What Have We Been Up To?

It has been a LONG time since I wrote anything here. We haven't been overly busy, but I just haven't been motivated to write. Since I finally put the pictures from my phone on the computer, I thought I would share those along with some of the highlights since we started school in early August.

We usually start the first week of August, but it takes some time to get into the swing of things after summer, so we usually go a little slower. Last year I tried something different,  instead of diving into each subject right away or even just a couple, we spent a week reviewing one topic or subject. This year we only had two theme weeks, one of which we spent learning about the Olympics, London, and England as those were in the news.

These are lapbooks about Buckingham Palace and the Royal family. While they were designed by In The Hands of a Child, they are only available to subscribers of Schoolhouse Teachers.

These are the Olympics lapbooks. They are a compilation of mini books from different sources. Some of them are from a set I bought, others I found for free online.

Another of our topics this year was geography. Geography seems to be something we don't get to on a regular basis during the rest of our year, so I wanted to get some basics in. We examined the differences between globes and maps, types of maps, map features, and map reading.  I wanted to keep things interesting so we used some library books, read and looked at websites, played some geography and map games, solved geography related mysteries, and made a scale drawing of our property. A couple of the books we used were Great Map Mysteries, Great Map Games, and Comic Strip Map Skills. We also read Around the World in 80 days by Jules Verne.

We have also been able to attend the monthly homeschool class at our library again this year. The topics this year have been drawing with perspective and personal finance.

We also had a field trip to the local history museum continues for their monthly homeschool event. The theme in September was Olympics.

We have also had fun playing this game which I one this fall. I submitted a made up word and definition when OUT OF THE BOX was having a contest and I won. This is an expansion pack to go with the original game. We don't have the full game so we have just made up our own way of playing. It has been a lot of fun to make up our own wacky words to match definitions.

Piano lessons have also continued throughout the summer and this fall. A couple weeks ago daughter had the privilege of playing in the competition at the local teachers music conference. She did a good job and even exceeded her expectations by receiving a score of 1. Now she is eligible to play at the teachers' state conference next month. 

 

So here are just a few highlights of the last few months.