I decided it was time for a reality check as to how my year is going in homeschool. When I look through my list of goals from August and look at what we’ve done, I wish we would have done more. Maybe I’ll always wish that. I’m very glad for what we have done. The accomplishment that I’m the very happiest about is lapbooking. We’ve learned to use lapbooking very well in conjunction with our studies, especially history. The second thing that I’m very happy about is all the read-a-louds that we did together.
Here is a review of what we actually did August – December 2008.
Bible: Covered the Death of Jesus through the death of the Apostle John and also the first five centuries of church history (My Bible Says lessons.) Two lessons of memory verses from Sealing Touch Jr.
History/Geography: Columbus through Plymouth, four lapbooks each child, lots of read-a-louds from the Truth-Quest American History 1 guide.
Science: a little nature study and what came along with our history studies–animals seen by Explorers, how a compass works, a bit about stars
Math: 1/2 of our Math-U-See books
Language: Lots of copywork and narration in our lapbooks, as well as a few Bible verses
Nature Study: this is an area we need to work on a little more, but we did some random nature study.
Music: Read Hymns for a Kid’s Heart vols. 1 & 2 and memorized Fairest Lord Jesus and Onward Christian Soldiers as well as parts of several other hymns. Also piano lessons.
Art: Another area we need to work on, but we did do some art that made it’s way into the lapbooks.
Service: participated in nursing home program, helped with putting on a vegan cooking school (Zippy even demonstrated.)
Chores worked on: mostly kitchen clean-up
So here’s what I wish we would have done:
more Bible memorization
more Nature study
more Art
more Science (may be mostly nature study)
cooking with my children–I know that doesn’t sound school related, but think of all the things learned while cooking together, not to mention the memories made.
These are the things I want to work harder on in the next few months:
Music: start studying classical composers as well as learn more hymns
Art: I still don’t really know where to start, but I’ve been reading harmonyartmom’s blog and her squiddo lens on drawing and trying to learn from that,
Bible memorization
Nature Study: I’m very interested in harmonyartmom’s blog about nature study and am trying to figure out how to incorporate that into our lives as well. We also plan to be participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count.
Well those are my goals. Wish me the best!