Homeschool Weekly Wrap-up

Well, we have decided to participate in this linky so this Mama can have a little more accountability as far as staying on schedule and including fun activities in the school year.  Just in case you've never been here we are a homeschool family of 7 we have 3 school age girls and 8 month old twins. We made a drastic change to our homeschool this year, when the twins arrived, that has worked very well for our family.  The changes that we have made have really enabled me to be a better teacher and planner. I have also enjoyed seeing how the Lord has worked the curriculum together and how they beautifully overlap one another.

Kindergarten: Our Kindergarten is simple we do reading, math, handwriting, piano, art & read alouds. This week we restarted Teach Your Child to read in 100 Easy Lessons. Sugar Pie had a lot of angst about restarting this book that had given her fits during the first semester. We had stopped this curriculum in the fall when it was clear she was not ready to blend her sounds and we started a simple and inexpensive phonics based program Adventures in Phonics by Christian Liberty Press. However, she is now doing really well blending her sounds and we are flying through the book.  We are still using the Adventures in Phonics to along with Teach Your Child to read in 100 Easy Lessons to teach the phonics rules & blends. She is doing well progressing through Horizon's Math. In the next couple of weeks I will  the use of Kathy Troxels Addition Songs & Quarter Mile Math. When she finishes school I am going to encourage her to draw.

2nd Grade: Our 2nd grader uses Christian Light for Language Arts and this week she is moving to the next workbook after completing her Unit test. She really enjoyed writing the ending to a story in her LA's this week. But Mama decided we would start supplement the writing portion with  Understand Writing by Susan Bradick. In her Christian Light Science she is studying animal habitats. This curriculum has her do additional research on animal that she is interested in. So we went to the library and picked up about 30 books to cover the animals she is currently studying. She has enjoyed reading through the books during her afternoon draw/read/research time. She loves her Christian Light Reading although she had to catch up a little this week. We use Our Christian Heritage which covers History, Geography& government. Right now she in the geography unit where she is studying each continent and the animals found on that continent this beautifully overlaps her Science. She is also making a days of creation book as she goes through the geography unit. For Math she is using Horizons  she is almost done with the first book and getting ready to start the second. We never complete an entire math book I just make sure we get through all the new information and we start up again the next year! She has been rather slow to complete her work this week and she has not been able to utilize the extra hour for reading/researching as much as I would like her to see her doing. This week in her free time she has been reading more Box Car Children series that she loves.  

5th/6th grade (Special Education)

Our 5th/6th grader has mild autism and this is starting to factor more into my curriculum choices then it has in the past. This has been a hard year for spelling and the second semester of Math. The problem with Spelling (Christian Liberty's Building Spelling Skills is a great program and worked well for our other kiddos just not this one) is that autistic children do not learn the meanings of word by hearing them in context. So she is spending a lot of time looking up the definition and she still has no idea what it means. Accordingly, she is mispronouncing it, not adding it to her vocabulary and using it improperly in her sentences. So I have been looking for a different spelling program and I think I have found one that will work for her. It's ACE's Word Building curriculum all the definitions for the words are given to the student the student has to write the words, make sentences & do some activities. Additionally, it has less words for her to learn which I think has been somewhat daunting for her. After we finished Horizons 3 we switched to Saxon 5/6 with a Dive CD and we have not had a smooth transition. Part of it may be that she does not like to watch video and even though it is really short she has a hard time paying attention to it. I am hoping to find a more instructive Math Curriculum for her but for now we are plugging forward in the Saxon Math. Right now we are sticking with the basics for this student. When we added history and science she seemed to get lost in her day. Right now we have been able to keep her focused on the tasks at hand.

Encrichment: During February's special focus on Black History Month we are keeping it simple by reading a couple of pictures book and I am reading the novel Freedom Train by Dorthy Sterling.  We are also going on a field trip to visit the local African American History Museum for the first time. All 3 of school age kids take piano lessons on Thursday. We have had a pretty good week of practice. I have had to move the practice time from the end of the day to the beginning to ensure it did not get lost during the mad rush at the end of the day to get everyone feed,bathed and put to bed. They also have an art class on Wednesdays where they are learning to draw portraits. Unfortunately the art teacher has been sick the last 2 weeks but I am hopeful that we will have art class this week. We are not currently studying classical music but I think I'll restart that in the the next couple of weeks. We are really mellow in our study of Classical music and now that our lives have calmed down and school is going so well I think the children would both enjoy and benefit from studying a classical composer.

That's about it around here at Roosterhill Academy so what's going on in your homeschool?
or check out what's going on in homeschools around the country at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers' Weekly Round-up!