Half-baked Homeschool

Did you ever start something, fall behind, and then resist picking it up again because you were so far behind that the thought of catching up overwhelmed you? So it is with the blog for me. I also had this ridiculous idea that I would blog after all of my other work was finished. You know, instead of sitting around twiddling my thumbs as I usually do.

One of the purposes of this blog is to log our homeschooling activities and accomplishments. In the six weeks since I last posted we've been working our way through the humanities curricula for third grade and kindergarten provided by the hybrid school we're using this year, while continuing with our own math and science programs. The boys, especially Bearclaw, have been challenged by the amount of work required for the humanities program.

Shortbread's kindergarten class at the hybrid program is focusing on early phonics and handwriting as they go through a set of "letterbooks". As you can imagine, there is one book for each letter. They are cute, but on the first day of use, Shortbread exclaimed, "That looks like a baby book!" He had a point. However, he's warmed to using them and loves going to class, taking part in "sharing time", and playing with his friends.

Bearclaw's class puts a heavy emphasis on grammar, using both Shurley English and some exercises from Easy Grammar. The best thing to come from this is their recent work in writing, which has helped Bearclaw learn to outline and write a 3-point expository paragraph. This is not something I expected him to be able to do this year, and I'm happy to have had the help of his teacher in working on it.

The third grade curriculum also includes spelling, vocabulary, and critical thinking, but history consumes the bulk of time not spent on grammar. Using Biblioplan and SOTW, we've been using Bearclaw's history work as our family history study. Currently we are studying the early colonial period of America, beginning with Jamestown and moving on to Plymouth Plantation. Our studies have included investigating the Native American populations that the colonists were in contact with, and the growth of the slave trade in North America. We've also looked at what was happening in Europe during this time, including the government of England and Scotland and the Thirty Years' War. Throughout it all, we've seen the overarching impact of the divide between Protestantism and Roman Catholocism.

Here are some of the highlights:

The first day of classes-

Making Native American pinchpots and colonial hand-dipped candles-

Making hasty pudding as the Indians taught the colonists-

And making homemade shortbread when we studied Scotland-

So now I think it's time I joined Kris's Weekly Wrap-Ups. Six weeks of review forces me to drag around too many photos!

I've finally gotten all of my materials together for this post. When I look back over everything we did this year, I start to think we actually accomplished some things. Now I just have to avoid glimpsing at the elaborate plan I made before the school year began...

Finished or not, history has been loads of fun, and I especially enjoy the fact that it's a subject we can all do together. We're using a somewhat classical model in our homeschool, while still giving a nod to Charlotte Mason and other styles (how original). So far, the four-year history cycle is working for us, and this was our Medieval/Renaissance year.

We used Story of the World as our spine and supplemented with both independent reading for Bearclaw and read-alouds for all of us. Most of those came from Biblioplan, which is a multi-level history curriculum comprised mostly of book lists. It's a very useful resource, and it provides, in each unit, independent reading ideas for each age group and a family read-aloud selection.

Some of our favorite read-alouds this past year:

Saint Patrick: Pioneer Missionary to Ireland by McHugh
Beorn the Proud by Bulla
The Door in the Wall by Angel
Explorers Who Got Lost by Sansevere-Dreher

We also enjoyed the following recordings by Jim Weiss and Greathall Productions:

"King Arthur and His Knights"
"Arabian Nights"
"Shakespeare for Children"
"Galileo and the Stargazers"
"Masters of the Renaissance"

I find the Activity Guides for Story of the World to be fairly user-friendly, so we did the map work and, sometimes, the review questions for each chapter. Notice I didn't mention the activity projects. I don't have anything against activiy projects, but I always schedule them for Friday, and by Friday I'm in a different mood than I was in when I wrote the lesson plan. Thankfully, the children attneded a homeschool history/arts program on Wednesday afternoons, so they did a multitude of projects. And I did not.

Here are some of the projects/pieces of art they created this year:

We also started a timeline this year, using the figures from Homeschool in the Woods, which has been very helpful (especially for me):

Of course, what the kids remember most are the few big projects we managed to complete at home, including dressing up as Celtic warriors (or maybe something closer to how they were depicted in Bravheart) when we kicked-off in last August:

And the grand finale this spring- a medievel feast with our dear friends, complete with period dress, entertainment, and authentice recipes from Gode Cookery:

The one thing we're still working on is the Reformation. I don't think we'll do any stake burnings, but I'll post pics if I change my mind.