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.