Homeschool Mother's Journal 2/27

In my life this week...

My oldest daughter turned 15 years-old.   My little girl is not so little anymore.   We had a wonderful time with many of her awesome friends. 

In our homeschool this week.
My youngest daughter that does really care to read lost herself in a book.
Places we're going and people we're seeing...
I drove my older children and some friends to Santa Barabra for a youth conference.   While they listened to some awesome speakers,  I visited the Santa Barabra mission with my two youngest.   It was a joy to spend some alone time with just them.   That doesn't happen very often.  

My favorite thing this week was...
Spending a quiet Sunday afternoon working my kids to help them set some goals.

What's working/not working for us...
Having hubby away so much for work.   Really not working for me.   

Homeschool questions/thoughts I have...
After eleven years of homeschooling, I am a few years away from "retiring" from teaching.   I just feel like I'm really getting good at this.    Thinking about not having anyone to teach makes me a bit sad.   It's time to think about the next stage of my life.  

A photo, video, link, or quote to share...

That's some big hair!   The winner at my daughter's party in the Bumpit hair contest. 

Weekly Report February 21-25, 2011

Be sure to check out what others did this week at

This week started out with a day off for President's Day. It was a day off of school for the kids, but lots of learning took place for me!    That day I got to spend most of the day alone painting--the kitchen.   I learned  I like the peace and quiet of a day to myself;  I also learned I HATE painting!    In addition I learned that painting a kitchen and it's cabinets is not a two or even three day job!

That being said---we didn't adhere to our normal schedule for the week because I was busy painting!    

E worked on his Aleks math.   E-R and I-E started on a section on angles which has been a review so far.    They also completed several reviews of past sections while their teacher painted.

We did complete several spelling lessons in Sequential Spelling.

E wrote an outline and rough draft for his setting essay for A Jury of Her Peers.

Everyone worked a lot in their Critical Thinking Books.

E practiced for MacBeth two evenings this week in addition to Friday morning.  

E-R and E  and I-E swam three times this week.

Everyone read alot.

And we focused a lot on art!    The first art lesson was a Visit to Gerrit Van Vranken.   Basically this lesson taught that computers can be used in art work.   Computers use the same rules human artist use to create 3-D and linear perspectives.

These aren't very dark--so sorry about that.

They are three dimensional landscapes.

 The next lesson  was all about light.   How we perceive light in art work and how light affects the way we depth was the focus.   The first project involved drawing a still life making sure to include the shadows.

Favorite part of school all week was the photo project.   The kids took photos of each other (and the cat) while learning about sidelighting, uplighting, and backlighting.

Can you say model ?

Can you say I have a stick and am super happy to have something to hit with it?!

Can you say nothing to do with our art project but super cute anyway?

E wishes to remain behind the scenes, but would like his public to know he took the pictures!

So our week didn't go as planned, and yet I feel it panned out to be a pretty super week.  

And I am one step closer to a new kitchen! 

Did your week go as planned? 

Why I Homeschool

I homeschool because my children are all individuals

 and

 I can give them an individualized education at home.

Weekly Review February 14-17, 2010

Our week flew by. We seem to be back in the swing of things----history, art, AND science all got down!

History: This week I had a brilliant idea for utilizing our Perspective: Timeline Game. We've played this game many times to review timeline dates. It's a simple game. Everyone takes turns putting their cards in the correct place on the timeline in relationship to other cards. At anytime your cards can be challenged. The point of the game is to end up with all your cards on the board and none in your hand. In our competitive family the challenge part of the game became more important than actually knowing where the cards went! Also, with all of the cards from the beginning of time to present day in use we had a hard time remember the dates of what we put down. So, to my son's horror I made up my own rules! gasp! We got out our Timeline Books and several history encyclopedias. I picked out only Medieval and Ancient History cards. Surrounded by our Timeline Books and several history encyclopedias, we started the game. Points were earned if the event was in your timeline book and you could tell us about the event. In addition, you didn't have to tell anyone else the date and got to place the event on the board. It was up to everyone else to look in their timeline book to see if you were right. If the event was not in their timeline book, they were out of luck: you looked it up and told us about it, and we all added it to our books. It made for a nice break from what we usually do and we all learned much more from this method of playing the game. In addition to our game,  we read about learning, scholarship, the black plaque, the Peasant Revolts, and the growing power of the common man during the end of the medieval time period. Everyone wrote a paragraph about St. Thomas Aquinas and a summary of medieval literature.

Lit: E still hasn't found his Windows to the World book, but I have found lots for him to do in my TM that doesn't require him to have his book! He re-annotated A Jury of Her Peers specifically looking for how the settings reveled the development of Minnie Wright. Next week he's going to write an essay on this topic. E-R and I-E are reading The Family Under the Bridge. They did comprehension questions, vocabulary, and we had a really good discussion about sharing feelings and responsibilities of parents. They also completed a paragraph describing how they would feel if they didn't have a home during Christmas time.

E-R's paragraph

I'm glad to have a home, but if I had no home at that time it would be hard. I would try to not see stuff I would want for Christmas. I would touch everything I saw. I would taste sadness. I would smell everything I couldn't taste. I would feel tears coming to my eyes. It would feel colder than it really was at night. It would be sad not to have a house during Christmas time . I'm glad to have a house to live in.

English: We're still working on pronouns. E started levels 6 and 7 of Sequential spelling. He's the only natural speller in our family; he's flying through each lesson without much difficulty at all.

E's spelling test

 E-R and I-E continue to work through level 3 of Sequential Spelling. Telephone Etiquette was a much needed lesson for our family. We did find some of the rules a bit outdated for today's world filled with caller id, call-waiting, and cell phones. E-R and I-E are working on a persuasive essay to get ready for the writing test in a week and half. 

Math: I-E and E-R started learning about percentages. E continues working through the Aleks Algebra program.

Science: We read about Daniel Benoulli and his family, are working on memorizing his principal, and completed a few demonstrations of his principal. I'll have a post just for science with pictures and more details later today.

Art: We did it! Amazing I know। This week we learned about three dimensional art during the Renaissance.

I-E's art assignment

Memory Work: We continued with our states. Almost everyone has the states and abbreviations down. Next we're going to memorize those capitals. We are working on memorizing Tennyson's poem, The Eagle, and finishing up the facts of the sensory system.

I feel really good about our week.   Off to enjoy the four day weekend.  Hope everyone has a great weekend.  

Be sure to figure out check out everyone's week at the Weekly Wrap-Up Hop.










 

Memory Work Plan

We've always included memory work in our school.  In past years, I've not been quite organized so it happened a bit haphazardly.  This year, I am excited to have a plan in place to help memory time happen.

Math facts
Poetry
Vocabulary
Anatomy
Scriptures

I found these nifty math games at http://www.currclick.com/.   We worked our way through the multiplying facts and the irregular verb tense game produced by the same company.   This was  a fun way to review and solidify those facts.
For poetry we are working through IEW's Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization,  I used this program with my older children.  We still remember fondly  Ooeey   Goooeeeeyyyyyyy!

Vocabulary is short and sweet with Vocabulary Cartoons.  Each day we look at the word and picture.  I read the example sentences.  We repeat the word definition.   Each day we add another word and review a few words from past days.   Sometime later in the day, I make a point to bring up our vocabulary word of the day to further review it.  Every ten days or so, we have a quiz.  

Anatomy is covered through Lyrical life science.   A CD is popped in.  We listen to the song (with varying degrees of ethusimasim) and work on filling out the accompanying worksheet.   One worksheet per week--which makes most units last three weeks.   My goal is for the kids to memorize the parts of the body not to go into depth about each of those body parts.  I have found that I do need to make charts each week with facts to memorize to go with the worksheets. I make these using information from the textbook.   When I don't do this--I notice that my kiddos simply fill in the sheets and move on. I try to keep the review from past days to three minutes and the new information to five minutes.  Also, with all the charts review is easy to do. 

E requested memorizing scripture mastery scriptures so he will have a head start at seminary next year.  We've started with the Doctrine and Covenants.

Lyrical Life Science Human Body  as well as Math Games will not take us through the entire year.   We may move on to another Lyrical Life Science Book.   And we will work on memorizing all the states of the United States using these lovely maps. (Which I have 100-not the nine shown (and which I have lugged across 13 states-twice))  We are also using these Wrap-Ups to memorize capitals and abbreviations.

Memory time is an enjoyable 30-45 minutes in our home.   Ultimately worth the extra resources and few hours of planning time required.