Homeschool Mother's Journal: Settling In Edition

In our homeschool... it felt a little more like school as usual this week, although we still have a couple things to add to the mix. We were able to get started on time, or close to on time, almost every day; and I think our routine will work out pretty well. Today I printed out our Google calendar for next week and gave copies to Landon and Kennady. The daily schedule reflected on that calendar will be mostly standard so I expect them to know what they should be working on.

  

Social Studies - We focused on the country of Brazil, reading about it together and the kids did short research projects about Itaipu Dam. Our Eating the Americas project continued with a menu inspired by Brazil on Friday evening. We also took some time to learn about the Amazon rain forest, and I assigned a research project about the rain forest to Landon. Kennady was given assignments from Geography Through Art, and spent some time drawing animals and birds from the rain forest. On Thursday, we also began an overview of the history of South America by answering the study questions in Around the World in 180 Days.

English - Kennady carried on with Lightning Lit. She finished most of the assignments for Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and is ready to move on to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Math - Landon is doing very well as he continues with VideoText Interactive. I am loving it too! Kennady had good days and bad days with her math this week. She is working on fractions, and while she is doing well overall, there were lots of times when she mixed up operations or just got confused.

Music/Art - Kennady's first choir practice was this week, and she told me it was much better than she had worried it would be. LOL She is doing very well with guitar and piano lessons too. She did some drawing this week as well, both from ARTistic Pursuits, and from Geography Through Art.

  

Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share... I am going back to a strategy I tried last year with Spencer that worked. I will be having Landon and Kennady log their study time in their own student planner books (which I purchased at clearance prices today!) and they will be required to put in a certain number of hours on educational activity each school day. Yes, we have a schedule and we work together on a couple of subjects, so I dictate how much time we spend in those "classes". But they are on their own for other subjects, and I want them to be able to decide how often and for how long at a time they want to work on art or a research paper, for example. As long as they put in the total number of hours required on a school day and get assignments done by the due date, they should be able to manage their own time.

In other news... Landon started wearing an honor cord for CAP this week because he is an honor roll student. He wouldn't pose for a picture (not surprised by that at all) so I settled for this:

Spencer started work this week and it went really well. We certainly appreciated that he was scheduled for basically the same shifts as Harrison both days he worked. It won't be that easy every time, obviously, but it sure helped this week because...

we had vehicles in the shop three days this week! Ack! Okay, two vehicles just had oil changes, so no biggie. But then the problem with the starter on the van cropped up again and we decided to have it fixed immediately.

One of my favorite things this week... clear, cool nights with brilliant stars and a soundtrack of crickets chirping. That's why I love living in the country.

Things I'm working on... preparing for our Small Group Fair at church on Sunday, which means getting promotional stuff ready for several of the outreach projects, including the food ministry. Things are coming along for the high school help workshop I'm planning. And I'm desperately trying to find a rhythm for blogging. I am having a hard time keeping up with the bloggy "extras" like Facebook. LOL

My posts this week included:

• Scripture and a Snapshot - September 1, 2013
• First Day - September 2013
• Eating the Americas - More of South America
• Virtual Refrigerator: Art Lessons in a New School Year
• X is for eXtra Credit {A Glider Flight Photojournal}
• No More Money for Curriculum {Blog Cruise}

A link to share... I found this page at Visual News showing some national flags created with foods that are associated with the country. It included the flag of Brazil, which we were studying this week. The flag is made of limes, pineapple, and passionfruit on a banana leaf.

On the bookshelf...

• The Stones Cry Out by Randall Price
• A Spear of Summer Grass by Deanna Raybourn
• A Time for Silence by Philippa Carr
• Love's First Light by Jamie Carey
• Liberty Hill by Sonja Heisinger

And I finished yet another book - Sticky Faith - and haven't blogged about it yet. There's getting to be quite a backlog. See what I mean about having trouble keeping up with the bloggy "extras"? This is one of them.

A parting shot... Kennady and Pepper try out her new basket chair.

This post is linked at SoYouCallYourselfaHomeschooler.com and at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers - see how other homeschoolers were settling into their new schedules this week.

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