First Mid Term Update

We are plugging away here at Random Uttering. Here’s a peek at what we've been up too. This post is long.

Travel: We are less than a week away from our trip to Spain.  We are eighty percent packed and now I have last minute errands to run prior to our departure.  I’m exited yet full of anxiety.  This is our first time going on a trip and leaving our boys.  Keep our family in your prayers, that we have a safe journey there and back and our boys are alive and well upon our return. 

Home Front: This year we decided to take on several home improvement  projects. Planning a renovation, dealing with contractors and prepping for a big trip.  It’s a bit much. More on this project later. 

School: Our curriculum selections have been a hit.  I tweaked two subjects slightly  but overall I’m happy.  We have come to the end of one unit in most of our books.  When we return from Spain we will pick up where we left off and begin the next unit. 

Christopher: Christopher will be turning eight this month.  He is getting really tall.

Math: Math got off to a slow start.  However we are in our groove and I believe this is going to be a solid year of math instruction.  Below you will see one of our pattern block activities.  Christopher completed a pattern then I completed another, writing down the number of pattern blocks for each color.  Then we switched and each of us had to figure out how the other person completed theirs. 

English: Christopher has learned  the basics of sentence construction. He understands the concepts and with more time and practice he will get better and better.    Our  next unit will cover nouns and verbs. 

Spelling: Rod and Staff is our spelling curriculum.  This is our first year using a formal spelling curriculum.  Christopher scored one hundred percent on each weeks test except for last week.  He misspelled brown.  Each week he gets twelve new words.  This week his was a review of all the previous weeks.  He had 25 words for this exam and he aced it. 

Current Events and Geography: One day you tube I found a video of another homeschool mom explaining how she incorporates geography and current events into their day.  Here is a video that explains how we have taken an idea from someone else and put our spin on it. 

Current events and geography

Shared Learning:

History: This has got to be one of my favorite subjects.  We’ve covered the fall of the Roman Empire. Celts and Anglo Saxons.  Christianity coming to Britain.

Poetry:  This term we are taking a closer look at the works of poet Robert Louis Stevenson.  We will recite one or two of his pieces at our open house this December.  Currently we are reading his biography and listening to his book Treasure Island on cd. 

Financial Peace:  Five years ago my husband and I took this class.  Now we are debt free and when I learned of his series for children it was a no brainer. 
Financial Peace Jr. is designed to teach children how to earn, save, spend and give money.   So far we have completed two of the six books. The first book deals with chores and the second working. Of course most seven year olds don’t have traditional jobs but I really appreciate how Dave Ramsey helps us parents plant the seeds of working to earn money, instead of asking mom and dad for everything. Another great selling point of this program for me is I have always struggled with paying children to do chores.  The book is clear that there are some chores you do simply because you are a member of the family.  Those chores are not paid chores.  Then there are other chores around the house that can be assigned a monetary value.   It’s very clear this family has one child that is motivated to earn money and another child that’s not interested at all. 

Science: Kudos to me, for trying something new this year.  After some time reflecting on our last school year it was evident that in order to get more science done something needed to change.  So this summer I spent weeks collecting and  packing all of our science supplies for each science project.  It has made a world of difference.  We’ve learned about the layers of the earth, the earth’s atmosphere, the moon, why we have different seasons, earthquakes, tsunamis, weather and  the water cycle.  It’s been great and with all the materials at our finger tips for experiments we have wonderful hands on enriching activities to enhance our learning.

How I prepared for our science this year.

Emmanuel: Emmanuel is progressing nicely.  He loves learning. At times it feels like I can’t keep up with him.  I need to get out of the way and not kill his love with workbook overload.  Tsk, tsk, tsk mom this is the reason you are homeschooling. You are outside of the box for a reason so get comfortable there.

He’s reading, counting to 100 and beyond.  Now we are working gently on fine tuning his motor skills which is going to take some time.  Emmanuel is fascinated with earthquakes and has not stopped talking about them since we covered them for science. We simulated an earthquake.  As you can see below the first pan is prior to the earthquake and the second is after. 

Joshua: Joshua has been hit with a bad case of the terrible twos. It’s really bad.  He is the most irrational child these days. Recently, Joshua decided he was no longer interested in potty training.  Flat refusal is all you get from him at the potty.  So I plan to really hit it hard with him once we return from Spain with a new strategy. He continues to work with his speech therapist and his language skills have greatly increased.  We review our  shapes and numbers almost daily and he can count to twenty with a some help.  He loves books.  I try to read at least a book a day to him for our special time together.  This book or two is generally tied to the alphabet of the week. 

This semester we took a break from our co-op.  I needed some rest. We added weekly park days into our routine. Below you can see the boys selecting their Nerf guns preparing for battle.  I’m really glad we are taking advantage of park days.  The boys get to play with other homeschooled children and the moms get a chance to chit chat. 

Well that’s it from us.  We will resume soon!  Stay tuned for updates from Spain.