School Room Snapshot 2014

                           

Charlie made the picture of our theme this year:

“The Savior was the Master Teacher…We would see most of His ministry being teaching. And yet almost none of that teaching was done in a church building. His teaching was out where the people were. It was in highways and byways and hillsides and seashores and in homes.

~Elder Holland

 Jacob writes letters to exciting people and has received a letter back every time thus far!
 We had special visit with the Brenan's. It was such a treat to spend some time with their family! We all fell in love with the little boys- such darlings. Craig is a professional trombone player (currently number one on the national jazz list FYI) so he did a mini trombone session with each of the kids on their own instruments. It was seriously awesome. I love being inspired by talented people.

Jenna and I have known each other for a long time. We don't get to see her very often but when I do see her I always feel so happy. She's one of those sunshiney people. 

 Jacob loves math so we made a math kit for him to play with in his free time. 

It's full of math games and puzzles etc.

 We are starting Hazel young on the geoboard.

Scarlet is progressing so quickly already. She's like a human sponge. I wish my brain was that spongy. 

 

 Our first study unit was about bridges. Bridges are actually really extra amazing 

when you start learning about them.

 All the different types of bridges.

 Jacob's Love of Learning class is Chess this semester. 

Jane is doing Kitchen Class and Charlie is doing Wood Burning.

Like Magic

I want to write about school today because it was one of those everything-went-smooth-and-easy days. If I record these days then on the brutal-torture days I can come back to these posts and remind myself that there's good days and bad days.

When we woke up, 8 am, it was a rainy cozy day. The kids went outside to take care of the bunnies and I made hot chocolate and oatmeal of breakfast, then I had time to read my scriptures before they came in. Once they came in, we ate, then got dressed and washed up and cleaned rooms and came up to the school room. We had a scripture lesson about Obedience and we each wrote a page about that for our scripture notebook. We also practiced the hymn we've been working on, Where Can I Turn For Peace

Next, the kids wrote out their spelling words for the week using our Apple Letters, which are basically fancy Scrabble tiles.

Then, we did about an hour of math.

Then, we looked over the file folder I got out for today which was a temperature matching game.

Then, the kids got out their projects. They are each making a lapbook (my friend Amber shared this idea with me in June so I had the summer to learn about them and I think the kids will really like it).  We gathered our supplies (library pockets, mini file folders, glassine pockets, velcro, accordian paper, brads, paper clip, staples, pencil crayons, tape, glue, ruler etc.) and got started. We had already checked out our books from the library and perused them, so we were ready. Jane chose to study horses, Jacob is doing whales and Charlie is doing Peregrine Falcons because he is reading The Far Side of the Mountain.

***Sidenote: I bought a bucket jockey from Home Depot for $10 and stuck it on a bucket to contain all our lapbook supplies and projects. Today was the first day we tried it out and it worked like a charm.

When we finished and came downstairs for lunch, it was 2:30 pm. I couldn't believe the time. We usually come down much earlier but today was just flowing. We had lunch and then I helped Charlie with his piano practice and Jane with her cello homework.

DONE for the day! It was sunny out by then so the kids went out to run around for a while. My visiting teachers came over, Tim got home, I went to the gym. Through out all this, Scarlet is potty training and up to this point in the day she had no accidents so that was an added bonus.

Jacob taught us a beautiful FHE, we had healthy fruit pizza, Timmy read stories then put the kids to bed.

It was a fulfilling day and I am grateful because this is what gets me through the long, frustrating ones. I think it probably had a lot to do with me starting the day off with my own scripture reading, having a plan for the kids ready and not having anything else scheduled to interrupt us. 

So today, I love homeschool. I'll see how tomorrow goes and then I'll know if that statement is still true.