Good morning, friends! I can't believe that we have completed 15 weeks of school already. With only three weeks left to officially complete quarter two! So we'll call this a double quarter update. This school year has been our best year yet. I say that mainly because we haven't had tears over school work. That can be so tough when your child is having a hard time trying so hard to understand something and things just aren't clicking. Hard on them and on us parents! So this year has been something unexpected.
With the kids being in grades 6 and 7, the workload is more so this is where the struggle has come in. No tears, but a bit of grunting through our days. As I was scrolling my camera roll for some pictures, I only found a few. Sigh. I've been really bad at taking pictures of life this year.
We started our year at The Monticello Plantation, the home of Thomas Jefferson and up to 130 people enslaved.
1st day
Some of our curriculum picks this year. This year is a huge refresher year (for math) to try to get equations to stick and make high school math a lot easier. So, we are using a new curriculum, Math U See and we started with Delta. Which is division. Xander only has 2 lessons left, which he'll be done with this week. He'll then begin the fractions book. Sterling will likely start fractions in January.
Sixth grade. We never started Botany. We decided to complete this in the spring, since that's growing season so it made more sense. Sterling actually started a zoology unit, but was bored with it and now she's working the same science as Xander. That was our big switch up this year.
Xander is my science boy, but this year his workload is heavy and he's determined he's not into science anymore. Hopefully by the end of the year he'll like it again.
Other subjects, not pictured are history, poetry, news, reading, fallacy, art, geography, habit, and life skills.
In history, we're using two curriculums. We're almost done with Story of the World, Ancient Times. We're also using Uncle Sam and You, by Notgrass. Both of these have been a wonderful addition. We use narration with Story of the world, and I print out worksheets for Notgrass.
In Poetry we are studying Robert Louis Stevenson. I have them memorize one poem each week. (we're working on memory this year too)
For news and current events, it seems like every homeschool family watches World Watch News, but we stick to CNN10. I don't see a reason to switch, there is nothing wrong with CNN10.
This year for reading we went away with reading skills because they've done it since third grade and have a great understanding of how to identify different parts of reading. So, I'm letting them pick chapter books and they're giving me book reports. It's working great!
We are using The Fallacy Detective to recognize bad reasoning. I wanted to start this last year, but didn't, so I'm glad I brought it in this year. It's a great addition and strikes up some good conversation on how to recognize bad reasoning.
In art we are working on watercolor. It has been so much fun.
For geography, we are using Simply Charlotte Mason's Visits to Africa.
We are working on the habit of attention.
Life skills we are working on; cooking, cleaning, laundry, money and financial literacy, and yard work. These have been our focused areas, along with other smaller skills.
We took a break at the end of August and went to North Carolina, rented a house with a pool, and visited with our friends. It was the perfect break.
Our next field trip was to Route 11 Chips
And as we drove home we decided to stop at Luray Caverns. This day trip ended up being really fun and interesting.
We took our school work to the deck when the weather cooled down. Even when the temperature was in the 90s, our deck is always cooler with a nice breeze. It's been the perfect addition to our home.
We had a rough two weeks at the beginning of our year because our new puppy was sick, but we managed through it. The little dogs are always at our feet or in our laps while the kids work.
We just got back from our fall break. It was fun! That will be a post by itself next, here's a sneak peek.
Have a wonderful day!
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