CHRISTEPHI

In my last post I shared what changes we're making to our core curriculum as we cycle back around and repeat Exploring Countries and Cultures from My Father's World. Now I'd like to share how we're organizing our day with a "morning basket." My kids are three years apart in age. From the time the youngest was in kindergarten to now, we have always done school together. Even when they were working on independent lessons, I'd have one kid on the right doing math and one kid on the left doing other math. But partway through our last school year, my eldest up and left us. Without consultant me, she apparently decided that she preferred the solitude of her own bedroom for her independent lessons. In fact, she started even taking some of our group work off on her own to complete independently! (The nerve!) So, we've made some adjustments. As much as I miss the togetherness of our younger years, this new style has its benefits.  For one thing, it allows ...

I am so excited to go through Exploring Countries and Cultures again. The last time my kids were so little -- 3rd grade and Kindergarten. And now they are in 5th and 8th grades! They have grown so much over the past five years. As I began to think about our plan for this year, I realized two things: 1) my gifted eldest child remembers just about everything we covered in ECC the first time, and 2) my younger one hasn't had many of the basics that ECC covers. So I was faced with a dilemma -- how do I adjust ECC to suit the very different needs of both children? How do I shift the focus for my 8th grader to aspects of ECC that she hadn't spent time on before (such as types of governments, imports and exports, etc.) while also taking my younger child through the more foundational information that he missed when he was just a kindergartener?  ECC is designed to be parent-led, family learning, with a supplement for 7th and 8th grade. But I came to the conclusion that I need to deco...

Konichiwa!  We have spent the last two weeks "in" Japan.  This has to have been one of our favorite countries to study so far!  The kids had a blast watching Godzilla with Daddy and obsessing about ninjas all day.  In addition to this, they... ...made koinobori ... ...created an entire menagerie of origami creatures... ...wrote original haiku poetry... ...drank ramune style soda pop... ...fell in love with mochi ice cream... ...turned up their noses at green tea mochi... ...learned about the beach... (Miss M made this image in PicCollage to illustrate her geography vocabulary word). ...and created a relaxing rock garden. We're heading to the Philippines next, Hubby's homeland.  We're closing in on our final push to the end of the school year (remember, we started back in January).  It's been fun, but all good things must come to an end.  Sayonara!

We started My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures about 18 months ago and though I have blogged about very little of it, we have been having a wonderful time!  I won't be able to give a rundown of everything we've done the past year and a half, but here are a few quick highlights. We made clay sun faces while in Mexico. In Brazil we studied the rain forest and made a terrarium with tropical plants. While traveling through Germany we read lots of fairy tales and ate delicious plum cake. For France we took a little picnic in the park with a baguette and some imported French cheese. I bought some unfinished wooden boxes to paint in the traditional style of rosemaling while we learned about Norway. We loved learning about Morocco and trying our hand at some leather tooling. A trip to the zoo yielded a close encounter with a bongo during our study of Zambia. For Kenya we fashioned some ...

We spent two weeks introducing our year ( Part 1 , Part 2 ) and shared Part 1 of our travels in the USA. Here's part two before heading off to visit our neighbors to the north. Bible This year we are reading through the book of Matthew.  To help us along the way, we made bookmarks featuring the name Matthew or Matthaios  in ancient Greek.  This is the language the book of Matthew was originally written in.  The back of our bookmarks have the readings for the year broken down into portions with a space for checking off each one as we go. Miss M never reads her Bible without a dry highlighter in her hand…and she highlights everything she reads.  I think she would eventually like to have her entire Bible highlighted.  Hey, if that's what it takes to get her in the Word, then it's fine by me! Music Somedays when you wake up and it's bitter cold outside, you just need some fresh scones and a tea party to get ya going! For US...

After our first two weeks ( Part 1 , Part 2 ) of introductory material, we were ready to start out on our traveling adventures! We spent the next three weeks "traveling" around the USA, learning about it's geographical significance. Bible One of our texts for this year is Window on the World .  In it we read about a couple different people groups in North America where Bible translation work is on-going.  The kids loved that each section includes a list of items to pray about and to praise the Lord for!  We each take turns lifting these items before the Lord. We also started reading about Christian heroes from Hero Tales, beginning with Dwight L. Moody.  I printed the copywork pages from Mama Jenn.  Miss M enjoys illustrating these pages.  Though at times her zany sense of humor comes through rather strongly! Math Miss M has been trucking along through Singapore Math 2B.  I've been faithfully remembering to have her drill her ba...

It's a new school year at Sycamore Hill Academy!  Miss M is now in 3rd grade and Little Guy is beginning the first of two years of kindergarten (K4 this year and a slightly more rigorous K5 next year). I found these cute printables via Pinterest  and we had a little photo shoot on our first day! We are starting each morning with My Daily Learning Notebooks from Confessions of a Homeschooler.   The PreK one for Little Guy and the cursive variant for Miss M.  This has been hugely popular!  Both kids have gotten started on them before I'm even ready to begin school most days! And they work together on the so sweetly, Miss M lending a hand to Little Guy and he hanging on her every word. I love it! Bible To start off our year, we systematically went through some important concepts: where the world came from, how it got to be the way it is now (the Fall), how different languages began, and the gospel is for all the peoples of the...