William the Silent, How Birds Fly, and Magnetism

I found out Eli hadn't done his science worksheets from the other day so I had him get started on that while we waited for everyone to be ready to start school.  He had a fit but did eventually do it.

Yearbook: We assigned Josie do to the next week of yearbook pictures.  Later she took a few of us doing Winston Grammar.

History: We decided to skip history because we couldn't find the story book.  Emmy was assigned to find it since she was the last one to have it.

Language Arts: I did the first Winston Grammar Basic lesson with Miri while Emmy did Josie's Calendar Notebook with her and helped Sarah do Letter of the Week.  Then I did a long review lesson in Winston Grammar with Emmy and Eli (we haven't done any for nearly a year). 

I quickly filled out planners for everyone so they would know what else they need to do today.  Then I had to go get Kjeri from work.

History (round 2):  When I got home, the kids had found the book so we read about William the Silent and did a minibook. Then I assigned extra reading and narrations.

Science: I read the girls' science lesson to them about how birds fly and we did a fun little experiment with water and straws.  Then they did their minibooks.  Eli did his science with little help from me. (I helped him find a bunch of things to see if they were magnetic and talked him through a few of his review questions.)  Emmy watched a lecture on the Virtual Homeschool Co-op website.  

Everything Else:  The kids did spelling, math, gospel, p.e, and reading on their own.

All in all, things went pretty well today - except that I can't believe how exhausting all of that stuff is.

What did you learn today?

It will all even out in the end...

So today we did history all together.  Then I had Miri do the pre-test for Winston Grammar and learned that she knows no grammar at all (which didn't surprise me).  I did a Letter of the Week lesson with Sarah about the letter "F."  (She knows more letters than I thought she did!)

Then we did science.  I read aloud to the little girls about animal classification and then we did our minibooks.  Then Eli decided he couldn't do his without help.  He had 4 projects/experiments to do.  Three of them were simple little things but one was not.  Let's just say it involved 8 different kinds of liquids in the same container (greasy, sticky, and stinky) and a bunch of objects dropped into the liquid.  It was a huge mess and a lot of time and I think we'll skip or simplify that one when the girls do this book.

Anyway, needless to say, we didn't get much other school work done today, but science was certainly memorable.

What did you learn today?

Park Day

Today was park day.  We didn't see any homeschoolers at the park we were supposed to go to so we went to one that was less crowded and picnicked there.

Then we went to the library and played and read and checked out books.

And, yes it counts as school.

What did you learn today?

First Day of School... Again

So, not long after my last post, we found out we are going to have a new addition to our family in October so that kind of messed up all of my plans for the summer and fall.  I took off the rest of the winter and spring to deal with morning sickness and do some planning for a new school year.  I rethought everything I had planned before and decided we needed to get back into academics this summer.  I just haven't taught the kids enough self-discipline to be able to unschool - and I need to keep them busy in school so they're not making as many messes.  They are doing most of the chores because, as usual, pregnancy has been miserable.

All of that said, today we started school - for the second time this year.  I am trying to figure out a schedule that will work with Rock's and Kjeri's work schedules as well as chores, meals, moods, energy levels, and William's nap.  I'll post that here when I figure it out.

Before I had to take Kjeri to work at Arctic Circle, we managed to talk about plans for the yearbook this year and Miri volunteered to do the first week.

After I got back from taking Kjeri to work, we did a history lesson - that took about three times longer than necessary because of an uncooperative child or two - and we managed to do a science lesson each as well.  We are using Story of the World: Volume 3 and I made minibooks for lapbooking for all of the lessons.  We'll do a minibook and glue it onto a sheet of cardstock each day instead of a folder-style lapbook.  When a page is full, we'll get a new sheet of cardstock and file the full one.  At the end of the year, we'll bind the cardstock pages together with my binding machine.

We also managed a science lesson each.  Emmy is doing the Virtual Homeschool Co-op online with Exploring Creation with General Science so I don't have to do much with that.  Eli is doing Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics pretty much on his own with the workbook I created for it.  Miri and Josie are doing Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Animals of the Fifth Day.  I read the lesson aloud to them and then we have minibooks/lapbook activities to go with.  Sarah just kind of listens in on whatever else is going on.

The kids all exercised together on the Wii for P.E. so that is one more subject we got accomplished.

Hopefully things will get better as we get into things and I figure out a schedule.

What did you learn today?