After this week I’m switching to a new format for these updates — I never want to sit down and write a post because it takes so long to 1) recall what we even did 2) find the pictures 3) write something up that makes sense. Also I have been told more than once that it’s bad for web crawlers not to have a focus to my posts. I’m not so much about the online hustle (casting no shade), as much as I’m just trying to document our days. But there’s gotta be a way to type these things up faster than my baby can recharge during naptime. Right? Suggestions?
So Vol 20 is the last full week wrap up in hopes that posts become more succinct, focused and frequent! Fingers (and toes) crossed. Years into blogging and I still have no idea what I’m doing. Kinda like motherhood.
First of all — my oldest turned 11! Can you believe it? We celebrated with bowling and arcade games and of course unicorn cake.
Language
We have been working on handwriting constantly. Much cursive practice. The girls have been writing in their daily work log finally. Josie’s struggling with this in general, but I’m not ready to give up yet. I like reading what the girls decide to record.
Otherwise we are really working on correct formation. Josie is working her little backside off.
We’ve worked heavily on homonyms, antonyms, synonyms and more parts of speech work. Some review, some new work.
Oh and contractions and compound words too! Cards from Maitri Learning.
The girls continue to work on Waseca Reading program. They’ve been reading independently everyday as well as doing 30 mins of Lexia Learning Core 5 without fail.
At night we’ve been finishing up the second Harry Potter book. We will go back and reread book 1 next month (for the 3rd time actually), but with the Brave Writer curriculum alongside.
Much literacy!
Reading aloud…
Math
I’m putting a big order to Alison’s together to finally get the elementary materials I’ve needed. We use a scholarship for our materials, and it was funded late(ish) this year, so our new math work got a late(ish) start too. But we continue practicing multiplication and division, skip counting and geometry work.
Farm School
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2E8jAABEnK/
We started writing in our botany journals all of our garden observations. I need to just make them general “farm schooling” journals I guess. So much to learn and write about just in our backyard. The chickens haven’t laid a single egg yet, and they are overdue! It’s been so dang hot here — record breaking heat for this time of year. I’ve just got in an order of Egyptian Walking Onions, but I will wait to plant them a bit. I might try sticking them in the fridge to ____ them. (Please insert the fancy word for making the plants think it’s winter. Forget what that is called hahah #mombrain).
Otherwise our Amish Paste tomatoes we planted from seed are taller than Mary! The girls removed cutworms. We have about a month before we get tomatoes, but should be plenty of time before our first frost date. Same with beans.
Sorry (not sorry) bug.
Sweet potatoes are close to harvest time. Hoping we get a good yield!
We hand-pollinated a pumpkin last week. That was a first! Otherwise the vines are struggling a bit. Yikes. Learning a lot though through the ups and downs of backyard gardening.
Religion
Learning about the seven sorrows of Mary. One of my favorite devotions.
Music
We’ve been practicing almost every day — last week I logged 5 days with the girls. Michael only 3 sigh. I’m afraid I’m not instructing them correctly and just undoing all the good work of our violin teacher.
Facepalm.
I took classical guitar for four years in highschool (plus 4 years of chorus — and a year of steel drum ha), but I’m still awful at reading music (my brain processes info in pictures, so I just see a note and know where to put my fingers on a guitar fretboard. It doesn’t translate whatsoever). I could bore you with more details on how very weird my mind is but I’m sure no one cares. 😃
Josie super struggles with sequencing; she’s been working on a puzzle her teacher made. It’s not clicking despite spending like 2 hours total on it throughout the last week.
Super facepalm.
It’s frustrating.
It’s ok.
We persist.
Geography
We just got in an amazing order of Waseca Biomes geography readers. Woot. More on that to come. We also have North America biome cards literally ALL OVER the classroom getting sorted right now.
Bambini
The babe — I need to actually get a structure and rhythm going for him. Prioritize his activities. Mostly he just gets too much attention and love and the majority of my energy!!! He’s somewhere in between two naps, and he’s cutting more teeth, so it’s mainly chaos around here.
Science
I’ve still not formally given the Great Lessons this year. Soon. But we’ve just been reading about volcanoes for fun in preparation. Volcano Discovery Kit activity for fun too. Contemplating doing a giant paper mache volcano for the first great lesson.
That’s that in a nutshell. See you next week for updates in a new format. 👋
Wow, I absolutely love all of your color fun and hands-on supplies. I especially love the cursive board. Definitely, a lot of learning going on at your house 😄
So many fun ways to learn! The backyard garden is so great for nature studies.
Those readers are so beautiful! And I love your daughter’s unicorn cake!
Your homeschool looks amazing! Where are those geography boxes from?
So much learning! I love the different methods you are using to work on cursive and those beads for the different mathematics shapes are fantastic! My daughter would love them.
So much awesomeness! I love the cursive board.