We took the official day of "back to school" around here to pick up subs at Subway and eat at the park. It was a beautiful day, as the first day of school often is. We like to enjoy the nice weather as long as it lasts. After getting our subs we walked across the street to a small lakefront park. The kids also played at the playground at the family center. Then we went to the library to check out some books and movies. They were excited that Little House on the Prairie, season 5, was in. We have fun watching those together in the evenings. Because we spent the summer doing some school --Math facts, studying Lewis and Clark, learning recorder, journal writing, and Explode the Code (after taking a month off from everything other than reading) I don't feel a big hurry to spend a beautiful day indoors.
As far as school this year, I am really excited because it seems it will be a much easier year than last year -- Kenzie is now reading at a strong 2/3rd grade level and can write in her journal and pretty much do a lot of what I have Josh doing in Social Studies and Science. I am also happy that we are doing devotional time together during breakfast-- working through the Keys for Kids devotional that our church gives out.
This year we will be studying Mammals through a Christian curriculum called Apologia, the kids are really enjoying the notebook assignments and experiments already. Currently we are learning about canines. They are creating a newsletter with stories and drawings, I will try to get that online when they get it finished.
For history, last year we finished up our first 2 years (we will cover this again in a few years, it is a four year cycle) of World History. We also studied World Geography and learned about many of the people groups around the world. This year we are studying Early American history, beginning with the Native American people (pre-European arrival) and covering everything until the Civil War. We are also learning about each of our 50 states and memorizing their capitals. We have some cool music for this so the kids already know many of them. We have a map up in the kitchen of the USA, and a 50 states coloring book which the kids are doing one page at a time (it covers things like state flags, flowers, major landmarks,birds, capitals and mottos). We started with Washington, Oregon and now we are studying Alaska this week.
Every year we seem to do some things kind of different and some things the same. This seems to work for all of us.
As far as Language Arts, Kenzie is continuing to do Reason for Handwriting -- she is hoping to start cursive after Christmas. Josh is still doing a Horizon curriculum for cursive that he started in the Spring last year. We started "Draw, Write, Now" this year and the kids are both doing it together once a week. Their drawings have been amazing (the book we have is about Native Americans), we always display them the day they are completed, for Dad to see and comment on when he comes home. They each have weekly spelling worksheets to do and we do creative writing several times a week. I found a neat book of journal prompts which have given us lots of interesting topics such as: "Think about what life would be like if you were a popcorn kernel..." We are also learning some basic grammar stuff since I haven't taught them that in the past.
Each year we try to do one extra-curricular type thing during the day (last year we did art and PE). This year we are participating in a Bible study and Kenzie is going to start piano through a homeschooling high schooler who teaches lessons. She is very excited to start -- it is something she has been asking about for over a year. Josh had wanted to start an instrument this Fall, but after spending some time learning recorder he decided he didn't like it at all. I am hoping he will change his mind and want to play piano, too. He is interested in singing on stage during worship time at church-- God has blessed him with a very good voice, so this might work out for him. Practices for worship team are during football pratice time, so we'll have to wait for that to end to try singing.
I am sure I will blog more about our day during the near future, but I wanted to share our plans and what we will be working on this year. Please keep Kaleb and I in your prayers as we try to do our best to teach our children all of the above mentioned things, while also learning about following Jesus and all of the character traits that are necessary for a productive and meaningful life.
