Half-baked Homeschool

I've jumped from week 23 to 26 in my wrap-ups, mostly due to working on a very long wrap-up of our "mega feild trip" during week 24. It's still not done, so I'll have to table it for now and move on.

In the meantime, the weeks roll by and we're trudging along. Spring break is upon us, and no one needs it as much as I.

BIBLE
I havent' written a thing about our Bible time in months. It's not that we're totally neglecting it, it's just that it's very scattered and lacks direction. I've been praying for guidance on this, and would welcome the prayers of others.

HISTORY
Our need for a break was illustrated when, despite JUST finishing our chapter on Napoleon, Bearclaw had no idea when, where, or what the Battle of Waterloo was when it came up in another book. Perhaps I rushed us through this chapter just a bit too much.

LITERATURE
Bearclaw finished up his project on Paul Revere (In Their Own Words). He had the option to recite the first to stanzas of "Midnight Ride" while in costume, which I thought would we be a wonderful choice. He, on the other hand, wanted to build a model of Paul Revere's house. Why must this non-crafty, non-project loving mom's kids ALWAYS choose to build something? We actually used a paper model from an history website, but it was so plain I suggested the Bearclaw jazz things up a bit. He said, "What about adding the roads around the house?", so we found an 18th century map of Boston (I love Google Images) and marked the location of Paul Revere's house and the Old North Church, for good measure (ok, so that part was my idea).

It turned out to be a pretty cool project:



Shortbread studied the letter "K", so we read Katy No-Pocket . Going by letters has really allowed us to get through a lot of the books that I really wanted to fit in this year. Our family reading tends to be dictated by the reading level and studies of the eldest, so I thought these wonderful picture books might be something Shortbread would never be able to appreciate. So glad I included them in his curriculum!

LANGUAGE ARTS
Bearclaw's humanities class is working on their final essay of the year. It's his first multi-paragraph paper, and thankfully, the teacher is taking it slowly. He is writing a persuasive paper on "why reading is the best pastime." This week he organized his brainstorming ideas into a web outline.

Only a few more weeks of letter studies for Shortbread. I think we're both ready to move on to some meatier phonics.

MATH
Primary Mathematics 3A is still in review mode, so no math trauma about it yet. Bearclaw is reviewing subtraction now. We are still struggling with some mistakes that come more from lack of focus than lack of understanding. I need to be more consistent about implementing some possible techniques to address that.

Soon Shortbread will finish his kindergarten math book and be ready for Primary Mathematics 1A. I'm trying to decide if we should go ahead and move on now (we'll do some sort of math this summer no matter what) or if we should wait and start 1A when we start first grade. Of course, then I have to come up with something for him to do this summer...

SCIENCE
I think I've frequently been neglecting science in my wrap-ups. How did that happen? I'm a former science teacher. Well, maybe it just goes to show that I'm not all that concerned about science for 3rd grade and kindergarten. Still, I love our curriculum, and working through the experiments with another homeschool family has been really enjoyable. This week, we talked about polymers and made "goop" out of glue and borax.


Visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to catch up on more Wrap-ups.