Science for March

For our science topic for March we will be studying all about how seeds grow.  We'll be doing lots of hands on things that you'll have to stick around to find out about!

Re-vamping our school

I mentioned in my last weekly post that I'm re-vamping my homeschool.  Well, in actuality, I'm completely re-doing my homeschool.

I realized that the "feel" that I wanted and originally intended for my homeschool isn't happening.  I get my inspiration for the "feel" of my homeschool from several different resources.  The 2 major influences for the atmosphere of my homeschool (not the actual materials used) are this blog (a Baker's Dozen) and Simply Charlotte Mason.  I also have a lot of influence from the Well-Trained Mind resources and forums.  Particularly, in the area of language arts.  So, I use some classical materials in a charlotte masonish way. 

What I did was that I came up with goals for my homeschool and then I broke them down into weekly goals.  I work much better with weekly goals.  With Sonlight I tend to treat it as a weekly schedule even though it's a daily schedule.  I'm just too much of a tweaker.

So, after I had my goals I came up with a Weekly Lesson Planner based upon several aspects of different ones that I had seen online.  It includes all of my goals for each week in more of a check-off and fill in kinda way.  I love it.  That way, I'm not completely committed to certain things on certain days other than my core subjects (and even that can easily be changed).  I put my Weekly Lesson Planner document in my sidebar down at the bottom, so if you want to see it and don't want to click on the link it's there, too.

Now, you may be interested in what my goals are for the rest of 2010.  Here are some examples These are what I call the gravy subjects, but just as important to my goals:

Poetry: Read 1-2 x per week.


Audiobooks: Get plenty from the library or look for a free resource and schedule them for bedtimes or nap time.

Composer Study- Go to library, AO or just online and listen to classical music at least 1x per week or just the CDs in the car

Art: either 1 lesson per week in Artistic Pursuits or get Christy to teach kids 1x per week or every other week

Artist Study: Go to AO and print off an artist print to display and look at 1x per week

Weekly: Watch an educational video off of youtube

Life Skills: Core charts must be completed before they can eat lunch. It’s up to them whether they want to do them right after they wake up or during their playtime or whatever. Also, have the kids cook more with me.

We need at least 1 day per week that they help me cook/bake. Maybe weekly bread making? Maybe they make lunch weekly?

I also made goals for myself which included things like a weekly planning and research session and certain lectures, conference speakers that I want to listen to on a regular basis.

My kids will also be keeping a science binder and I will be keeping a math journal filled with all of my ideas.

I took the Weekly Lesson Planner, and I printed them front and back so that I only had 1 sheet of paper for each week.  I'll let you all know how it goes!

If you haven't checked out what we are doing for math here it is.

Living Math!

I'm starting a new blog called Magnificent Math! about our journey to living math.  I know NOTHING about living math, so it will be more about my journey vs. my kids journey, but I guess they are 1 in the same in many ways.  Hopefully, it will give practical advice to those that are considering the same journey that I am embarking upon. 

School Week of 2/22-2/26/10

We took off of school a little bit more than usual this week.  I'm re-evaulating some of our school choices, and we are in the middle of moving, so it seemed the best thing to do.  We did manage 2 RightStart lessons and all of our Sonlight for the week.  That's about it, though!

School Week of 2/15-2/19/2010

This week we talked about rectangles in RightStart Math A.  We even made a craft with rectangles.  I LOVE RightStart!!!  It's perfect for my wiggly son. 

Math: Lessons 9-11 in RightStart A

Faith used her rectangles to make a train.  I love her imagination!

We also did a lot of this:

Sonlight P4/5: We finished up weeks 6-7

LA: The kids are really grasping the clock face and the house diagram.

Artistic Pursuits: Lesson 2

DEL: We completed some DEL, but we aren't staying up with the P4/5 schedule for it.  I'm more than ok with that.  It's not my favorite.  : )  I'm also not wanting to rush it so that we can use it during our breaks, too.

School Week 2/7-2/13/2010

We had to spend a lot of time this week playing "catch-up" in school, because we missed 2 weeks of school due to us being in Tanzania. So, for the next 2 weeks we will be doing 3 RightStart lessons per week instead of our usual 2 lessons per week. In the picture above we are learning about tally marks. The kids love using their dry-erase boards, so that was probably their favorite part of the week. We also started working harder on Language Arts preparing for when we start writing our phonograms soon.

In these 2 photos the kids are sorting their tally and finger cards with RS Math A. We spent 2 days doing this just to make sure that they really understood what I was asking of them.

It was a rougher week in school with my son, because his hyperness is out of control since we got back from Tanzania. Hopefully, it will be better next week. We also did art for the first time this week using Artistic Pursuits.

We were supposed to start science this week, but I think that might wait until next week or even until next month. : ) Hope you all had a fabulous week!