We began school this week--ow, my head hurts. The learning curve for Finn's two online classes has been so steep! Annie's schooling is so much more my speed! Here's what she's doing this year:
*Math: She uses Horizons. I love it for her! It's really perfect for us: colorful, spiral, easy to teach, and challenging enough without being overwhelming.
*Language Arts: this year I decided to try to inject a bit of formality and use Learning Language Arts through Literature. I wanted something that would be, for lack of a better way to put it, "open and go," but still a gentle approach. So far I love, love, love it. It's not full of nonsense busywork, it's based on quality literature, and it just fits us very well so far. I'll give another update after the first semester or so!
*History/Literature: Annie picked Early American History to study this year. We chose Beautiful Feet Books, but I purchased the "old" version of their Early American history, which is quite different from the new version they just rolled out this year. I am not sure why they made these changes, because the "old" version has some great books! In any case, this week I got so busy with Finn's needs that Annie volunteered to read the books herself--I'd planned to read aloud to her. That's going great! The readings so far are perfectly-suited to her level and she's narrating very well after she reads. I'm so thankful.
*Handwriting: we continue to try to tame Annie's handwriting into legibility with A Reason for Handwriting ("transition" level, so she begins cursive this year).
*For science, I divided Jean-Henri Fabre's Storybook of Science into weekly assignments, and we are reading through that this year. She will do a drawing narration in her science notebook (it's from Riverbend Press--I love their notebooks!) at least once a week.
*She will do a simple geography workbook to practice map skills--it will probably only take about half the year. We won't even start this until sometime in September.
*Annie is taking an upper elementary Spanish class for fun--same wonderful teachers Finn has.
*Annie's best friend is homeschooling this year, so I'm hosting a three-hour "book club" for the girls once a week. My vision is to do poetry, Shakespeare, and a book discussion together, then work on crochet/knitting, and then they can play. Once a month or so I also hope to do some sort of seasonal activity, and I am going to ask each girl to bake something as a treat to bring once a month as well; I'll bake a treat on the weeks I don't assign someone baking.
*We continue to do "morning time"together--a prayer, a hymn, Bible readings, read-aloud, Shakespeare, poetry, a bit of Plutarch, artist and composer studies, etc....but not all of it, every day! Just the first four every day, and then a bit longer on Fridays for Shakespeare, etc. This may be my favorite part of homeschooling. :)
*Annie and Finn are both doing a robotics club/competition this fall.
*Annie has been accepted into a local ballet company, so ballet will consume a lot of time: two 2-hour classes per week, plus four hours of mandatory rehearsals on Saturdays. And we live 35 minutes from the studio. But although she's only 10, she is super-focused on ballet and I want to support her in this. She has been obsessed with ballet since she saw "Swan Lake" as a toddler! This is her sixth year of classes, and she's an extremely hard worker. I'm thankful that she has this opportunity, even though it does mean a lot of sacrifice and work (50 hours of parent volunteer time? yes) on my part as well.
*And finally, violin lessons!
Annie is our social, extroverted child, and I'm pleased that every day she will have *some* sort of social outlet: book club, ballet, Spanish, ballet again, robotics, ballet again. (Finn is a bit more like me: happy to curl into a ball and read a book for days without talking.) Her actual schooling is very simple (math + a bit of language arts + reading lots of books), which is perfect for her and for me.
So far this week she got all of her work done easily by noon, she spent several hours with one friend at the pool on Monday, then she spent several hours with other friends at the lake on Tuesday, attended hours of ballet and robotics, and has plowed through several novels. I'd say Annie's fifth grade year is off to a great start.
It is a joy to spend my time with my children, and such a privilege to homeschool them. I am so grateful for this life!
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