This was our first week back and our first week with the new schedule. We got EVERYTHING done this week (well, minus one day of history which we'll make up for this afternoon) for the very first time. I'm so excited about our new schedule and the time that we have for a few "extras". We start with Bible each moring, prayer, Bible verses, Books of the Bible, and the treasured "Fruit of the Spirit" song that even my 2 year old knows. The kids then illustrate their Bible story and my 5 year old son started this as well. I love seeing his little drawings and it's so neat to see the different things that each child gets through the stories. God is good!
We then move to handwriting, language arts, and spelling. We're loving our handwriting book, Handwriting Without Tears. Only Dd7 is doing this as Ds5 is doing Explode the Code. Yesterday Dd7 learned to write a formal letter through this book. It's great. For spelling we started something new this term. We will be using Spelling Wisdom from the Simply Charlotte Mason website/curriculum. This has been a favorite find of mine as it teaches spelling using phrases from classical books, Bible verses, famous quotes, etc. We're learning two things at once. LA is also new this term. I have never really done LA because I couldn't find a curriculum that I was happy with. English For the Thoughtful Child seems to be exactly what I was looking for so I'll let you know how that goes.
Math is all the same. Horizons k for Ds5 and Saxon 3 for Dd7. They're doing great with these and really excelling. I guess they take after their daddy!
After a break we come back together and do science and history together. I'm still trying to figure out the timing of these lessons but for now we're doing science one week (every day) and history one week (every day). It was too confusing for ME to try to do one on Monday and Wed. and the other on Tues and Thurs. This week was history and we learned about Ancient China and the Shang dynasty. I requested some books from the library that were listed in the "extra resources" section of SOTW and they really helped bring the history alive. That's what CM style of education and living books are all about.
There are other things that I'll add in as soon as we get used to this schedule. Mainly, picture study and music study. But those only take a few minutes a week so I'm not worried about fitting that in. When the weather is better we'll be back to our nature studies as well. But living in MS we're not used to having weather in the single digits...brrrrr....it's cold!!!
Jill
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I keep losing my comment for some reason...I may have already posted this.
ReplyDeleteIt's great to read that your new schedule is going well - always a point of much prayer here. Your time with the Bible w/ the kids sounds absolutely lovely.
You got to go to an SCM conference - wow! We switched to SCM for Geography/Bible/History this year and couldn't be happier. It is a much better fit for us and we'll pretty much transfer from AO to SCM next year (I'd already had most of our books for this year though). I am glad to hear Spelling Wisdom is as good as it looks.
Oh, and I know what you mean about nature study in below freezing temps! When it's that cold the boys look at the frost patterns on the windows or we listen to a few Burgess tales from Librivox :)
Thanks Richele, are you doing Genesis through Deuteronomy/Ancient Egypt from SCM? I picked it up at the conference and we're doing it at night as family bible study. It's fabulous. We are loving it. I, too will probably be going with a more SCM approach next year as opposed to AO. It's just better for us. Thanks for commenting!
ReplyDeleteHow funny. We too are finding ourselves moving more to SCM. I just found out about a SCM conference near me in March. I am definitely going, looking forward to it. I am glad to hear you are enjoying Genesis through Deuternomy/Ancient Egypt. We are thinking about doing this after we complete our term 3, by then we will have completed our year one readings of Creation/Ancient Eygpt/Ancient Israel. We have 3 months before we start year 2 then and I feel this will reinforce our year one. Isn't home schooling amazing? Many blessings.
ReplyDelete