Week 30

We are now 3/4 of the way through the school year.  Only another 10 weeks to go.  Yay~!!  Another year almost come and gone.  I never thought that I'd get this far, in all honesty.  So happy to have been able to experience these years with the girls.  

It's been a little while since I did one of my weekly updates, so I thought it would be nice to get an overall view of where we are these days.  :o)

English:  Well, I decided to start driving all over the country side with a few other things.  Namely the McGuffey readers for copy work, and McGuffey Spelling for penmanship { cursive }.  We still occasionally dropped back in with the Christian Light Education light units.  I think we even had the odd Rod and Staff moment or two as well.

Spelling:  The two older girls continued on with Rod and Staff spelling.  Finishing up with lesson 26 this week.

Phonics:  We've managed to get quite a few worksheets done from the last book on phonics that I did a show and tell on recently.

Reading:  Chloe has been reading a heap of books.  I'm not overly confident in her comprehension skills, but at least she's giving it all a thorough try.  

Phebe is also doing pretty good with her reading.

Hannah, although reading, seems to derive much more pleasure from the maths department.

Maths:  This was the year that poor Chloe got multiplication and division.  Wow, is there a LOT of that~!  She has her days.  Some days go particularly well, whereas other days we see a struggle.   She's just about to officially hit her 8x tables - she was working on lesson 120 today.  The end is in sight though, so that is nice.  Each day when she opens her book she can see how far she is into the text - and how little is left to finish.  As a side note - that Australian Maths BLM that I also threw in - well, she loves it.  So that is a nice little bonus.  :o)

Phebe is doing great with her grade 2 maths.  Her last lesson was 77.  She's recently learnt to carry. Clocks are now to the 15 mins. She's also looking forward to jumping to grade 3 in the coming year.

Hannah is hot on Phebe's heels in the maths department.  She's up to lesson 60.  So there's only a handful of lessons separating them. A funny thing Hannah asked me a couple of weeks ago was { paraphrased because I can't remember the exact words }:  Can I just skip Grade 3 and start Grade 4 maths with Chloe next year? Ummm, nooo.  You have to do Grade 3, sorry.   I just asked Hannah what was the best thing in school this week, her reply: Maths.  ha ha ha ha.  I think we are on a winner there.

History:  Well, I started reading from MOH III, but have somehow ended up doing most of our reading from George Washington's World instead.  Both books are excellent.  I'm just running out of time though.

Science:  Chloe is currently working from Primary Science { BLM }. I've set them up as little packets / projects for her to work from. We did try her out with doing Rod and Staff science 3 on her own, but it didn't work out as well as I had hoped.  There is a bit of reading to do with questions to answer, and I figure that she's just not that ready - just yet.   So I've gone back to reading it as a family read aloud on Tuesdays and Thursdays.   We are now up to Unit 6, and there's only 7 units in the book, so the end is in sight with that as well.

Phebe and Hannah LOVE their current science work.  It's so easy. They've just finished another module.  It has a slow learning process { as in pretty much one concept at a time }, or rather a lack of depth, but they love it, so I don't mind. At least they are still doing science, and it isn't taxing me one single iota.

Latin:  How many false starts do you think we need?  ha ha ha ha. We've managed to get to lesson 2 in our new books.  It's just not a priority with us. Well, at this point in time at least.  To help combat the relaxed view I decided to give the girls their own workbooks { Latina Christiana I }.  So we've jumped from Prima Latina to that now.

Perhaps I also over program things as well.  I like to keep a lot of resources available.  

The girls still do a little Art, but ummm, not really share worthy.  I guess it's all about experimentation.  :o)

Yep, Chloe has taken to adding planes in all her pictures lately.

We'll be taking the next two weeks off school.  A nice little break with our 6 weeks on, 2 weeks off thing.

I was thinking to myself - WHAT - am I going to do for the next two weeks?  Then I remembered that I had a spelling rule project that I started and well, I may very well end up finally getting around to finishing it.  :o)

I also had a little second guess of myself this week, that may or may not have involved a little panic attack about my History selection for next year.  So, long story short, I spent a little time perusing some of my books in the line up - and decided that we'll probably use SOTW IV as the main spine { OR a Grade 4 Social Studies text by Christian Light Education that looks awesome all by itself }, but heavily accented with a LOT of Australian History thrown in.  I really want to spend a fair bit of time on Australian History - and I have a number of good books to do that, so we're actually all good to go.  My panic was that I didn't have enough main core books, but I can relax now, as it turns out I've got plenty.  Probably too much. Which leads me to my next problem, what to whittle out.  I've already whittled out the high school text that looks pretty inviting.   

I also have to confess that I went and bought some school stuff. Yep, just after I told you all how awesome I was at not spending.  I managed to get 6 weeks of spend free bliss, and then I fell.  Oh the shame of it all.  In all good defense, I only did it because it was a good deal.  

I got a brand NEW Dead Famous on Boudica for $3.00.  How could I pass that up?

I also scored 2 Doodle Design for $1.97 each.  Another handy bargain.  Perhaps our Art lessons might get some better focus and direction with those.  Chloe can't wait to actually start them.  :o)

Total spending spree - less than $ 7.00

And finally - if you have a kindergartner in your home { and other children that ooooh and ahhh over the littles projects, feel free to add them in }.

{ A Calendar Activity }

Take an A3 coloured piece of cardstock as the base, add a slightly cut down A4 - landscape blank numbers calendar page.  Have the children freestyle a cut out apple, and fill in all those missing numbers for the month of September.

I actually picked up this FREE printable { monthly calendars number practice } HERE.

Yeah, so there you go.  A quick little update.  Am I the only one to second guess, and have little panic attacks over curriculum choices?

Thanks for visiting.

Latin - Prima Latina

Now that we are moving back over to a more classical model I have added in the study of Latin.  I say moving back because this is not the first time that I have had my hand in the classical - or rather neo-classical style of education cupboard.  I'm still on the fence as to how much of a role Latin { or Greek } will play in our current homeschool though.

Many years ago when the boys were in their elementary school years we gave the classical model a bit of a run.  So within that context they were exposed, with a considerable amount, to both Latin and Greek.  Move forward about 7 years in time, which brings us to today, { like all good curriculum junkies } I still had a bunch of these resources available on my shelves.  In particular, I have some of the best grammar stage handy dandy Latin materials available for beginners.

Introducing: Miss Prima Latina by Memoria Press.  Perfect for absolute beginners at roughly Grade 3 { or Grade 1 too if you want a little one to tag along with an older child for the ride. You must promise not to get pedantic or pushy about the grammar though }.  Our main focus is just to acquire some basic vocabulary and introduction to the subject.

I figure that we could get a LONG way even without the workbooks, especially for this particular year / course.  I may look at investing in the workbooks for the following years though since they require a bit more focus and attention.  We'll see how the girls take to doing Latin.  

{ Teachers Manual and CD }

{ A heap of flash cards - mostly Latin }

These were made roughly 2005/2006.  There are a LOT of cards in here, all printed and cut.  The only bad thing about it all is that they are all totally jumbled up.

This leaves me with the despicable and arduous task of trying to find the ONE card that we need each day.  Something that I am not looking forward to having to do.  So, I am actually tossing to and fro in my mind as to whether or not to just make new cards as we require them.

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A fun message for my Latin buddies.

So, tell me, do you do Latin in your homeschool?  What do you use?

Today I'm going to link up with:

I hope you can join us.