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On the Road Homeschooling

As I've said before one of my favorite things about homeshooling is flexibility. You can go on vacation any time you want and/or do school anytime you want. So for us our last vacation was just another opportunity for learning. We brought our workbooks with us and the girls took some time to complete a few pages. At the museum we were able to see and touch things we had seen on books and at the zoo we got to enjoy more of God's wonderful creation. We still have to work on some Geography as we study the states we visited and the 3 big rivers we crossed over. Learning can be lots of fun!

School is still going on, in spite of all the silence. Although I have to confess that I have been a little off track.
A few weeks ago we went to a field trip to Chestatee Zoo (animal refuge) with the Timothy Ministry group. We had a great time seeing all the animals and petting some of them. Lutfi took the day off, so that made the trip even better! I love having my DH around. Sarah was studying birds in her science class this week and we dissected some owl pellets. That was a very interesting experience, we found 3 skulls of rodents in our pellet and many other kinds of bones. In social studies we have been learning about the Lewis & Clark Expedition (inspired by A night at the Museum) and next week we will visit the Lewis & Clark museum in St. Louis, which is making our trip more exciting for the girls. These past couple of weeks we have been talking also about languages and cultures and reading Psalms related to the good use of our speech. We are memorizing parts of Psalm 34. Sarah is doing great with her math, she is very fast doing her addition and substraction sets. Sofia is practicing writing her letters which she does very well and doing some addition too. She is a very good artist and enjoys drawing and coloring a lot.

Weekly Update

Two weeks already! Time goes so fast. We are now going to chapter two on our curriculum. This past week we learned about cities, map skills and map making, rocks, community helpers, life in the city and electricity. The next two weeks we will be studying architecture (castles and churches), changes (land formation, people, culture),more community helpers and kinds of rocks and volcanoes.

Sarah is a very smart girl, she gets things fast, so I don't have to spend much time explaining our lessons to her. She loves hearing the stories from the bible and remembers well everything we read. We start our lessons with the reading of scripture; some times I draw pictures as I read the stories and some other times the girls make their own drawings. They also love when we use a big sheet of paper on the floor so we all add something to the drawing as we read.



Sofia is also a quick learner. Even though I don't require that she sits with Sarah and I for all the lessons she always wants to participate and do homework. Joel is also learning along. He likes to color next to his sisters and sometimes he just grabs his own book and sit next to us as we read. Is so cute, he is such a good little boy.



Having little David has been a challenge. He is still feeding every 2-3 hours and some days he does not want to take long naps so our schools gets interrupted quite often. But we are all learning to be patient and I think the breaks are good for all. I will be trying to do school in segments of no more than 20-30 minutes at a time the next weeks, I think we can be more efficient this way specially with our young students.




I am still doing the walks on Th so this is our PE class of the week and we will eventually turn it into our nature walk too. On Tu when the girls are at the Timothy Ministry classes I walk with my sister around the church, so that means that so far I am not having to give up any of my walking time, which makes me happy since it's the only time that I exercice.

I really enjoy being home with my kids, watching them learn and discover new thins excite me and motivates me to keep going. This is certainly not the easy path. But we know we are doing what's right and in doing so we are glorifying God. Which at the end is the purpose for everything, isn't it?

 

Can't believe we have started a new school year!
We are all excited and full of expectation. The girls had been counting the days and the hours and finally the day came and we are half way through our first week.
This year we are going to be using a Curriculum called Weaver. It is christian based and covers social studies, geography, language arts and science. For math and phonics we will be using Alfa Omega Lifepac. The girls will also be attending some classes at a church that has a program for homeschool kids. This will happen every Tuesday.

Monday was our first day. Daddy took us for breakfast to celebrate the beginning of the new school year. Then we came home and started working on our first lesson. Little by little we will be introducing all the subjects. I do not have a set schedule yet. I'm still working around baby's feedings and toddler's games. I hope to establish a better routine in the next couple week for the sake of everyone!

Another new thing in our homeschool will be notebooking. I've learned about it during this past year and think is a great way to keep record of the things learned.
We will be working on this every Friday. So hopefully I will have some pictures of our first notebooking page by the weekend.

Got to go, baby is crying!

Homeschool Happenings

These are the some of the words Sarah has learned to read this year. We are also working on numbers 1-100 and doing some addition problems. For the most part we try to take it very easy. We enjoy going to the library a lot, and playing lots of pretend games. Both Sarah and Sofia like to draw and color. We also do lots of crafty staff that involves cutting and pasting. There is always something to learn while we do our daily chores, so I don't have to do a lot of planning.
This week we also started to learn the Lord's Prayer as part of our study on prayer during Sunday School.
I enjoy being home with the kids. It is truly a blessing that I would not trade for anything!



Celebrating the birth of Jesus

Sarah cooking breakfast for her family