Homeschool Mother's Journal: Celebration Edition {Blog Every Day In May}

In our homeschool... The big news is - we finished our American History course! The last few lessons in America the Beautiful brought us up to date on the digital age, gave us an overview of American popular music, and taught us about Music City and the Ryman Auditorium. We had a great time with these lessons. The very last lesson in the book was about Fourth of July celebrations, so we are planning to have our own Independence Day style Family Night this evening to celebrate finishing the course! Since there were two lessons that focused on American music, I'm also working on putting together YouTube playlists so the kids can see and hear some of those pieces and artists that they're not familiar with.





We also finished science - or at least the textbook portion. There are still field journal activities that aren't finished, as they involve observing the moon or stars over a period of time. We should have started all of those things earlier.

And all three are working on final papers or projects for English. But maths continue to be the area in which we're moving slowly. Spencer is very nearly finished Consumer Math, and since it's just review at the end I'm not worried about that. Landon won't be finishing Algebra I until the next school year starts. We had hoped he could do the whole course this year, but we're not on schedule for that unless he really hustles. On the plus side, I guess we could plan on him finishing in first semester next year. Kennady plods along in math. It's not her favorite subject by any means, and often she just avoids doing it altogether. We had originally planned to do two Life of Fred books this year, but are completing just one because we've added other supplemental material from Math Mammoth and Lone Star's Target the Question to give her some variety and extra practice.

I'll be headed to CHAP on the weekend to (hopefully) learn a few things in the workshops and seminars, and (maybe) buy a few things to round out our course of study for next year. I think I have a working plan for next year, and I'm sure that there will be review materials that come our way through the Schoolhouse Review Crew that will more than fill in any gaps!

In other news... we kinda sorta skipped school on Tuesday to go to our homeschool group's Field Day. Unfortunately, the weather was less than ideal. It was chilly and either threatened rain or was drizzling throughout the morning, and the rain started in earnest just before lunchtime. Needless to say, we opted not to have our picnic lunch at the park and Field Day wrapped up early. Here are the top four finishers in our age group for a distance throw event. Kennady threw the football almost as far as these three young men!

Tuesday evening, CAP had their annual Open House, and since my choir practice was on a different night this week, I was able to go. At last! It was pretty cool, and Landon came very close to admitting to me that he enjoyed CAP and planned to continue with it through high school. The hubster and I have overheard him tell others that he likes CAP and even refer to what he does there as 'fun' but Landon doesn't want to let on to his parents!

Our squadron's award-winning Color Guard

Wednesday evening was the end of season picnics for children's and youth ministries at church. Once again, the weather was not great at all, but we had fun anyway.

And finally, on Thursday evening, we went to a church dinner to celebrate our graduates, with Spencer as our family's guest of honor.

Helpful homeschooling tips/advice to share... Much as we enjoyed our classical astronomy course, Signs and Seasons, this year, I do wish I'd planned it differently. Since many of the field activities are observations of the sun, moon, and stars over periods of weeks or months, I realized too late that we would have been smarter to do the text portion of the study all in the first semester and got working on some of the observations much earlier. So that's my tip - if you're doing Signs and Seasons, plan to start on the field journal early in the school year.

One of my favorite things this week... celebrating achievements in sports and school, with my own kids and with friends.

A photo/video/quote or link to share... These are some of the sweetest and most unique photographs - Real Life Mowgli: Girl Who Grew Up in the African Wildlife.

On the bookshelf...

• The Map Across Time by C.S. Lakin
• Patrick: Son of Ireland by Stephen R Lawhead
• The Spirit Well by Stephen R Lawhead
• Sticky Faith by Dr Kara E Powell and Chap Clark Ph.D.
• Pride and Prescience by Carrie Bebris

A parting shot...

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

I'm also linked at Hammock Tracks - Homeschool Review

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