CHRISTEPHI

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...

Hello, my lovely blog readers!  Did you miss me?  It's okay if you didn't because your life is probably as busy and insane as my own. Can you believe I didn't blog at ALL in 2017? Not once!  An entire school year in the books without a single post documenting it. But that's okay, because I gave myself permission before the year began to not blog. Sometimes we need to cut things from our schedule for a season in order to put our focus more fully in other areas. But, I'm back for 2018! A super quick recap of what we did last year..... We used My Father's World's Rome to the Reformation for Bible, history, science, music, and art.  Both kids used Singapore Math . Mister E worked through Language Lessons for Today and part of Spelling by Sound and Structure until I realized he already knew how to spell all the words in the book and dropped it. Miss M used the final one third of Intermediate Language Lessons , All-in-One English , and Writing Strands ...

One of the most common questions I am asked about homeschooling is "What math do you use?"  Since the time we started using My Father's World a few years ago, we have stuck with their recommendation of Singapore Math.  Aside from one little foray into  Math Mammoth (which I also loved and highly recommend), we have not found it necessary to supplement at all. This year Miss M has been working through Singapore 3A and 3B.  She was so pleased with herself when she completed level 3A.  Of course, I was proud too! Level 3A focused on working with larger numbers (up to 10,000) and really nailing in those multiplication and division tables.  One day I sat down with a pile of flashcards to drill Miss M and since my camera was handy, I snapped a few shots of her in constant motion.  Apparently acrobatics help with math fact memorization! Level 3B moved on to some topics that really lent themselves to hands-on learning: length, weight, and capaci...

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...

Somewhere along the way I learned about a scheduling method called Sabbath Schooling.  In order to prevent burnout (for the kids or for the mama!), the idea is you schedule six weeks of school followed by one week off, the Sabbath Week! When we first started homeschooling I didn't set out planning to make our school year match the calendar year, but both the kids birthdays are in November and we like to take off plenty of time for the holidays to be with family and attend Thanksgiving and Christmas events.  So it works out best for us to school through the miserably hot summer and have extra time off in the spring and fall when the weather is nice. We finished our last school year just before November and took a 3 month break (our "summer" vacation).  We started our new school year a couple weeks ago, but before I tell you how it's been going, let me share with you our curriculum choices for our new school year. Our core this year is My Father's World's ...

After having been homeschooled through early elementary, my mom put me in public school in the 5th grade.  The school, not having any academic history for me, randomly placed me in the highest level math class (and the lowest level English class).  The first day of class we were given timed tests: 5 minutes to complete a page of 100 addition problems.  Then subtraction.  Then multiplication.  By then I was getting in over my head.  I understood that multiplication was essentially a form of addition, so I started frantically making hash marks to count up to the answers.  I didn't finish my 100 problems, but I struggled through the 5 minutes and did the best I could.  Next we were given a page of 100 division problems.  By this time I was completely overwhelmed and burst into tears.  The teacher gently ushered me next door to the lowest level math class where I spent the rest of the year, cheerfully using my multiplication cheat shee...