Day Number 80 in Homeschool-Land

I'm feeling the need to document some homeschool info...

We currently homeschool our 3rd grader after having him in a district preschool one year, a private preschool for one year, and a public charter school for 3 years. The decision to pull him has been a mega-humongous gift to him and to our family.

Our 3rd grader's requests before we started homeschooling were 1) history, and 2) a white board.
No problemo.

We are using the following for our curriculum:
  Sonlight Core B+C (World History)
  Sonlight Language Arts with grade 4-5 readers
  Spelling Power
  Handwriting Skills Simplified- Cursive Writing Grade 3
  Teaching Textbooks Math 4
  Life of Fred math supplement
  A hodgepodge eclectic mix of science topics and experiments
  Critical Thinking Co logic & sentence fragments & word roots workbooks

We tried the following and stopped using them:
  Sonlight LA - grade 3 (Sonlight was AWESOME and did the exchange with no problems)
  Sonlight Science B (we may still use some of this in our eclectic-ness)
  Saxon Math 5/4

"Extracurricular activities" include Cub Scouts, and piano lessons starting next week. If I could have all the kids at home for school, we could do some volunteering... Meals-on-Wheels again maybe? Josh liked that when he was in preschool.

And we do have a white board.

We have been experimenting with a 5-week-on / 1-week-off schedule for our school. So far we both love it ~ the weeks off give both of us a break and give me time to plan for the next 5 weeks which has been taking me maybe 5 hours or so. It's hard to know since I end up getting sucked into the Pinterest vortex which ends up being quite delightful I must say :) . One hour or so per week of planning isn't bad at all! I also have time to get projects done, such as painting several rooms in our house and canning. I keep holding my breath because we will still have school when his buddies are done... We may regret this schedule during the first two weeks in June! The relaxed schedule has made it healthier for Josh (and for me) to get out of the school schedule routine and to relax and just enjoy learning.

• Side note: I can't wait to get #2 home to school him. He appears to be excelling at school, but I think he has amazing compensatory strategies and frankly he's fooling some people who aren't paying attention like they should be... I guess I'm just not sure what reading and math he is actually learning/retaining. I feel like at some point he will hit a wall if he doesn't learn the way that's best for him. At home his academics are inconsistent. With his auditory processing issues (APD), he really needs a multisensory approach to learn best, and I hear that most of the work his KINDERGARTEN class does is worksheets while sitting in their seats. NOTE TO THE SCHOOL: That's not how God designed little kids. I will be posting about our "ESL experience" soon. I found a great reading program for APD that I was keeping in mind until #2 came home for school. While talking with our most excellent speech pathologist the other day, she said the program I had in mind was the one the language specialist was thinking of for David! I also have a multi-sensory math curriculum in mind too for David. Someday... someday.

Now we are in December and we paused our formal homeschool curriculum and are doing a Christmas unit study. This is my first unit study and it has shifted and changed course each day during this first week. Good thing I am ok being flexible with our plans! I suspect next week will be much the same. We have covered geography, history, language arts, math, and science topics so I think we are doing a-OK!

After yet another break for Christmas (yep we take lots o' breaks) we will get back to our regular curriculum that I have listed up top.

I joke with friends about how we have an every-other-week-off schedule in our homeschool :) Nah, it's not that bad. I do notice that we have more time for learning even outside of "school hours" with our family school lifestyle. And that we are having more fun.

Now for the fun part:

Our new-to-us piano
Ya we're working on getting a bench :)

field trip!

Josh maneuvering our "laser beam" field

field trip! wall-to-wall trampolines!

homemade geodes

OK, not exactly homeschool.
We did have a parent-teacher conference in Hawaii. Complete with mai tais :)

Stalagmite

nature walk

Sam in his helmet and boots

cooking class

Chinese kid holding a Chinese watercolor painting

Field trip to a kids' play - these kids are friends in our homeschool group 

Nose art courtesy of a SPECTACULAR dismount from his scooter

(((hugs))),
chris

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
       Matthew 6:33