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 ...

Looking back on our second week of school this year, I see that we have become a little more comfortable with the process. Our days are proceeding more smoothly; we are transitioning from one subject to the next with less fumbling; and we are able to tighten up our schedule somewhat.  That's a good thing because even though we had fun last week, each day seemed to take forever! Mister E is pretty resistant to the increased workload of first grade versus kindergarten.  He's not very gung-ho about writing or worksheets or reading books. (He already knows how to read quite well, just doesn't choose to spend his time doing so). Since he's only six, I am trying to keep things pretty light. My main goal for him this year is to improve his handwriting, so I try to give him lots of fine motor activities.  Thankfully he loves Legos and spends quite a bit of time with those during his free time, so I know the fine motor skills will come up to par in time. ...

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...

We had another fun week of adventures!  We learned about Jamestown, came up with a chant to help us memorize Matthew 1:21, and learned more about air! Jesus means the Lord saves We learned last week that the name Jesus means the Lord saves, and this week we learned that if we say we belong to Jesus we should live like Jesus would.  I gave Miss M a bracelet from when I was a little girl with the letters WWJD? on it.  Little Guy wanted to know: "Why is there a mystery on it?" which is what he calls question marks. On Tuesday we did an experiment with a cup of water and a piece of cardboard. We were afraid it wouldn't work, but it did !  I queried on Facebook whether it is really air pressure that keeps the cardboard in place and my uncle responded: "In order for the water to come out of the cup, air has to get in. A hole anywhere into the cup would allow air in, which would then cause the system to collapse. But as long as it's sealed, the air p...