What are you doing in school this week?

[Element]

I'm taking a break right now from planning the upcoming week. I thought I'd hop on here and see what you are all working on.

 

Where are you at in history? Science? Math? Any kids have lessons gelling together cross-subject? (That's always fun.) What are you reading?

 

You don't have to answer all of the above. Feel free to just answer one subject or one child if you wish.

 

We are finally heading into serfs and noblemen in history, so that's fun. Both kids will be starting a new level of math so we'll probably have a week of (boring, imo) place value review to look forward to. We are reading a total fluff fiction novel right now called Dark Life. (We're completing our holiday break and we usually just do fun fiction during that time.) I am reading Anna Karenina with an online "book club" of sorts.

 

Does anyone else want to share thoughts about the upcoming week's lessons/ fun stuff/ plans/ etc.?

[Wheres Toto]

I completely redid our set-up, which took longer than I thought and resulted in too much time off, so we are jumping right into things full-speed ahead. I'm adding Literature (fairy tales, Aesop's fables), art, music, and Spanish to our days. This week we have a 4-H Cloverbud meeting on Photography, and we are doing Magnets for our Science at home. We may so some US History or Geography. I have to finish planning and decide if I think we can do magnets in one morning or if it will take two days.

[Element]

I completely redid our set-up, which took longer than I thought and resulted in too much time off, so we are jumping right into things full-speed ahead. I'm adding Literature (fairy tales, Aesop's fables), art, music, and Spanish to our days. This week we have a 4-H Cloverbud meeting on Photography, and we are doing Magnets for our Science at home. We may so some US History or Geography. I have to finish planning and decide if I think we can do magnets in one morning or if it will take two days.

 

The 4-H meeting sounds fun! What Spanish program or book are you adding? I have been eying Getting Started with Spanish.

[Joshin]

This year I didn't need to change up anything over the holiday break, which is a first and feels so odd! DS12 is moving right along in Saxon math, Wordsmith and the rest of his LA stuff, and French. DS7 finished Miquon before break, so we are moving over to Singapore to see how that works. His reading has taken off so much, that I added a Think! Write! Draw! book so we can start getting some writing practice in with his reading and grammar work. He has fought organized writing thus far, but he picked the book out himself so we'll see.

 

Both boys are tackling the Norman invasions in history this week. I did change up science a bit over break. We were about to move into space studies and have used task cards for the first half of Earth science. I found the GSA Space curriculum at the thrift store a few weeks ago, with all the reproducibles already copied in triplicate and rubber banded to it for a $1, so I grabbed it. DS7 in particular is very knowledgable about everything space science, so it looked like a great way to add more depth to the subject with minimal effort on my part, but still interesting enough for my 12 year old. That's really our only major change, and we'll still probably use the task cards with it a bit.

 

This year has been going way too smoothly compared to the last six years, so I feel like I'm jinxing myself my posting anything! Hopefully we have just finally hit our stride!

[Heidi]

We are reading Our Island Story together at night and we are all so into it. I am actually starting to like history. I'm thinking about dropping SOTW; we just don't like it, especially compared to OIS. Maybe I'll pick up CHOW again...

 

My dd7 just finished 1st grade on Friday, so she is beginning 2nd grade tomorrow. Grade level is determined by math level at the moment. For 2nd grade she will be starting Climbing To Good English 2 to replace copywork. She is thrilled about this as she loves workbooks. She will also be working on math diligently through the summer so she can be on track to start 3rd grade in the fall, a year ahead where she would be in PS. I should have done this much earlier for her.

 

Dd4 is learning to blend sounds. We work on it every day.

 

I am pre-reading a history book I might read aloud to my kids, called The Boys of 76, by Charles Coffin. He wrote three books, the first one about how/why we broke off from Briton, which I thought would be a good book to read after OIS. Then the Boys of 76, about the revolution, and one more to follow that book but I can't remember the name at the moment.

 

And I am determind to actually DO our science curriculum, starting Tuesday.

[merry gardens]

We resume our formal schooling this week. I had planned to add some new class materials for January, but I decided that instead we'd pick up the pace of the history and grammar books to more quickly finish with them. Four of mine had finished their Singapore math books "A" before break, so we start with "B" this week. But before we start formal school work, we're going to put away the Christmas decorations and clean our homeschool classroom tomorrow.

[Farrar]

Hmm... finishing up our comics unit with co-op this week with a field trip to see the Liechtenstein exhibit at the National Gallery and we'll probably make art and some of language arts comics focused so the kids can finish up their artwork and stories and submit it to be included in the comics anthology we're all putting together.

 

Finishing up the French Revolution and starting a short study of Napoleon. I'm thinking of reading the H.E. Marshall (who also wrote Our Island Story) biography of him.

 

Finishing up our unit on biodiversity in science and getting ready to start genetics. We're going to do a little more with food webs in our hands-on day and finish up an experiment we had about water quality in local streams.

 

Mushroom, who is my struggling speller, started AAS just before the break to try and remediate and he will finish Level 1 this week and start Level 2. With a few exceptions, so far it was mostly words he could already spell, but I see that it has helped his spelling in little ways when he writes, so I'm hopeful about level 2, where he doesn't spell most of the words very well.

 

Working on Challenging Word Problems this week with both ds, I hope and taking a little break from other math curricula. We've also been reading the fun math in Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School and they love that, so we'll do some more with it this week.

[Julie Smith]

We are listening to "The Goose Girl" and Eldest is reading a "Secrets of Droon" book almost every day. Once he is done reading it to himself I read it outloud.

 

For History we are using SOTW and tomorrow we meet Joan of Arc tomorrow.

For Science I am nagging my dh to finish making his audio recordings of Mr. Q Earth science.

For Math I am waiting for AOPS to finish making 3D. Also doing math in the form of board games and just general life.

[momto2Cs]

We're making a fresh start this week!

 

Some highlights... ds11 gets to start learning more about his passion, which is ancient Greece & mythology. Dd9 gets to start learning abut American history through the American Girls books. We're starting a biology study with both. I'm excited, and nervous.

[Chrysalis Academy]

Oh, I'm really excited to start up again!

 

In math, we're starting a unit on fractions, and I'm excited because I think dd really grasps fractions - mostly - from doing LOF, so I'm hoping we'll only have to do a small amount of MM to feel sure taht she's mastered the topic. This means we can add in more supplemental/fun/problem solving stuff. We got Math Doesn't Suck, and Math for Real Kids, and we have Zacarro. This is kind of my first stab at winging it with teaching math - although we have a net, which is mm - we won't move on till she can ace the chapter test. But I'm hoping we'll be focusing on the real-world applications, more than just crunching through the algorithms. Anyway, I'm excited about it. I've really been thinking about math during this break, thinking a lot about what my goals are for dd and how we can use the combination of materials at hand to reach them. So, loosening up from just following the curriculum, to try and deepen it. We'll see how it goes. If it's a cosmic crash and burn, we still got all the MM lessons to fall back on!

 

We're also starting Story of Science/Aristotle this week. I've been looking forward to that for quite awhile, I hope we really enjoy the study. You were talking about making connections - dd is a big-picture, cross-discipline thinker, so I think this way of studying science will really appeal to her right now, learning about the people involved and the historical context, along with the "facts." I have math and science supplements to beef up the analytical part.

 

We're going to do a unit on Lewis and Clark first thing for history. We got the Chicago Review Press book Lewis and Clark for Kids, and she's reading a couple of novels about the expedition. Then we're going to study Mark Twain and start reading Huckleberry Finn. All leading up to a unit on the Civil War later in the spring. I really like the Chicago Review Press books, and I'm planning to incorporate more of them.

 

In lit, she has devoured the MCT Mud novels, so instead of spending a couple of weeks on them, it will be more like a couple of hours, which is ok. She enjoyed the books, but I wish I had had them for her a year ago - they would have been more challenging then. I think Huck Finn will be plenty challenging, though!

 

So, yep, excited about the new stuff, as well as content with the old - we're finishing MCT Town in the next month, and plugging away with Latin Prep, and enjoying LOE with the advanced spelling lists, and WWS is going very well, so we'll just do the next thing with all that stuff. I'm ready to start up again! And I think dd finally is too - she was bopping around bored today, so I handed her Streams to the River and Dog of Discovery, and she's been reading them all day. So a nice head start for the week already!

[NotSoObvious]

Finishing up some work and getting ready to go see Winter in FLoRIDA!!

[mom31257]

We are in the middle ages of Europe, and I found this free lapbook based on the Magic Treehouse Research Guide. I'm going to give ds one mini-book a day to help him start learning to skim through and find information.

 

In math he's doing a chapter on fractions (equivalent fractions, adding/subtracting fractions with different denominators). I may try to do something with Hershey bars when we do equivalent fractions. They are great because they are divided into 12 squares. It's easy to show how 6/12 is equal to 1/2, 3/12 is equal to 1/4, etc. He really won't need that to understand it, but he will enjoy eating the chocolate.

 

For science this week, I'm focusing on a health unit about healthy cells and lifestyles. I plan on letting him look at cells from dd's Biology course and possibly swab his cheek for cheek cells as well as have him keep a record of what he eats for a day. I think I'm going to do this with the whole family and probably develop an exercise plan for the month.

 

We are already reading The Railway Children by Nesbit for the book club that I'm leading later this month, so we'll continue that. So far, ds is not very impressed with the book, but he's my child who doesn't really like to read.

 

I'm also starting R&S English and Spelling. He is a decent speller but makes odd mistakes that make me think he's not really retaining the phonics rules I did much earlier with him. I've been putting together my own grammar, but I want to get settled into a curricula for next year, so I'm trying it for now.

 

Dd has Spanish class tomorrow afternoon and volunteers at the library on Wednesday. She's starting more formal proofs in Geometry this week and studying a chapter on evolution in her Biology. She's finishing up a poetry unit in literature and starting to read just a few of the Canterbury Tales. She's a little behind where I wanted her to be in her Lively Art of Writing, but there's still plenty of time to finish it and do the other things I wanted with composition this year. She's doing a Geography book this year, so I can give her a full credit along with her geography work these two years in BP. She's learning, but we aren't putting much effort into it really.

 

I'll be teaching our IEW co-op class this Friday morning for ds as well as leading Biology labs for dd's group. It's going to be a full week!

[Kfamily]

We're hoping to have a really full week here too.

 

Both girls wil continue to work in math, Latin and French. They've reached the point now (well, my older dd has been at this point for awhile now...but life gets in the way) where I really need to expand their work in French. Every time the schedule gets busy...which is often.... :)...we tend to drop the extra components of French and just keep working on the lessons. I'm planning on adding back more time spent with audio books/movies in French, copywork and dictation. I also want to have them both write narrations in French, but I'm just now stepping them into this.

 

We will also make some progress in our opera study, hopefully we get to some art, and we'll also start The Magic and Medicine of Plants for nature study. We'll be reading Brutus for Plutarch studies and then Caesar to prepare for Julius Caesar.

 

My younger dd will continue reading The Little White Horse. I've really loved the art and narrations she has been giving me as they are tied to this book. As soon as she finishes this we'll start our Anne of Green Gables study. We've started her Astronomy book, for which she has eagerly been waiting, and continue to read from Our Island Story and A Child's History of the World. She's started a retelling of Beowulf in writing using Imitations in Writing Medieval Legends. We're still working in D'Aulaires Greek Myths and she's starting "The Lady of Shalott" for her new memory work piece. I tend to let them choose a lot of the poems they memorize and she asked for this one.

 

My older dd will be reading from English Literature for Boys and Girls and completing her narrations in a notebook for this book. She'll be doing this with Age of Fable too. I'm getting her ready to start the Iliad and our Greek humanites study with Book of the Ancient Greeks, Story of Philosophy and History of Art for Young People. Her next memory piece will be "And Wilt Thou Weep When I am Low?" (her choice too).

 

My younger dd is reading independently the following:

Girls Who Looked Under Rocks (for science)

Gone-Away Lake (E. Enright)

Otto of the Silver Hand (Pyle)

 

I've just recently decided to ask her to give me one written narration each week for any of the books she's reading independently. She's reading several other books of her own choosing as well.

 

My older dd is reading independent, of her own choice, The Hobbit and Philosophy and rereading The Hobbit to go along with it.

 

This should be a busy week for us too! In fact, the rest of this year will be busy, I think. :)

[Trillian]

We're starting LLLOTR. I was planning on using it starting in 6th grade, slowly, but DS has been begging all year to read LOTRs again, so I gave him a new (used) illustrated hardback version for Christmas, plus the audiobooks, and the curriculum. We're also going o be doing some poetry, which might be too much. At least in the beginning, LLLOTR will be very little writing (I've moved some stuff around), so I wanted to have a writing component as well. We'll see.

 

I dropped ES, which we both found deathly boring (well planned but not his or my thing at all) and accepted I needed to do my own thing. So, we'll be doing that, starting with some physical science. It won't be a whole year of anything, but touching on subjects. I'll be reading aloud Bomb during science time as well.

 

Math and history have been working (art as well), so we're just moving on, more fractions and on to the Egyptians.

 

He's listening to a Mediation course from TGC.

 

I've added a day a week of volunteering and another park day each week so we're going to be busier than in fall - not something I'm looking forward to, but he really needed more time with friends (and I really wanted him volunteering).

[prairiegirl]

I had plans for starting school tomorrow but I have to go to town in the morning and try to get my iphone fixed and we have a funeral to go to in the afternoon so I guess we will be starting school on Tues.

 

For history, we are doing Modern and we are now up to Gandhi and will be studying India. My ds will be honing his writing skills by writing an essay on Gandhi.

 

My ds needs a bit more practice with fractions so he will be starting Key to Fractions this week. My oldest will be starting Art of Argument this week as well.

 

We are reading Appointment by Death by Agatha Christie for our family read aloud. I am reading Prince Caspian to the two youngers and my oldest is reading The Hiding Place on her own.

[MrsBanjoClown]

In science this week we will be studying the water cycle,. We are going to start learning about one animal every week as well and for this week my younger chose the octopus. In addition, we are going to begin our nature unit on birds this week.

 

In history, we will be studying the Medes and Persians.

 

We are on chapter 19 of Song School Latin.

 

DS6 started Singapore Math 1B just before the break, and will be working on numbers to 40 this week. DS8 is still working in 2A and will be working on dividing by 2 and 3.

 

DS6 is working quickly through his reading program and will be reading out of his Abeka reader Aesop's Fables. DS8 is currently reading the Bluebonnet Award books.

[hands-on-mama]

We are starting the Oo Octopus unit in MFW K. My daughter is super excited. We plan to go buy a beta fish next weekend in between the Octopus and water unit. She'll just do the next thing with her other books.

 

My youngest is going to drive me crazy. She's three and wants to do school all the time. I wasn't planning on this at all. I bought her the R&S preschool books (the youngest set) and she's flying through them. I bought LHTH again from a mama on here. I don't want her doing anything to schooling but I don't want to hold her back either. If you give this girl paper and writing utensils, she could draw all day. She tries so hard to act like she's reading. We'll go with it for now and once we finish LHTH I will get AAR pre-1.

[Faithr]

12th grader will meeting with math tutor 2x this week to do Advanced Math, meeting with his dad all Tuesday morning for Government class and will also be finishing up a 10 page paper on the Commerce Clause for him. His Physics homeschool class and his Com. Coll Chemistry class don't start up until next week. He's also currently reading To Kill a Mockingbird. He'll watch a history lecture or two as well.

 

8th grader has Aquinas Learning on Thursday. He's got Latin, Logic, Catechism and composition to do. He's also reading The Wanderings of Odysseus. No history this week, I don't think. He's also got math and science to do.

 

6th grader has the lightest week. Her Aquinas Learning doesn't start up until next Monday - she'll be working on cursive, math and IEW (writing).

[....]

Hmmm...our stuff is "do the next thing" right now, so I could post our schedule. :coolgleamA:

 

My 11 yro and 10 yro:

 

Monday: Math, English and Artistic Pursuits (we're studying shading - LOL)

 

Tuesday: Math, English and Anatomy & Physiology (we're going to try making mummy apples)

 

Wednesday: Math, English and Mapping the World with Art (we're drawing the Nile River area)

 

Thursday: Math, English and Around the World in 180 Days (we're studying Africa - I got a TON of books from the library about the Mali, Songhay empires, archaeology in Africa, etc)

 

Friday: Exploring the World of Math (I tried making the Egyptian knot rope, but apparently, the Ancient Egyptians were smarter than I am) and my kids are making a Book of Centuries

[Pink and Green Mom]

We're plugging along, starting up after 2 week break (I did have the kids do some flash cards and reading). My parents are here today so they finised school with little muss or fuss in order to get to play with grandma and grandpa.

 

For History Odyssey (which I loathe and despise), we're beginning our study of Ancient China. My older is going to have to write a report on a famous person from this time period and I expect lots of hand wringing and whining.

For Elemental Science, we're beginning our 5 week study of vertebrates (fish is up first)

For math the oldest is starting his new unit on decimals, the younger is reviewing 5 mulitplication tables and will move into 5 division

Older is reading On My Honor, by Bauer. I found a great lesson plan online for this so I'm using some of the comprehension questions for discussion.

Need to figure out what younger shoud read, leaning towards Along Came A Dog

Oldest is just about done with Unit 3 in IEW (I'm using the teaching manual "lesson plans" and we do Ancients in CC) - we're a bit behind here.

The rest is do the next lesson.

[Holly]

We're just starting a new history curriculum (SCM). After years on American history (with HOD) it feels so nice to study something completely different. We're starting with the book of Genesis and Adam and His Kin. Today they made a poster to go along with their studies...it has key events from Genesis. Our literature book is The Long Winter which matches nicely with the foot of snow in our yard. We just switched artist/composer studies and are now working on Mozart and Audubon. I also pulled out our Rightstart Math Games book and am going to find some multiplication games for my older two to play. We gave them a few board games for Christmas, so I'm trying to end our day with a game. It's not always easy with outside activities in the afternoons.

 

I'm also really excited about the RR order that should be here tomorrow. There are some fun things for the kids: a geopuzzle, card games book, book of outdoor games, madlibs...and some books for our history studies.

[TechWife]

MFW coordinates Bible, Lit., Writing & History. We got out of sync at the end of last semester, so we are going to spend the next week or two getting back in sync - extra work in writing, then adding lit. until we get if caught up to where we are in Bible & History. Proceeding as usual with math & science. He's finished with his web design class, so I think we're going to have him do some career exploration for 1/2 credit. He's dropping German and adding Spanish.

[Wheres Toto]

Well, if today was any indication, what we actually do is going to bear little resemblance to what I planned to do. <<sigh>>

[MinivanMom]

We are just starting to delve into astronomy. The kids got a telescope for Christmas, but it's been cloudy so we haven't gotten to use it much. We finally went out two nights ago and they were able to look at Jupiter. It was pretty amazing and now they're super excited to learn about space. I've been looking up all the celestial events for this year and putting them on our family calendar so that we don't miss anything.

[Walking-Iris]

We just started up after break as well. My Kinder is moving right along in learning how to read and write. Using all the usual suspects for reading/phonics. We've finished up the subtraction units in SM Essential Math B . He's good at the math (could likely do 1st) but getting a bit advanced for him can be tiring, so I've added some K level Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners to give him a break. He loves math books so these are something he can happily zoom through at his pace and he feels less tired and ready to tackle the SM next time. We've decided he's still young enough and tires easily enough that there would be more harm than good advancing.

 

He's also nearly done with his science unit on anatomy. I'm trying to stretch out his science a bit so we can start Earth and Weather closer to spring and finish the year and summer with Plants.

 

We've been reading and doing some activities in our ever trusty and loved PWB. Working on making him some continent boxes.

 

My older 4th grader is moving along in Saxon at a good clip. We'll finish WWE3 this week and move into 4. For science we've been reading all we can find on chemistry and other physical science topics. Picking and choosing from Chem For EveryKid. He's also following along with anatomy. We've all been playing with the loupes and doing some Private Eye activities.

 

We started a new SeqSpell level this week. And we'll continue with our Bravewriter read alouds and writings. Continuing with our ongoing state studies. Starting Greeks this week (hopefully he'll like that better). SOTW is continually never getting done. :( We'll also pick up where we left off in HFA and continue with our art studies. We talked to a local artist who studied at the Chicago Institute about possibly mentor/tutoring my oldest in painting...squee. We meet with him this week.

 

My littles are continuing with the activities in Mudpies to Magnets. And my 2 year old is still playing with her ever changing "workbox" (really work shelves) activities found mainly from Pinterest.

[Mommee & Baba]

We're working back into school after being on "too long" of a winter break. Today we spent 5 hours as we're all fighting a nasty cold and ear infections, but we have to get started up again or we won't ever! Everyone was ready to get started again flyer 2 failed weeks of attempts due to illness and family from out of town showing up.

 

In he 5 hours today we did math, science, & bible. I was more than pleased! Tomorrow we will focus on history, language arts/grammar, spelling/reading, & hoping for some math! But we'll see!

[amyrobynne]

We had a soft start back last Wednesday, but today's our first full week and it feels like our first "normal" week since November because we dropped our normal history, religion, and art programs to do Advent and Christmas Around the World stuff and bake lots of cookies.

 

Last week was pretty painful with a lot of whining but today went really well. After skipping grammar for the fall, I started my oldest with FLL3 today so that I wouldn't have to think about poetry, mostly. Poetry always gets pushed to the end around here and I didn't feel like I had a good approach anyway. I wanted FLL's handholding. We'll do that on days when he doesn't do IEW writing.

 

We're learning about the apostles and early Christianity in history, and energy basics in BFSU science for both boys. They'll each be finishing their math books around the end of the month and Leo and I are both excited to be done with Saxon and start Singapore. They'll be doing 3B and 2B by February (my 1st grader skimmed the beginning of Saxon 2 until it started getting harder, skipping us ahead to lesson 40 by week 3).

 

Until now, we've done spelling 4 days/wk, but starting now I'm giving myself permission to skip spelling any day we aren't home all day. They're both natural spellers and there's no rush to get through their curriculums (Phonetic Zoo B and the end of AAS2). My husband has been reading them The Hobbit at bedtime, so I no longer feel the need to do a for-literature's-sake-only read-aloud, which frees up the morning a bit. My oldest has been doing really well learning cursive and has about 7 letters to go, so I'm going to put more of a priority on doing handwriting as many days as I can so he can finish the letters and begin doing most of his work in cursive.

 

My biggest problem all fall has been feeling like there are a ton of subjects to cover and what should I do when and in what order so nothing gets pushed back all the time. I feel like I have a better plan now -- math and history every day, spelling and handwriting if we're in the house all day, IEW (oldest)/copywork(middle son) on half the days with FLL3/reading-narration the other half. Then every day will have one of the following: religion (twice a week), science (twice a week), and art (once a week). I also need to make sure we're awake earlier. Sleep is nice, but if I roll out of bed at 9:30, the day's in trouble before it starts.

 

My youngest is starting to grasp letters and numbers, so I'm making a point of talking with him about those now too.

[SunnyDays]

Great post! It's fun seeing what everyone else is doing.

 

We did a couple light days to start back last week, so this is our first full week. We'll be finishing Mr Q's Life Science, starting a Civil War unit in history, and also starting the last chapter of MM4B!! (Which means I need to decide whether to branch out and do some different math for a while - like Zacarro or LOF - or just plunge into MM5.)