Homeschool Mother's Journal: Easter Week Edition

In our homeschool... We did our best to get 'caught up' again in History, and our studies included the Civil Rights movement, the War in Vietnam, the Kennedy and Johnson families in the White House, the Interstate Highway system, and the Great Salt Lake in Utah. I certainly learned a lot about the Interstate highways! I got a good start on printing out materials for a lapbook project from Homeschool in the Woods titled The 20th Century in America. We have one more lesson to finish up our current unit in America the Beautiful, and then we'll take a break to work on the lapbook for awhile.

I am reading Treasure Island aloud to Landon and Kennady, and we are using a Progeny Press study guide to go along with it. They had researched a little on the types of ships and boats mentioned in the book, and Kennady made this quick drawing of one of them.

We didn't do any work on our Classical Astronomy course, but did spend a couple of days exploring at SuperCharged Science. We learned that we're seeing the Second Law of Thermodynamics in action whenever we let our hot drinks cool off sitting on the table. I don't let my coffee get cold very often, but for the sake of science this mug of hot chocolate cooled off a bit, and then I decided it would be more efficient to allow the heat energy to transfer to my hands. ;-)

I think everyone got some Math and some Language Arts done this week as well, so in addition to co-op class, it was a full week, despite a couple of days with slow starts and time spent away from home during the day. I realized that I'm falling behind on grading again, but I don't think it should take long to catch up. It had better not, because I'm very busy next week and I think that's when third quarter grades are due!

Our co-op class this week learned about supply and demand in a free market system, and all sorts of related things about markets and economics using major league baseball as our focus. One of our activities in class involved having the students set prices for some licensed products and then decide where the best deals were, where there would be shortages or surplus product, and came up with ideas on how to create incentives for consumers.

 

 

In other news... At long last, Spencer had a session scheduled with a driving instructor, and that was on Monday - when we woke up to a couple inches of snow! Thankfully, the roads weren't slippery, only wet, so it turned out to be a good session. Even though it cost me about half a day of teaching with the other kids.

On Tuesday, I spent more time running here, there, and everywhere than I did teaching or doing anything else at home. Kennady had her girls Bible study in the afternoon, so I delivered her to her friend's house for that, and also dropped Landon off there with his friend, which saved me making another trip later on to Civil Air Patrol. My dear friend (who is the mother of Kennady's and Landon's friends - I absolutely love how that worked out!) did the honors of taking the boys to CAP this week. After dropping them off, Spencer and I went into town to buy him a suit. One step closer to graduation and becoming a real adult! It was rather odd having just the two oldest boys at home for dinner that evening, and not the two younger kids. After dinner, DH and I slipped over to the church so we could practice with the other worship team - I am singing a special on Sunday and they are playing for me, and they borrowed DH to play bass. After practicing my piece, I continued into town for what was left of my choir practice, and then brought the boys home after CAP as usual. Whew!

The rest of the week went pretty much as usual, except on Friday evening we attended Good Friday service at church.

Helpful homeschooling tips/advice to share... There are lesson plans for all ages in several subject areas available on the Curriculum page of the Baseball Hall of Fame website. The lesson plan I used for the co-op class came from the website. It's written for classrooms, but I found the Economics lessons were pretty easy to adapt for my class of a half dozen students, and almost everything could have been adapted for just a couple of students at home too.

What's working/not working for us... reading Treasure Island. Can you believe Landon asked to do this? Wants to?! I'm enjoying reading it aloud, although doing the pirate voices and accents might not be good for my voice! Landon even downloaded this book and a couple others on his iPod. We might make a reader of him yet!

Thoughts/questions I have... why did I think we would have time to do Latin this school year? That is the one subject that consistently gets shoved to the backburner. Oh well, a little here and there is better than none at all, in my opinion, and it is fun.

One of my favorite things this week... although it should be springtime already, I really did love the snow we had on Monday. It was beautiful!

A photo/video/quote or link to share... These are the Hot Cross buns I'm making this year - Chocolate Chip Hot Cross Buns!

                                                                                        Source: penniesonaplatter.com via Kym on Pinterest

On the bookshelf...

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• The Spirit Well by Stephen R Lawhead
• The Map Across Time by C.S. Lakin
• Ireland's Saint - The Essential Biography of St Patrick by J.B. Bury
• Patrick - Son of Ireland by Stephen R Lawhead

A parting shot... Isn't this pretty? It's a house we drive by between our place and DH's work.

This post is linked up at iHomeschoolNetwork - see what other homeschoolers are looking forward to this week!

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