Week 12

The best part of this week was knowing that once we finished we would be on our second break.  I really like the six week schedule.  We have the chance to take a break before any of us are sick of school. 

Schooling with 3 children
I am constantly ways to deal with new aspects of doing school with three children at home.  Luke works on quite a few subjects each day.  I try to do one or two activities with Ben (at 3, he is doing formal "school" simply because it makes him feel included) and Olivia really only participates in watching YouTube movies and training her brothers to have laser focus when distractions abound.  Every once in a while, all three children are occupied with school at the same time and peace fills our house.  During these times, I take a quick picture, grab a piece of chocolate, and hide!

Benjamin practicing writing the letter L on his white board

Luke working on math

Olivia reading Highlights while sitting in her high chair

Co-op Engineering Class
This week in Engineering, we had Tool Week.  My father-in-law and a father of one of my students came to help teach a group of 5-7 year olds how to use hammer, wrenches, screwdrivers and sandpaper.  The class seemed to be a big success.  When we got home, Luke headed straight for the backyard to put his new skills to work.

Science
We continued learning all about fish this week.  Our lab this week dealt with how materials absorbed water.  We experimented to see which material (paper towel, toilet paper, construction paper, coffee filter, or writing paper) would absorb 2 teaspoons of water the best.

Ben School
Ben's goals for school this week were to learn the letter L, remember his birthday, and practice counting by 10s.  One assignment for the week was to find his favorite YouTube video (did I mention I use that all the time . . .?) of counting by 10s.  After watching about 10 different videos, he found his favorite.  I love tricking my kids into learning!!!

L is for lion

Family Time
We worked really hard on Wednesday morning to finish school so that we could go to the cider mill with Aaron's parents.  We saved Explode the Code and Grammar for last and Luke ended up completing his assignments on the car ride to the mill.  I am so thankful for this flexibility! 

Cider and doughnuts were a huge hit!

The workers at the mill gave the kids a bag of old doughnuts to feed the ducks.  As soon as Aaron opened the bag, he was surrounded by a flock of ducks quacking and staring right at him. 

 

Substitute Teacher/Girls' Weekend
Aaron served as a substitute this week while Olivia and I went to my aunt's house in Ohio for Girls' Weekend.  We had a great time and enjoyed spending time with each other and with our family.

Olivia learning to "raise the roof" with Nana

Shannon with Aunt Nancy

She climbed in the seat and said, "I drive!"

Olivia is the proud owner a superwoman cape!

Thanks, Aunt Nancy!

Cheers!

She picked out her new hat by herself.

Week 11 - Sniffles and Coughs

I had so many ideas for this week.  We had planned to get out of the house for fresh air and a visit to the apple orchard, but a nasty cold followed by nasty weather made all of that impossible.  All five of us were hit pretty hard with sniffles, coughs, and sneezes, so we spent the majority of our week at home.  Luke was shocked when I looked at him and said, "Time for school!"  I didn't want to give up a potential day off on a future beautiful day when this week we were healthy enough to do school, but not healthy enough to be around people.  It actually worked out well, because the boys had enough energy to do schoolwork, but didn't have the excess energy that needed to be burnt off during breaks.

Literature
We started reading the book "The Family Under the Bridge" this week.  It is about a homeless man who meets a homeless mother and her children.  I love that Sonlight (our curriculum) intentionally picks books with complex characters who improve for the better by the end of the book.  The story takes place in Paris and mentions many famous landmarks (Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Seine ).  We watched a YouTube video about Paris and once again, my boys have the international travel bug.   I think I'm catching it, too!

Math
We had a review week this week in Math.  His book had three days of review activities and we practiced with flash cards and M&M math.  I did my best to step out of the way and let him work on his own so that I could see what he actually knew, and realized he had actually picked up on more than I thought.

History
In History, we've been reading in "Living Long Ago" about different clothing worn in different countries during different time periods.  We read little snippets about cave people, Vikings, Native Americans, clothing before and after the French Revolution, Pilgrims, and a few others.  I think Luke's favorite facts were that King Louis XIV only took a bath once a year and that the dental hygiene at the time was so bad that when people's teeth fell out they would use wood or bits of animal bones for dentures!

 Poetry

We read quite a few poems from "Llama Who Had No Pajama", but I think the boys' favorite was "Magic Hand"

I have a magic hand; it looks

Quite normal to one's eyes.

But it can cover anything,

No matter what its size.

 

My hand can cover houses,

Make a mountain disappear,

Or hide a hippopotamus

If it is not too near.

 

I have a magic hand' it looks

Quite normal to one's eyes.

But it can cover anything,

No matter what its size.

 

Using their magic hands to cover the huge trees across the street (you can even see Olivia in the corner trying to do it too!)

 

Luke also tried his hand at writing his first poem.  We created a list of rhyming words and then he tried to put them at the end of sentences.  Here is his final product:

 

I'll write a poem for my dad.

It is about a lad.

The poor lad just couldn't add.

This made him sad, not glad.

 

Creative Writing/Handwriting

Luke worked a little more on his pirate story this week.  After some work on contractions during the past week, I was really pleased he put them into his writing.  This is probably our most spontaneous and most productive subject.  He usually draws his picture, then writes his sentences on his own.  Once he is done, we work together to proofread. 

 

"The pirates didn't like the spies.  The spies didn't like the pirates."

We still love Draw Write Now.  It has been great for handwriting practice, plus Luke's drawing abilities have improved dramatically.

 

 

 

Ben School

I am finding that our school day runs much smoother when Ben has his own activities planned.  Normally, a child his age would only have school two days each week, but it makes my life much easier when his school schedule matches Luke's.  I bought a preschool book that has at least 100 pages of tracing and coloring so that I don't have to find a bunch of little projects for him to complete.  I also sent him to his room to work on puzzles the other day which bought at least 30 minutes of uninterrupted (at least from Ben) school time.

 

This week we worked on the letter K.  He practiced tracing k's and writing them on a whiteboard. 

 

K is for kangaroo

  Luke's Language Arts curriculum was scheduled to learn about antonyms, but since he is pretty confident with them, he taught Ben about opposites instead.  They acted them out together.

 

Big and Little

Happy and Sad
 

Family Time

We decided to get a membership to our local history museum.  Because we are homeschoolers, we were able to get a 50% off teacher discount!  We had planned to visit a corn maze this week with my parents, but because it was cold and rainy, we went to the museum instead.  

 

Luke working in the car shop

Olivia riding the creeper



Hanging with Nana and Yogi

Aaron's parents are in town from Tennessee this week, so we're looking forward to spending time with them.  Luke and Ben are enjoying sharing what they're learning in school, co-op and Awana.

Papa listening to Luke during reading time

 

Week 10- Our Busy Week

This week has been ridiculously busy and has made me extraordinarily thankful for our flexible schedule.  This week included my birthday, work craziness and meetings, plus preparations for the wedding of some dear friends.  I am pretty sure that we haven't stopped moving since Tuesday morning. 

Science
On Monday, we needed out of the house.  For some reason, everyone was getting on each other's nerves, so we loaded into the van and went to our favorite park.  We walked about a mile around the park gathering and examining different leaves, acorns, nuts, and berries.  The boys ran everywhere trying to find different and interesting leaves to put into their baggies.  It was a great field trip and was refreshing both physically and emotionally.  After we walked our mile, we spent some time at the park before coming home for a nap.

Our science readings have been about rivers, canals, tide pools, and waves.  We found some great YouTube videos about the Panama Canal, tide pools on the California coast, and (Luke's favorite) surfing.  The videos have become a constant in our science and history studies.  Luke loves having extra screen time and I love the little nuggets of information that sneak into his little brain.

History
We started into a new book called, "Living Long Ago" that has been describing clothes that people wore in different times and places in history.  Luke has loved the book and drew this really cute picture of a cave person.

He also tried paper weaving.

Phonics
Luke finished his Explode the Code book and is ready to move to his next book.  Since we have had such a busy week and because he works almost completely on his own in his book, he had to do "car school" a couple times this week!

Field Trip
Our highlight of the week was visiting my cousin during his Fire Station Open House.  The boys thought it was so cool that Andrew is a firefighter.  He helped Ben with the fire hose, lifted them in and out of the rescue boats and fire trucks, and showed them all of the tools used by fireman.  We even watched him in a demonstration of the use of the jaws of life while he helped dismantle a wrecked car.  Luke was so amazed that he came home and made videos explaining how to be a firefighter!

Ben
Ben didn't have a chance to do a ton of school this week, however, he is officially an Awana Cubby.  Isn't he cute in his little vest?

Homeschool Perks
Because my sister-in-law was the wedding coordinator for the wedding this weekend, we had my nephews over for the afternoon/evening on Thursday.  Luke worked hard during the morning so that he wouldn't have to work while they were here.  He finished most of his work before they arrived and within 20-30 minutes of their arrival, he had finished and was ready to play.  They spent most of their time playing in the dirt outside.

On Friday, my dad picked up the boys at 8:30 in the morning to watch the recorded Tigers game from Thursday night.  Luke was up at 7:00, so he crawled into our bed and managed to complete his math assignment, recite his Bible verses, take a spelling test, and listen to his Literature story before they left.  We had to scatter other assignments in throughout the weekend, but time spent with Yogi is worth it!

My birthday was earlier this week.  We had co-op in the morning, but Aaron managed to have time to make us a big breakfast.  I also enjoyed beautiful cards made by my sweet boys.

Week 9 - A Clarification and Our Progress

I have always loved to reflect and evaluate how something is going.  I know I come by it honestly.  I come from a long line of evaluators.  I've been thinking about my blog a lot lately.  When most people think of blogs, they think of people describing day to day life along with all of the ups and downs they experience.  This website is not a blog, but rather our online scrapbook.  A scrapbook is for recording your favorite memories.  No one includes a sink full of dishes, World War III between siblings, potty training accidents on the carpet, or details about rebellious kids in a scrapbook.  Why?  You record the things you want to remember, and what you record influences how you remember it.   When my kids and I look back on our homeschool experience, I don't want all of us to remember my frustration with getting Luke to actually work when he's doing math, Ben's fits when his brother gets the boys' favorite plastic cup, or Olivia banging on the computer while we try to watch an educational video.   I want all of us to remember the fun projects, field trips, and family time.  I want to remember why we're doing this and how it has drawn our family a little closer together. 


Here are some highlights from our week.

Geography
Our book has finished the last three continents this week.  We read short descriptions of Australia, Antarctica and Europe.  The highlight, however, was watching YouTube travel videos about various places on each continent.  We watched videos about the Great Barrier Reef, Sydney, Rome and Antarctica.  My favorite was a video about an Antarctic cruise through National Geographic.  The kids (all three of them) watched scientists tag killer whales, penguins playing, whale bones on the shore, seals swimming, and ice falling off a glacier.  They were completely enamored.  I was curious to see what the cost of the cruise was.  It would only cost about $90,000-100,000 for our family of five.  Luke brought the change jar over and asked if we could save it towards the cost of a cruise!  Luke's favorite video was probably Rome (which really surprised me), although he was really disappointed at how difficult it was to draw pictures of the amazing sculptures from the video!

He eventually gave up on the sculptures and tried drawing an open air market instead.

The Arts
After about 2 months of requesting to paint, I finally took out the watercolors for the boys.  They will definitely be coming out again soon.  I managed to have almost an hour and a half of silence as they painted and painted.  The watercolors came with really, really small brushes, so they worked much slower than I expected on their stack of paintings.

I managed to plan a week's worth of lessons and clean the kitchen while they worked.  I was so proud of myself until I remembered  . . . .

I left a toddler alone with a cup of yogurt.

This week, I also started a new season of teaching piano.  Luke is going to be taking his first year of piano with me, but at a very slow speed and only taking lessons when he is ready and focused.  He needs a little more time to mature and develop a sense of focus before we work consistently on lessons.

Writing
We worked a lot on both creative writing and handwriting this week.  I think Language Arts is one of Luke's favorite subjects, so we've been devoting a little additional time to helping him improve his skills. 

Creative writing - Luke is continuing to work on his pirate story a little each week.  It has been a great, practical way to learn capitalization, punctuation, spelling and grammar while not having to work out of a workbook.


Handwriting- Draw Write Now has been a wonderful alternative to traditional copywork.  Luke has to write his sentences before he draws his picture.  He gave this picture to my parents as a gift.

Letter Writing - My cousin, Andrew, received a Life Saving commendation from the Fire Department and was in our local paper.  The boys were excited and wrote congratulations notes for him

Dear AJ, I am glad you are a firefighter!  I like firefighters.  Luke

Dear AJ, You get to be a firefighter.  Ben

(Ben's picture of AJ fighting a house fire)

Ben School
Ben has been working on the letter I.  I had great intentions to do an "I is for icky" project, but never got around to it.  Hmmm... , maybe I'll attempt it this weekend. 

Writing the letter I on the whiteboard

Number work