Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Planning for Fall

Cub Scout camp was last week and this week I have a boy at Boy Scout camp and a girl at EFY. My husband was at scout camp for half of this week, too. Half of our family was missing! I just had my two little boys! They got along extremely well and played together all the day long with hardly a fuss. They get to go to some fun places this week like seeing a preview of The Last Airbender at the movies, go play at the park, go play with friends, go to Terra Studios, and go to a Primary activity. For 2 days we had a living room full of army men, Galactic Heros, games, and two 100 piece puzzles...which my 7 year old did complete! Fun times.

Meanwhile, I'm already planning for fall. I'm going to teach science at our homeschool co-op this fall. Not because I'm a great scientist or even really like the subject, but because my kids need a meaty science class and I'm teaching it so I know they get the material! I know...it's a little control freakish. If I do it in a class setting, it will also get done and we can't procrastinate like we do other stuff at home sometimes. Yep. I said it. We procrastinate. Like on the botany we were supposed to keep up with the last few weeks! When my older two get home from their camps we will pick up on some of it in July.

One science class I'm doing is based on Apologia's Exploring Creation with Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day. In ten weeks, we are going to go skimming through the whole book. I'm having students notebook and keep portfolios of what we do in class. This will be for ages 9-11.

The other class I am co-teaching with a friend. It is based on Apologia's General Science text. Students will also keep a notebook, have homework, tests, and keep a portfolio. We will only go through a portion of the book in 10 weeks. The class is for ages 12 and older.

At home, we will continue with Story of the World, volume 3. We should finish this by Christmas and start volume 4 in January.

As for next week....well....we're going camping!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Summer Time!

I can't believe it is already summer! Where has the time gone?

Well, in our homeschool this summer, we are working on Botany. Yes, we still school through the summer as much as we can. We do this because we take breaks during other times of the year and it all balances out!

So, to update:

The list schedule I made up didn't work out well. We are going to try it again when summer is over.

In the summer, we do math and reading/language arts every day when we are home. I am also having my two older kids add botany onto that list of things to do everyday. Other stuff, like art and music, happen when they happen. We are going to continue having history lessons once per week. We are still meeting up with another family throughout the summer once per week (around trips and camps) to do history activities together. This is going to be super great in July because we'll get to the Revolutionary War time period then. How appropriate.

We have Cub Scout Camp, Boy Scout Camp, Girl's Camp, EFY, Youth Conference, and we just found out our oldest boy was nominated for All Stars in baseball. This is a busy summer for our family, but we will be squeezing in doing some homework when the kids are home. It will be a shortened version, so they'll still have plenty of time to play outside, meet up with friends, play in creeks, etc.

We are also building a house this summer. Construction has started. We will post pictures later. When we get to the finished out phase, I will immerse myself in that for a while - painting comes to mind!

The kids are helping me to do some gardening this year, so the botany lessons are fitting in nicely. Also, I'm having the kids help and observe as I make various herbal remedies this summer. They helped me and watched me work with lemon balm a few weeks ago!

My daughter has launched a new blog. She started this as a YW value project and has decided to carry on with it.

www.youthreadclean.blogspot.com