Homeschool Update

We have just finished our third week of school this year and we are really enjoying our new curriculum. I thought I should start keeping a digital record of all that we are learning and doing.
We'll just see if I can keep up with the updates or if my next blog doesn't come until November :-)

We our using a new curriculum this year from Heart of Dakota Publishers. It is a Christ centered, history based curriculum. It is very organized which I love because it is less work for me.
Since Bounce is a little young age wise for this book, we are taking it half-speed, so we'll take 2 years to complete the lessons rather than one.
Despite working at half-speed, our days are full since we're also adding in Apologia science and Calico Spanish. The science curriculum is creation based and we study one day of creation for an entire year. This year our focus is astronomy. I am so grateful that we are able to bring everything back to God. For example, we were learning how God uses the stars as signs (ex. star of Bethlehem) and then we looked at the whirlpool galaxy online.


Ketchup was so excited about the cross that God put in the heavens that she wanted to print out a picture of it to show her friends.
Spanish has also been a lot of fun. Calico Spanish is a brand new immersion based Spanish curriculum. It incorporates a lot of music which the kids love. They walk around the house singing the songs. Daddy is really impressed with what they have already learned in these few weeks. I am glad that when I say "Nino y nina escuchenme. Ahora es la hora de espanol (Kids, listen. It's Spanish time)," they squeal with delight.

I also like this Spanish because it has a script for me to read so that I am saying everything in Spanish and as a result my Spanish has improved as well. Above is our bulletin board that we use; everything came ready to just put up and use - Mommy/Teacher likes!!

We are studying the colonial time period and also learned about Christopher Columbus. The kids are enjoying the texts so much that they are disappointed when I stop reading. Below are their portraits of Christopher Columbus (with 2 objects representing his importance in history: a ship and the Atlantic Ocean) and their blue water paintings with fish that we completed in Spanish class following my instructions completely in spanish.

Another of our favorite activities we have done was something we called "geography jump." We taped the outline of the earth and it's continents on the floor and jumped from continent to continent. We used it several times to mark Columbus' journeys and then the kids also wanted to put their stuffed animals in the continents in which they live.

Finally, we were able to join our homeschool group for a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art. One of the paintings we saw was by Pissaro and used what I believe the guide called "pointallism" which is the technique of using small dots of color instead of strokes of paint. The day after our field trip, the kids' assignment was to paint a picture based on the poem we had been studying. The poem was "The Storm" by Sara Colerdige and talks about a storm with its rain, lightning and thunder (I'm reciting it in my mind as I'm typing, but I'll spare you the recitation) and then the sun starts to peek out. Here are their paintings: Bounce focused on the lightning, and I was especially impressed with Ketchup's use of pointallism with no prompting from mom.


Note that the kids are still in their pajamas which is how we often are dressed as we learn. It seems as if every day there is one reminder of why I am so glad that we are blessed with the freedom and opportunity to homeschool from pajamas and sleeping in to being able to truly see how God has created all and holds everything together. Looking forward to the rest of a fun year!