The First Six Weeks

With the first six weeks of school behind us, we are all looking forward to a little breather. School has really been our main focus at home over the past one and a half months, and the kids have been doing great! This is really the first year that I've implemented six weeks on, one week off schedule, and I think we are going to like it! It's amazing how at four weeks, everyone is starting to drag a little. A break helps keep everyone going a bit longer.

So a summary on the first six weeks:

Everyone is well established in their math curriculums.

Everyone is doing their own science programs. This is a new thing for us in our homeschool. I actually really like how this is working because it is one less thing to accomplish in our "together" school work. Whatever science topics we cover as a group is very informal and more fun. Individually the kids have chosen science topics to dive into. This is also a first for me. In the past I set out to cover learning outcomes  required by our provincial school system for each grade. This year, I've allowed the kids to go after what interests them, and what do you know, they're far more motivated to do their science studies because of it!  ;)  My oldest, 7th grader, however is doing a more general science to help prepare her for future sciences in high school.

At the beginning of our school year, I set out to really minimize what we were doing in Language Arts. About two or three weeks in, we re-evaluated, and decided that our Language Arts required more structure, a clearer plan, and we went back to The Good & The Beautiful which I never stopped liking. The reason I'd taken a break from it was because I wanted my kids to do SpellingYouSee and my third grader is still doing Explode the Code. Adding TG&TB felt like too much when it came to spelling and grammer.

So I decided we could combine. We are only doing SpellingYouSee twice a week. Because it's on the easy side for my kiddos, I'm letting them skip a bit. My youngest is still doing Explode the Code and we are skipping much of the phonics in TG&TB. Basically, I have just found myself very free to pick and choose what each of my kids needs to do this year. And so far, I'm loving the flexibility and variety.

In the past I've always felt like if I skip anything in a curriculum we will somehow miss something and have large gaps in our learning. I've come to realize that in these early grades (like pre-grade 5) there's so much review, that learning to just read and write should be the main goal, and the topics are really secondary. I know I've been told this over and over, but somehow it took me going through it to really feel confident to tailor things to each student of mine.

We haven't begun anything for Canadian social studies yet, but I see us covering some history topics over the next few months.

We have finished reading the Gospel of Luke together, and we finished our Ephesians study on RightNowMedia by Phil Vischer. That was the second series like it we've seen together, and we will definitely do another when we get back to school. The kids really like these little episodes, and it's great teaching! I even find myself remembering things from the videos about these epistles.

In our first six weeks, we also read these two books together. Both of them, we thoroughly enjoyed.

A nest one of my daughters found in the yard. So cool! Includes strips of plastic we might find littered on the side of the road here too.

On My Side Table