My Life

So far I think the kids have enjoyed the Advent activities! A few of the things we did last week were making Christmas cards for friends, cleaning out clothes to donate, learning about St. Nicholas, and making a paper chain for the tree. Last night was a game night and I surprised them with a few new games. I bought a couple decks of cards, a Crazy 8 game, and Jenga. With the purchase of the Jenga game I got a free card game so I got Monopoly Deal.

Our school semester is wrapping up this week. While the kids are excited about being done for a while, I'm busy looking ahead to January. I haven't been completely happy with how this past semester went. Not anything the kids have done but my disorganization in getting library books and not getting some projects done. So I'm looking ahead trying to figure out the best way to prepare. You would think I would know how and know better by now. But this is my first year schooling four and I feel like I'm spinning in circles.

We finished up our Bible Study book this week, Route 66: A Trip Through The 66 Books of the Bible. I'm thinking that in January we will start a "read through the Bible in a year" thing. It's hard finding devotionals or Bible Studies that interest the kids. A lot of them include situations that public schooled kids face so my girls don't really relate to that. And other books are geared towards Sunday School which means they don't cover multi-age levels. So it seemed fitting that after learning about the books of the Bible we would actually read through the Bible.

I need to be doing more with my little guy. I'm trying to get my thoughts together about what goals to have for him after we start up. He's writing letters really well and loves "doing school". We need to work on letter recognition and letter sounds. I would also like to do a couple little unit studies with him.

Gracie will be switching to CLE for Language Arts and Math. We haven't made it all the way through the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading but we've done enough. She is reading well and that book doesn't do much to really drill in the phonics rules. So it's time to give her something where she can be learning them AND applying them. In the case of Math, I'm just tired of R&S. I still like it but I've been pleased with CLE Math so far with Emily in how and what they teach.

There aren't any curriculum changes happening for the older girls. Abby just moved up to the 5th Grade R&S Math book (she really likes R&S so we haven't switched her to CLE)!! Em is ready for level 500 in CLE's Math. I am thinking about adding in Writing Strands (again) for them. We also need to get back into doing the Word Roots!

The other thing I'm planning for is a human body and nutrition study. I think we'll start with the human body and then do nutrition. Gracie is doing Christian Kids Explore Biology this year (which I have kind of set aside because she's not really at the level for everything taught in that book) so it seemed fitting. But also it's something we can all do together. We did the topic a little bit when Emily was younger but for some reason (still a mystery to me) it REALLY(!!!!!!) freaked her out. So I figured this would be a good time to get the study done with everyone involved!

So there we go. Those are my plans for our second semester. :)