Friday, August 28, 2009

Week 2 in Review

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I thought about participating in the blog hop again this week, but the the topic is "A Day in the Life" and I'm still trying to figure out what that looks like for us! We continue to adjust to Anna's new away-school schedule, but each day is getting better and better. Hopefully in the next week or so we will settle into a nice routine.

Ryne: Last week I wrote about our struggle with a narration assessment to figure out where to start him in Writing With Ease. I got an email from Peace Hill Press, saying that Susan Wise Bauer agreed with my idea to split him into two different levels. So he will start with Level 1 for narration and Level 2 for copywork and dictation. This means that I will have to just use the manual as my guide and find my own literature selections, but I was leaning toward doing this anyway. It's more work on my part, but I've already been doing it in previous years for copywork -- plus I don't have to spend the extra money on workbooks.

All of Ryne's other individual subjects went well. He did miss one question on his math test (his first missed question on a test in six lessons of Gamma), but as soon as I pointed it out he caught the mistake. Oh, how I love that math is going so smoothly for him right now.

Grace: It was smooth sailing for Grace as well. We finished up our review of addition facts, so we'll start on subtraction next week. Since she did so well with Ryne's reading book last week, I've made it a joint reading time, letting her and Ryne take turns. Now I'm wondering what to do with all the 1st and 2nd grade reading books she was supposed to read. Maybe they will become night-time reading material.

Bible: We finished part 1 of Discovering Jesus in Exodus. The Scripture text was Ephesians 1:3-7. Both Ryne and Grace are able to answer these questions:

  • When did God choose us to belong to Him?
  • Why did God choose us to belong to Him?
  • What do we have through the blood of Jesus?
  • What does redeem mean?
Science: We read about clouds and made weather in a jar.

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waiting for precipitation

We also completed Outdoor Hour Challenge 2, and you can read about that in the previous post.

History: We read about Columbus and made simple models of the NiƱa, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Just like last week, this is review since we covered Columbus in SOTW 2 last year, and therefore didn't read as much this week as we could have. We did read a short chapter book, Pedro's Journal, but it was just okay. What we did enjoy, however, was American Pioneers and Patriots, which will be one of our spines as we go through Adventures in MFW.


The kids enjoyed making the ships and were able to tell me all about what happened to each ship, based on what we read this week.

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Fine Arts: I love that Adventures introduces the kids to many great patriotic hymns and songs. I had planned on doing that before we chose Adventures, but now it's already planned out for me! This week we started "God Bless America."

We also started our instrument-of-the-week studies, starting with the violin. We will be following the order in Story of the Orchestra. We also started our first of four composer studies, reading part of Joseph Haydn: The Merry Little Peasant. I'm kicking myself because somehow I didn't get the companion CD added to my Rainbow order. We also continued learning the hymn "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty."


We finished another Artistic Pursuits chapter, the theme being imagination. Our project didn't go quite as well as I hoped because I (the daughter of an art teacher) forgot that watercolor pencils are not the same as watercolor crayons. The kids were a little disappointed in the results, because the pencils did not blend very well.

Latin: Since I couldn't find our Song School Latin CD, we just reviewed the songs we learned last year, without music. Must find that CD...

Other: Last week I forgot to tell about our first Family Math activity. It was so much fun that we decided to do it again this week. The activity involved assigning each letter of the alphabet a dollar amount (a = $1, z = $26) and then determining whose name was worth the most money. This was the perfect activity for Ryne and Grace. While Grace has not learned column addition, she was still able to help out with the basic facts she knows. Last week I wrote the problems on the white board, and we all helped to add up the value of each name.

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This week they wrote the problems on the white board, which turned out to be a great lesson in place value for Grace. Instead of using our first names again, we chose five of the Dutch last names from our church directory (ours included) and calculated which last name was worth the most. Dutch names have a lot of v's, w's, and s's and other "valuable" consonants, so the kids just loved this variation.

So that's our week! We still need to add in spelling. I bought Level 1 of All About Spelling and I need to take some time this weekend to figure out how it works.

Happy Homeschooling!

Outdoor Hour Challenge # 2

For this challenge my assignment was to read a few more pages from the Handbook of Nature Study, and I was really struck by this quote:

Make the lesson an investigation and make the pupils feel that they are investigators. To tell the story to begin with inevitably spoils this attitude and quenches interest.

Even though we had an amazing time last week on our first challenge, when I told the kids we were going on another nature walk today, they responded with grumbling. I was stunned, but rather than give up I decided to rephrase things a bit:

Yes, we have to go down to the creek and see if the rain freed the catfish. If he's still there we'll have to come up with a plan this weekend to save him.

Let me back-track a little to explain. Last weekend Anna was down in the woods with her friend, trying to find some leaves for a school science project, and they found a huge catfish stuck in a shallow pool of our creek. Most of the time the creek barely has water in it, but when we get a good rain you could almost do some white-water rafting on it. So the catfish must have been swept down during the previous week's storms, but then got stuck in one of the little pools when the water subsided. We did not have a net big enough to get him out, and he really didn't want to have anything to do with people. So we waited to see if the next round of storms would carry him to the lake downstream.

When the Ryne and Grace started to complain about the nature walk, I remembered I needed to make it an investigation, not something to check off our planner. The kids needed some sense of purpose in the activity, and the catfish was the perfect motivation. They got excited, and we had a wonderful time.

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The theme for the challenge was "using your words." After the walk we were to creatively sum up our experience:

  1. Give one word describing something we heard.
  2. Two words for something we saw.
  3. Three words for something we felt.
Here's what we came up with:

  1. chirping (Ryne) and splash (Grace)
  2. bubbles rising (Grace) and green moss (Ryne)
  3. thorn pricking me (Grace) and cold, cold water (Ryne), and sticky spider webs (me)
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And what about the catfish? To the kids great disappointment, and my great relief, the catfish was nowhere to be found. He is probably getting acquainted with his new friends in the lake.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

And the winner is...

Congratulations to Louisiana Laura of By the Bushel! Email me a mailing address (link is in the sidebar) so you can enjoy your new DVDs! Thank you to everyone for joining in the fun!

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Week 1 in Review

Quick! What is 11 - 10? No, we didn't cover 11 weeks worth of school in our first week. I just do not have Photoshop on my new computer yet, and since I didn't start my weekly reviews until week 11 last year I don't have a cute little image for the first 10 weeks. Hopefully that will be resolved by next week!

Now that I have thoroughly confused you, let me get on with the review of our first week of school for the 2009-2010 school year. For those of you who are new to my weekly reviews, I start with some highlights for each student's individual subjects and then cover the group subjects.

Grace: She feels like such a big girl now that she gets to do First Language Lessons! She loved memorizing The Caterpillar. She also started Writing with Ease 1 and continues to work on Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading and her Christian Liberty phonics workbook. One big surprise occurred actually when I was working on reading with Ryne. He is reading Secrets in the Maple Tree (Abeka), which is written at a 3.5 grade level. Grace kept getting distracted from her phonics because she wanted to hear the story, so I invited her to come listen. Then Ryne needed a break, but Grace wanted to know what happened next, so I let her try reading a page. She did great! It confirmed that she is just naturally picking up reading now, and that OPG is just solidifying what her brain has already started to figure out on its own. I have read of similar experiences with other children using OPG, so I think that speaks for what a great program it is.

I'm having her review her addition facts and then we will give subtraction another go (it was too hard to introduce over the summer because we didn't have the consistency we do in the regular school year).

Ryne: He was shocked to see how thick the FLL 4 book is, but he was still eager to get started. Since he's done so wonderful with the FLL series, I decided to try out WWE. He spent the week doing the Year 1 end-of-the-year evaluation as a placement guide. The first and third days were copywork exercises and the second and fourth days were narration exercises. He rocked on the copywork and failed miserably with the narration. I expected him to do poorly with narration, but not this poorly. This is one of the key areas where autism effects his learning, which is exactly why we need to focus on narration. So now I'm not sure how to proceed -- split the levels (not even sure if that is possible), just work on narration in Level 1, or what? The copywork in Level 1 is way too easy for him. So I sent an email to Peace Hill Press and they are forwarding it to Susan Wise Bauer, the author. I'll keep you posted...

One subject he did do really well in, however, was math. He started MUS Gamma this summer and is loving it. This week he finished Lessons 4 and 5. So far he has not missed a single question on any of his tests!

Anna: I won't always include Anna in the weekly reviews, since she is going to away-school, but because she is home two days a weeks she is still very much a part of our homeschool week. She loves her new school and her teacher is incredible, but we're all going through an adjustment period. It is a lot of work, and it is just going to take time to get acquainted with the way things work there. I learned the hard way that I need to be more available on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We were still finishing up homework at 9 o'clock both nights.

Bible: The kids were excited to start Discovering Jesus in Exodus. They had no idea there was a sequel to the Genesis book.

Science: We're restarting the Christian Kid's Explore Earth and Space unit on weather since it was April when we last looked at it. I found some fun worksheets on the internet to review the seasons. On Friday we completed our first Outdoor Hour Challenge, which I blogged about in the previous post.

History: This week was a gentle introduction to Adventures in My Father's World. We talked about the pledge of allegiance, did some basic mapwork, and read a little bit about the Vikings discovering America. We didn't spend a lot of time on the Vikings since we covered this in history last year. I also gave Ryne and Grace their own history notebooks, and they were pretty excited. In the coming weeks I will continue my tradition of posting links to our favorite books for history (and other subjects), but for this week there was just one, so I will save it for next week.

Fine Arts: We finished Unit 1 in Artistic Pursuits, started learning the hymn Praise to the Lord Almighty, and read/listened to the section on the different musical periods in Story of the Orchestra. I wasn't planning on covering that much in SOTO, but Ryne wouldn't let me stop. He is really into classical music right now. He talks to me about different symphonies ("Momma, what do you think of when you hear Beethoven's 9th?") and is working on composing his first symphony -- Ryno style! The Artistic Pursuits lessons fit in perfectly with this because it talked about artists being composers as well -- they just compose with images. Ryne loved that!

Overview: We still have a few things to add in, such as Latin and spelling, but our first week felt solid. It does make such a huge difference in having Anna home only two days a week. We were able to get all the schooling for Grace and Ryne done in the mornings, which is so different from last year when we were often finishing up at 4 o'clock. On Monday we even had a 30 minute quiet time after lunch and then each did their piano practice and I still had time to get a few housekeeping things done. That is the type of day I envisioned. The rest of the week's afternoons were a little more chaotic, but mostly due to what I mentioned above -- getting used to a new routine. I'll spare you the details... One thing that I am particularly thankful for though, is that my research seems to have paid off. I put a lot of thought and prayer into our curriculum for this year, and so far I think everything is a winner. That certainly makes life easier!

Happy Homeschooling!

Friday, August 21, 2009

Outdoor Hour Challenge # 1

One of my goals for this school year is to incorporate more nature study, and today was the first step. I've heard several times of the Outdoor Hour Challenge, but only recently discovered that the creator is Barb/Harmony Art Mom -- the same person who hosts Sketch Tuesday. I've been enjoying her other blog for several months and never realized the connection, silly me!

As I understand it, she posts a new Outdoor Hour Challenge every Friday, but it is recommended that newbies start with the first 10 Challenges. Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong on that! Barb assigns some reading from Anna Botsford Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study to go along with the challenge. You can read more about how it all works here.

So for the first challenge the parent is to read the first 8 pages of the handbook, and then take the kids outside for at least 15 minutes and just observe and enjoy. Once back home we discuss what we saw and come up with at least two things to investigate further.

In the future we will use the woods in our backyard for most of the challenges, but today I wanted to take the kids to a nearby state park because they have a nice paved path (it's rained a lot this week, so everything is pretty muddy). It has been a while since I've been to this park and I accidentally took us on the wrong tail. So what I figured would be a nice 30 minute hike ended up being almost two hours! But it was so much fun that I didn't hear any complaining until just before we were done.

Ryne is really into Indiana Jones right now, so he dressed in his hat and brought along his home-made whip!

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We were very surprised to find a cherry tree right above the trail!

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Twice we came upon downed trees, but Grace just urged, "Keep going!"

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At one point we took a dirt path off the main trail because I knew it would lead us to some spectacular scenery, although just being in the woods was beautiful.


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I didn't tell them what was ahead. But as we got closer I said things like, "Wow, we're getting pretty high, almost like we're on a big cliff," or "Oh, look how light it's getting up ahead. It looks like the trees are ending," and then, finally, "What's that?!" They couldn't believe it was the Missouri River. We see it all the time, but never from this high up. Oh, I can't wait until we study Lewis and Clark this year!


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We saw all kinds of interesting things that we'd like to learn learn about.


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But this was probably the most interesting. When we picked a few of the cherries, Gracie noticed some funny looking things on the back of the leaf. By the time we got home the leaf and whatever the funny-looking things are had shriveled up quite a bit, but hopefully we will still be able to identify them. I have no idea how to do that though, LOL!

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The best part of the whole morning though was when Grace said, "This place makes me think of the song All Things Bright and Beautiful," and then sang the song for me. To me, that is the primary purpose for studying creation -- to be increasingly in awe of the Creator.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Raise your hand if you love history... and a give-away

It seems like so many homeschooling moms say they develop a love for history once they start teaching their kids. Well, history has always been my favorite subject, even as a young girl. I particularly loved American History, which led to an interest in government, which led to a degree in political science, which led to a Masters in Public Administration, which led to... being a wife and homeschooler. And I wouldn't change a bit of it, because now I can study history all over again! Except that the materials are much better this time around. Story of the World (or insert any number of excellent history curricula on the market). Timelines. Lots and lots of great books. Fun projects. And this...


Are you familiar with the Liberty's Kids series? Here is a description from the Liberty Kids website.

The primary goal of the Liberty's Kids TV series is to provide 7-12 year olds with a fresh and exciting experience of the extraordinary period of 1773 to 1789 in American history.

Through the eyes of two young apprentice reporters named Sarah and James, viewers of Liberty's Kids will go on adventures in search of the real stories of the American Revolution. Sarah is a proper British girl right off the ship from England and James, a fifteen-year-old apprentice, sees things from a cocky colonist's perspective. They meet famous historical figures such as George Washington, plus other figures that should be, like Phillis Wheatley - a published poet while still enslaved. Although the setting is Colonial America, Liberty's Kids' characters find themselves in the middle of a revolution that confronts issues that still fill the newspapers today - gun control, downsizing government, lower taxes, freedom of the press, and race relations.

Sarah and James are followed around by eight-year-old Henri, a spirited immigrant from France. Moses, a former slave who freed himself, watches over them for his employer, the remarkable Benjamin Franklin, with whom we travel to Europe as he fights for recognition and assistance for the young nation.

The entire show is produced using high quality animation and creates an exciting world that today's kids can jump into and discover the real stories of the incredible time that gave birth to the United States of America. Liberty's Kids offers caretakers, from parents to teachers, an extraordinary resource through which they can share with young people the inspiring stories, characters, and values at the heart of America's great experiment in democracy.

Several years ago it was on PBS and my kids loved it. Then it disappeared. Last year repeats were being shown on a cable channel at the oh so convenient time of 6:00 a.m.! But then last fall I heard through the homeschool grapevine that the entire series was being released on DVD, so we quickly pre-ordered our copy. Part of me wanted to save it to use as a supplement for our history studies this year, but the kids would have none of that. They wanted to watch it right away. With 40 episodes (a running time of 15 hours), this six-disc set kept my kids (and myself) entertained for months. And my kids love to re-watch the episodes, so we will still incorporate it in our history studies this year.

So in honor of a new school year and my favorite subject, I am giving away a new (still in the shrink wrap) DVD set. I know some blogs have to get real complicated with the rules for their give-aways, but those are blogs with hundreds of readers. So here are my simple rules:

  • US residents only (sorry!).
  • Leave a comment at this post, telling me your favorite subject as a student or your favorite homeschooling subject.
  • You do not need to be a homeschooler to enter!
  • Blog about this give-away and leave a separate comment for a second chance to enter.
  • Contest ends Tuesday, August 25th at 11:59 p.m CST.
  • Winner will be announced the following morning.
I don't Twitter, Facebook, or anything else (I have a hard enough time keeping up with blogging!), so the only way to win is to comment. And if you don't win, it's okay -- you can still visit the Liberty's Kids website for fun games, activities, and teacher resources. There are even scripts for plays your little history buffs could perform.

Monday, August 17, 2009

picture time!

This week for the Not-Back-to-School Blog Hop, we're sharing pictures of all our eager learners. Last week I was inspired by how many of you blogged about doing school outside. Today was our first day of school, and I thought it would be fun to spread out a blanket and do some, if not all, of our work outside. I figured this would also provide the perfect opportunity to take some great pictures for the blog hop. Well... it ended up pouring down rain for a good part of the day, and the forecast is calling for much of the same for the next two days! So scratch the cute outdoor pictures. Instead, here is a picture from our vacation last week. <span class=

From left to right:

Ryne, age 10

Grace, age 6
 
Anna, age 11


We are looking forward to another fun year at Blue House Academy.  If you are visiting, I invite you to come back again and read about our adventures, challenges, and triumphs.  I even have a neat give-away coming up soon that might interest the history lovers in your family!

Friday, August 14, 2009

We're so boring.

On Monday school will be back in full-swing, but right now I still have summer on the brain.  We have had been on two trips, back-to-back, the first of which you caught a glimpse of in this post.  That picture was taken at Tablerock Lake, Missouri, a favorite spot of Marc's family.  We had a wonderful time water skiing, tubing, hanging out with our spread-out family, and celebrating Ryne's birthday.

The second trip was to my favorite state, Michigan.  I am a Midwestern girl, through and through, even though the majority of my growing up years were spent in Texas, south of Houston.  But I was born in Chicago, lived there three years, and then lived in Michigan six or so years.  Both my parents and their families are Michigan natives.  I have so many good memories of living there, that I always knew someday I would be back in the Midwest.  Thankfully, God paired me with Marc who is equally Midwestern at heart (of course that's not the only reason I'm thankful for my hubby!).

My only living grandparent is still in Michigan -- she goes by Grandma Van or Grandma Grace (our little Grace was named after her) -- so I have tried to visit her every year, especially since we started having kids.  Thus started our annual Michigan trip.  For five years now we've settled into a routine that changes little.  We spend a day in Battle Creek, MI visiting Grandma and several other family members.  My aunt and uncle live on a nice lake there, so we hang out the deck and watch the kids splash in the lake.  It's a real treat to take a spin on Uncle Jeff's jet ski.  Grandma celebrated her 90th birthday last month, so we celebrated with lots of yummy goodies.

Then we head north up the shoreline of Lake Michigan, making camp in the little town of Manistee (sometimes figuratively, but the last two years literally).  This is where we get real boring.  There are hundreds of neat things to see and do in this area of northern MI, but each year we do the same thing:
  1. Eat at Big Boy in Ludington.
  2. Stay in Manistee (the last two years we have camped at Orchard State Beach).
  3. Take a 3.5 mile hike (all in sand) at Sleeping Bear Dunes.
  4. Eat the best-ever soft-serve ice cream at the Frankfort Dairy Maid.
  5. Canoe on the Platte River.
  6. Eat the best-ever soft-serve ice cream at the Frankfort Dairy Maid, again.
  7. Buy a case of the best-ever organic blueberries off Highway 31.
And then we head home.  I'm telling you, we are boring... and we love it.  Take a peek at how boring we are.



P.S.  This is my first post on my new laptop!!!  So I'm officially back in the blogging business!  Thanks for being patient with me in my time of technical difficulty.  And special thanks to Ruthanne for linking me up to the blog hop while I was gone.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Our School Room (again)

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It's week 2 at the Not-Back-to-School Blog Hop, and this week we get to share where all that learning occurs. I wish this topic could have been saved for next week, because I'm still putting the finishing touches on a mini-makeover. But I still want to participate, so I'm just going to re-post what our school room looked like last year. Any new comments will be in this color.

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Here's our school room -- my favorite room in the house. It is truly a multi-purpose room: guest room, office, school room, and craft room. The room is over our garage and separated from the rest of the house, and this arrangement has served us well. Last year (two years ago) we hosted an art class in our school room and I never had to worry if the rest of the house was clean!


This is your first view of our school room when you enter. Those of you with hyperactive kids know what the trampoline is for! I bought the table years ago for a craft table with intentions of painting it. Just one of the many projects waiting to happen. (Still waiting...)


The bed is where we do all our read-alouds, Bible memory work, and DVD/VHS watching. It can be a little too comfortable when the sun is shining through the window, but I've only fallen asleep a few times.


This TV with the tiny screen is across from the bed. So far the DVD player has not fallen off, but clearly we need a new setup here. Ignore the awful popcorn ceiling. (Yea! The little TV is gone -- all 5 of us pooled our Christmas and some birthday money and even fished around the house to find enough money to buy a larger TV. And then it took us 2 weeks to figure out how to get it set up properly -- the kids thought it was pretty funny to see MUS's Steve Demme all pink!)


Here is where most of the written work gets done. I bought the desks cheap from a former homeschooler at my church and the chairs from Biz Chair. The rolling cart is used to hold extra supplies and hanging files that keep everything from completed assignments to catalogs. We have very little usable wall space in this room, so Hubby installed a great bulletin board above the desks -- perfect spot for our timeline and other helps.


When we first started homeschooling I thought this book case would be sufficient for our homeschool books. Is that laughing I hear? (This book case is now holding the TV and stereo, and all the stuff that goes with them. Where the book case used to be we have hung a 3x4' magnetic white board, stealing Darcy's idea. Handyman himself even gave us a few pointers.)

Thankfully, we already had two larger book cases around the corner. Now five of the ten shelves have been taken over with homeschooling materials. (Umm...all of them are for homeschooling now...and with this year's books coming in I'm starting to run low on space again.)

This was one of my smarter ideas this school year. The bin holds our library books in the order we plan to use them, divided by subject. As you can tell, we are due for a trip to the library -- usually it is stuffed to capacity.


Here are two of my favorite things in our school room -- our view and sentence diagrams written in window marker. It's really scary that sentence diagramming gives me such pleasure.


The artist in action. Below Anna is the state quarter collection that is still missing Hawaii. Has anyone seen a Hawaiian quarter yet? (We did finally find Hawaii.)

And this is one of the strangest things about our school room. The previous owners used this room for a home-based business and apparently needed lots and lots of outlets, some in very strange spots. This room boasts 21 electrical outlets and 7 phone jacks (including 2 in the bathroom)! How crazy is that!

I hope you enjoyed the tour of the Blue House Academy school room.

Oh, and since not all our learning takes place in the school room, you might want to take a look at this other old post to see our outdoor school room. This is where many of our Outdoor Hour Challenges will occur.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Our School Plans for 2009-2010

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I'm a little late posting this for Darcy's blog hop (there are already 138 links!!!), but I have a good reason...

I was here...

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...thinking about anything besides curriculum!

But our new school year is quickly approaching, so it's time to share our plans.


Bible:

  • Sunday School and Catechism instruction at church (plus memory work for both)
  • Daily stories from The Child's Story Bible
  • Discovering Jesus in Exodus (Last year we really enjoyed the first book in this two-book series)
  • Additional memory work (starting with the books of the Bible)

History:

We were originally scheduled to use Story of the World 3, but I decided it was going to be too difficult. So we are going to concentrate on American history, and maybe a little detour to Holland (lots of Dutch blood in this family). Next year we will study geography, and in two years we will start the history rotation over again.


Science:


This will be our first year incorporating formal nature study. It seems a bit overwhelming, since I can't name the most common trees or insects, but we're going to give it a try. We also did not finish our science curriculum last year, so we are stretching it out over two years. I think this will work out great, because I wanted to spend more time on astronomy anyway, and I wasn't sure my younger two were ready for chemistry.


Foreign Language:



Art:


Music:


Other:

  • Occasional activities from Family Math
  • Computer activities like typing and Web Design for Kids (see Dawn's review here)
  • Extracurricular activities like Cub Scouts, ballet and swim

Just for Ryne
(age 10, 4th grade, high-functioning autism):

In the past I have listed
RDI as part of our curriculum. This can be confusing, since it is not a curriculum in the traditional sense. We use RDI to remediate Ryne's core deficits of autism, and it flavors how we use all our curricula. For more information please consider joining the Homeschooling with RDI Yahoo Group. I will also blog more about this in the future.


Just for Grace (age 6, 1st grade):


Our oldest, Anna (age 11, 6th grade), will be starting at a Christian classical school this fall, attending school Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she will study at home, so I will still be heavily involved in her schooling. For those of you curious what they study in a classical school, I am listing her curriculum for the year.


Anna has also marked up my Veritas Press catalog with additional literature choices, so we will be doing a little supplementing. She'd also really like to listen to the Story of the World 4 CDs to go along with the history cards.

Blue House Academy will officially start on August 17, the same day Anna starts at her new school. In the past we have started in July and after every 3-4 weeks of school we would take a week off. I really love having those breaks, but I'm going to try a more traditional schedule this year. We'll see how it goes...

Be sure to visit LWM3B to see what others have planned for the school year. I've only read a handful so far, but have already found a few new things worth researching.

Happy Homeschooling!