The Back to School Post

Finally, we have made it back to school. Today finishes up our second week. Things are moving along nicely. My plan was to have the whole school year planned and the paperwork ready to pick up and go in file folders. Well, I'm am still working on that. However, the first two weeks that I did get planned out, worked out very well for Aly. She enjoyed having her own checklist to mark her work off. Of course, this led to an Aly funny this week when I noticed that she had marked off something we hadn't accomplished yet. The conversation went something like this...

Me: Aly, you marked off Bible. We haven't done Bible yet today.

Aly: Yeah, I know.

Me: Well, why did you mark it off then?

Aly: I just like having things marked off on my list, it makes me feel like there is less to do.

So I guess she's liking the checklist idea, even if she hasn't really grasped the concept :) This year we will be doing a study of countries and cultures. We began with just an overview of geography and our hands-on project was to make a world cake showing the continents. Much harder than it looked. Aly finally had me try to draw the continents and I didn't do any better. Aly, being the little chef that she is, loved baking and icing the cake.

Teaching Textbooks Math is great. Aly does the lessons on the computer. Totally takes this non-mathy mom out of the equation. I love it and so does she. Aly loves her new grammar book (Junior Analytical Grammar). We are picking up the pace a bit in spelling and handwriting. This year I'm having her do more writing. We are starting out with some story starters and she has had a couple creative little paragraphs. Our read aloud is The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I had to make her pick from a few classic books for her reading assignment. She doesn't like to try new things in reading. So her first book was The Mouse and the Motorcycle. She finished it this morning and decided she really liked it. For fun she is reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Last week she had all her Playmobil figures lined up in the Roman arena and they all had Greek Mythology names and were acting out various battles and scenes (and a few make believe ones) from the book. For science we are planning a study of biomes and habitats, as well as adding in the Land Animals of the Sixth Day book. We went outside and looked around our backyard for nature and found a bunch of rotting apples from our apple tree were feeding butterflies, flies, chipmunks, and the groundhog (or hogs, not sure how many there really are). There were between 6 and 10 butterflies flying around the bottom of the tree. Aly got this picture of one of them...

Skyeler's work is going well, too, though she's working pretty independently. We have tried to incorporate her interests into her schooling this year and still leave time for her to explore some of the extras that strike her fancy. History is the Middle Ages. A time period she loves. Right now it is mostly reading. We hope to add some field trips to make this come more alive. Algebra is Algebra in any language. She's just trying to plow through. Same with grammar, where she is just doing a refresher workbook. Literature will be two fold. She'll be reading some Medieval Lit along with her history assignments (for instance, this week she began parts of the epic poem Beowulf). Also, we will be doing the Movies as Literature course with friends of ours. In science she is working on finishing up biology from last year and then will be moving on to chemistry. She is most excited about her two electives: Photography and a Jane Austen Literature study. Photography began last week. She's beginning with an Amanda Bennett unit study and then we will move on to various online resources from there. One of the biggest things with photography will be to have her out practicing with the camera multiple times a week. She has already been roaming around outside the house looking for something interesting to photograph and I am hoping to get out to some of the metro parks for more practice. Our Jane Austen Lit Study will start in October with friends and we are all excited. We are going to have the girls keep a blog of their work during the study, so stay tuned for a link. Skye has been using her free time to practice her piano and brush up on some Photoshop skills. She has been using Photoshop in our co-op Yearbook class and this year she has branched out to try some other things. She was excited to have a montage of book covers that she had Photoshopped together posted on the Bryan Davis Dragons in our Midst forums. I am trying to foster this talent and let her have time to explore and experiment.

All in all a great start to the new school year. Co-op begins in a week and a half and then we will be in the full swing of things. I always have hopes to update weekly or so, but life does happen and I have no idea if I will be able to keep up or not.