks sketches and then sit and do next week sketches. We were just blessed with a fabulous table top easel with watercolor set from a local homeschooling mom and the kids can't wait to get their hands on that. I hope to at some point begin incorporating some Art History into this time also. Harmony Art Mom has some fantastic resources on her blog which I will take time to look over when given the time.

Thursdays~We just started adding a bit of "schooly-science" back into the mix. We had started completely Charlotte Mason style Science using Nature Notebooks and all of our wonderful field guides. We do continue to do this, but have enjoyed using a book I recently bought at Little Dickens called Totally Irresponsible Science. I just couldn't pass this up when thinking about how much the boys would enjoy it. Our first experiment was called Making A Frankenstein Hand. It was a smashing success. It was your typical baking soda and vinegar mixture, but with a twist. They did the procedure no less than 5 or 6 times. Lots of fun. I won't mention that for the following half hour the boys spent trying to get latex glove over their heads so that they could cluck around like roosters. Ooohhh, the joy of schooling boys.

Fridays is our day to catch up with thank you letters and penpals and household chores. I plan on adding in some recorder lessons, but am not in a rush.

We are having a really fun time and I pray that God continues to allow our home educating experience to be productive, while creating a ton of great memories.

Frogs!!

We decided to start the frog study off with a bang. It was a beautiful day to head to the neighbor's pond and attempt at collecting tadpoles and frogs to observe this week as we study the letter F, the number 6, and a cute little song about tadpoles that eventually learn to hop. Within 5 minutes, the children had 2 small terrariums filled with big, fat tadpoles and 3 teeny frogs. Good fun.
Today we worked together and made our favorite homemade play dough in the colors of green and brown. Elijah took the cake with his replica of the frog life cycle. When he saw the picture, he admitted that he forgot to add the last frog. Still a superb job.
It has been so wonderful to have God provide so much of what we have needed in order to have great mini unit studies each week.
Ribbit for now.

Eyes in a mirror

To wrap up our study of the eyes this week the kids all drew their own eyes by looking in a mirror. Dante drew crazy, shifty eyes...surprise. Elijah drew beautiful blue eyes. Isabella drew green eyes and Justus got frustrated and didn't participate. I have been feeling rather artsy the past few weeks, so I sketched an eye that I found on the computer. Next week we start a great week learning about frogs. For now I say that I am so glad it is Friday and have no major planning to do this weekend.

EYES!!

This week we start a week long study of our eyes. We are focusing on the letter E, the shape of an oval, and the number 5. We are learning the song Head and Shoulders, Knees, and toes. The children had a blast being blind folded for a fun game of pin the eyes on the head. Even Cheyanne said, "I do it, too. Take my picture, mommy."

The letter D

Little hands time this week will include learning the letter d, the number 4, the vocabulary work "duckling", and the color dandelion. We read "Make Way for Ducklings" yesterday which is a fabulous book, where Mr. and Mrs. Mallard do manage to find a fine home for their ducklings in the pond in Central Park. The children swam around the living room (pond) while big brother ripped up and threw little pieces of bread to them. If we have time this week, we will squeeze in a few more fun activities and art projects. They all enjoyed abstract painting with chicken feathers. Messy, but fun.