Friday- the view from here

This morning was kind of full, Meg had a dentist appointment and then we went to lunch at the home of some old, dear friends.  (we had a sweet time, this very large family has daughters who used to babysit for us) After lunch, we went home and sat around the table to dive into our school work.  (Except Josie, who has been sick. She worked on her Biola Star homework, but I let her off the hook for other work)

Amie and Demi did Math - because every day is Math day :D  then handwriting and then worked in their spelling notebooks- writing half of their list words in complete sentences, and then a page in the spelling workbook.  We did a grammar worksheet and then I read aloud two chapters from Don Quixote.  (I have renewed it the maximum times from the library and was hoping to finish it, but not gonna happen...sigh)  We discussed the story, I pointed out some literary facts about this classic.  After, I read aloud from A History of US Vol. 2, about Jamestown and John Smith.  Demi then used the book to complete a worksheet I made from the reading. -Amie did the worksheet a few days ago, I don't know why Demi didn't do it... ( I am forever a worksheet girl, I have realized it is just quicker to make my own...)

Meg worked on her Biola Star homework (British Lit, Chemistry and Economics) and then worked a bit on her week's work list I made up for her.  She also practiced her violin.

Sky came home from work and did some woodworking in the garage, Amie and Demi worked on their creative writing stories, Josie read and slept.  Meg studied.  I parked myself in front of the fireplace and wasted time on the internet.  We are having a cold-spell here in So. Ca, it was in the 50's today, which I cannot handle. (I know, I am a wimp)  I whined to Sky about how cold I was and then sat in front of the fireplace till it was time to make dinner. (Demi-Sky did not have lacrosse practice today due to rain)

On the menu for dinner?  Left-overs. Score!

After dinner, I made up a batch of my grown-up oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  {they are grown-up cookies because they have more oats, less sugar and double the cinnamon and nutmeg}  Here is my recipe:  Grownup Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

We then watched Groundhog day with the kids - we rented it.  This was the first time the kids have watched it.

The kids went to bed and now I am sitting in front of the fire again, playing on the computer.  Not a bad day in homeschool land...

Snapshot, a day of homeschooling

Our homeschool day today, Friday looked like this...

8:00 Teddy arrives, I am getting ready for the day, getting the littles breakfast, Meg takes the dog for a walk.

8:30 leave to take Meg to horse riding lesson, the littles have instructions to finish the 30 min. video they are watching and then to do something else, they play with playmobil

I return and school begins with the 4 youngest.

Character Study with the 3 littles, then they move on to Math-today they are doing Math skills work for their grades using Flashkids workbooks, I am giving them a Math-U-See holiday today. Then we do cursive handwriting, Language Arts workbook -using adjectives to make sentences more interesting, and phonics (explode the code).

Josie does Math-U-See on her own, today she has a test. Then she does a page in her Language Arts workbook- using prepositional phrases to make writing more interesting, and then she works with Literature using Mosdos Press. I work with her a bit on the assignment, explain terms a bit.

I leave to pick up Meg at her riding lesson, the littles do a bit of quiet reading and then go back to playmobil...Josie tackles her History reading assignments from her Sonlight core 6 program.

I get back with Meg, she tackles her Math-U-See work, her grammar work and then her independent History reading. I set the 3 littles down again with drawings they did yesterday from our history reading, and have them write a paragraph beneath the drawing describing what the picture is about-from the read aloud History book.

I make lunch, set up the table in the family room so the 4 youngest can eat lunch and watch an Eyewitnnes DVD on Butterflies and Moths that I got at the library. This will be the introduction for Science work we will be doing on Monday.

We are done for the day at lunch. The 2 older girls will still have some history reading and comprehension questions/vocabulary later in the day, Josie still has to do some spelling, but the 3 littles are done.

After lunch, I have promised to take the kids to Barnes & Nobles for hot chocolate and reading fun.

this is a snapshot of our day today, a bit of a light day, but not totally unusual.

Thanks for visiting!

doings

We are making our slow way through Noeo Physics II curriculum. My honest assessment; the jury is still out. We enjoyed week 1, it had a good mix of reading from two different living-type science books and experiments. Week 2 was taken from the experiment book only-and seemed un-inspiring and not supported through other reading. We decided to skip week 2 and move into week 3, which again seemed to have a nice mix of reading and experiments. You can see from the photo above, that the subject was heat energy.

This week I have been working with the 3 youngest students on narrative writing. I do admit that my big shortcoming as a homeschool-mom is not demanding a lot of writing output from my younger kids. The above photo shows the kind of writing I usually ask for at the younger ages. Because 2 of them are boys, and the act of using a pencil seems to be particularly tiresome for them...I admit I let them off pretty easy. I rely much on verbal questions and answers, and on verbal narration (the child telling back the story or lesson in their own words, or even borrowing some of the words of the author).

For our new charter school program, I need to turn in a writing sample for each of the kids. Amie's was easy, as a first grader- she needs to draw a picture and write one or two sentences. The two boys however, need to turn in one to three paragraphs of a narrative work, with pre-writing. I have to say, it was hard work getting one complete paragraph from them. I was very pleased with the product they turned out..but I don't know if it will satisfy the assignment.
Meg and Josie write almost everyday for fun, they are working on novels..their assignment was a no -brainer, my only difficulty was in reinging in the length...

Fun links;

There is a book give-away over at Faith and Family blog. Go on over to enter the drawing.

Here is a *Fun memory game to memorize yoga poses

Life after blogs: What's next..

Flash kids Writing Skills workbooks - we are using these to boost writing skills

Snapshot -a day in the life of a homeschool family

Our days as a homeschool family are rarely 'typical'. Many days have a familiar pattern, but our days ebb and flow and change.

I thought I would give you a "snapshot" of what our day on Tuesday was like.

We begin our school-work at 9 each day- bright shiny faces at the table already dressed/brushed/washed and breakfasted. They also do some goofing-off while I am showering/dressing and breakfasting... (and shh..it's 10 on some really bad days). On a good day we start with "circle time" which is cozy on the coach and includes some, or all- of Bible reading, Character story, history vocab words and Latin/Greek root words..(never all listed here, but a few). On a not-so-good day, we skip circle time and start at the table.

This Tuesday we headed straight to the table, where we hunker down and do the meat and potatoes of our home-school day. We tackled Math for all 5 kids, cursive handwriting for the youngest 4, a numbers writing page for the youngest 3 and the older 2 girls did their Grammar and started the dreaded daily Math review page for the day. We then took a 15 minute snack/play break. The 3 littles headed out to the treehouse. The 2 older students kept working and I helped them with the Math.

I called the younger kids inside when break-time was over and we
worked on our Latin/Greek word for the week- reviewing it, the definition and derivatives and then I asked them about last week's word.
I had to stop here and make lunches and then leave to take Meg to violin lesson.

We came back and I grabbed Teddy and sent him to the computer for Phonics, letting the other 2 continue playing.

I directed Meg (13) and Josie (11) to the family room where I started the dvd for Latin for Children primer A- which we watched together.

After we were through viewing it, re-playing the chants several times, and discussing it...the girls went to the table and worked from the workbook for the first chapter. They were then free to do whatever they liked, which usually is free-reading-but they also have assignments for history reading they can work on.

The kids played, I switched Teddy at the computer for Amie and then Demi for Phonics. Then we jumped into the van and headed for the library. I played the lesson for Songschool Latin in the van, over and over. (It's very cute and very catchy)

*sidenote- what could be cuter than your 6 year old singing Latin with a lisp? Suddenly, there are "w's" everywhere...at least the sound of-even if the letter is nowhere to be found...

We came home, the 3 littles worked on the workbook page for Latin, and then they continued with their play. It's a continuing play that has overtaken my front living room for several weeks now...and consists of hundreds of playmobil pieces like this here...

Sky was now home, and he corralled the kids at the table for a science experiment. This was our second experiment from Noeo Science. The first experiment from last week did not work out very well. This week's did not work out either. Sky and the kids had fun, though.

The kids then went outside to play with neighbor kids, riding scooters and bikes.

So, that is a snapshot of a day in our homeschool.

Thanks for visiting.