Homeschool Weekly Wrap Up March 16th,2012

This week was a little off due to my sister and her 4 children visiting from out of town. We had great fun playing outdoors in the beautiful weather we have been having, played at the park, and going to the zoo.

Big Man and Princess where so excited to begin our first week of Tapestry of Grace and start their new grade level subjects that they begged me all weekend to "do school". We started our week on Sunday afternoon and finished up this Saturday. So, even with company for 3 days, we were able to stay on schedule and get everything done.

Princess- Even though I didn't care for the Language Arts portion of Sonlight when we did it last year, Big Man seemed to do well with my modified version of LA1, so I decided since we already owned it, I would do the same with Princess. She did really well with the "I Can Read" Book 1 stories since the words were familiar to her from the word ladder activities we did last year. She struggles most with the copywork and knowing how to keep everything in order when she rewrites it.
She also started ETC 1 and did awesome!

Big Man- This week was the beginning of some brand new curriculum for him. He thinks that FLL is way to easy and short right now, but I have thought it has been perfect. He struggled with the first narration we did in WWE, but once he got the hang of it, it was easy sailing from then on. His reading continues to improve every day. We choose books from THIS list that our library has. He reads one book per day to me or Dad and then documents it in his reading log. I have him write the name of the book and the author then he draws a picture of something he remembers from the book.

He started ETC Book 4. I had heard that it was best to skip this one and move on to book 5, but so far, no problems. I plan to just stick in there and see how it goes. We also began Beyond the Code with Book 1.

Princess- Started Horizons K this week. We also are doing the 2 week trial of DreamBox with plans to purchase the subscription through Homeschool Buyers Coop. Both kids have loved the program and I have been very impressed with the level of the content they are learning.

Big Man- Started Horizons Math 1, as well as Math Mammoth 1, and DreamBox. We made these alligators to reinforce the concept of greater than/less than and played a rousing game of war!

We learned about weather in science this week. We started a temperature log and discussed evaporation.

Our first week of TOG was great fun! We read several books about Ancient Egypt. They both loved making the cookie map of Egypt. I think the mountains tasted the best!

We had friends over on Friday that also started this week and made Egyptian Paddle Dolls.

Our read aloud this week is Little House in the Big Woods By Laura Ingalls Wilder. Snuggle time with Daddy is a must!

Curriculum

2012 School Year Curriculum

Together

Bible- Bible Study Guide For All Ages

History and Geography- Tapestry of Grace Year One

Science- NOEO Biology I

Art/Music- Harmony Fine Arts Year One, Piano Lessons

Big Man

First Grade

Language Arts- Spelling Workout, Explode the Code (books), First Language Lessons Level 1, Writing With Ease , reading tons of books by grade level from library.

Math- Horizon 1, supplemented with Math Mammoth, and DreamBox Learning.



Princess
Kindergarten

Language Arts- Early readers, sight word practice, cvc words, etc, and Explode the Code.

Math- Horizon K supplemented with DreamBox Learning.



Why We Homeschool

I know that I took a very long hiatus from blogging, but have finally decided to come back. Why? Well, I thought it might give me the kick in the pants I need to document our lives. Not only our day to day activities, but also our homeschooling journey. So, to kick off my return to Blogosphere, I thought I would start with the basic "Why We Homeschool".

We homeschool for one reason-Because that is what is right for our family. Notice I didn't say that it is right for every family, I said it is what is right for OUR family. When we were considering homeschooling our children, Hubs asked one thing- Can we provide a better education for our children at home than they can recieve elsewhere? The answer was a definite yes. We want to teach our children Biblical truths, we want to protect them from the outside world (to some extent) on our terms and no one else, and mainly because we want to provide a more rigorous education than what is provided at many of our local schools.