A Peek at Our Homeschool

One of the best things about blogging regularly is the opportunity to look back at our homeschool year and see how we have grown.  I enjoy writing an end of the week post by subject for our homeschool.  Today I thought I would give you a peek into our most recent week.

Gospel – We begin our homeschool day with scripture time.  This week we read Old Testament Stories about King David, King Solomon, and Elijah, worked on memorizing a scripture, and practiced a song.

Math -My 4, 5, and 8 year old learned about inequalities this week.  We used Math U See Beta, watched the lesson together, and then got out chocolate chips.  We like using food in our math.  I find it really reduces the amount of tears we get per lesson! Each child was given a small amount of chocolate chips.  We then paired them up and used cards with the <, >, = symbols in between children to show who had more, less, or the same amount of chips.  Those chocolate chips were eaten, more passed out, and the game repeated.  It also was great practice in counting for the younger children!  Later in the week my oldest did a worksheet and then taught me the concept to show she really understood it using manipulatives.  She also played on Mathletics, a product we reviewed HERE.  The younger children counted manipulatives and played games.

Phonics - My preschoolers use Rocket Phonics daily (read my review HERE).  It is wonderful!  They like the games, and both of them enjoy reading to me.  We also have been reviewing the Beehive Reader 1 (read my review HERE) and I got this picture of Emma, my 4 year old, reading it for fun.  She was doing pretty well with it on her own.  She is one stubborn determined little girl.  I’ve found that if she wants my help she will ask for it, so I try not to offer too often.  She reminds me when I forget.

Firefighter Unit Study -Our main study this week and next is firefighters.  I’ve blogged our plans and book list HERE.  This week we learned about the history of firefighting from bucket brigades through the present day.  We learned the requirements to become a firefighter and a little about their equipment.  Next week we will be visiting our local fire station.  Makayla also has some pages to do related to this unit.  We printed them and use a 3 prong folder to hold her work.  These pages include a quiz, writing prompts, firefighter related math problems and graphs, etc.  The younger children colored a fire engine and helped play the board game we made in a file folder.

Sign Language - We learn sign language with our embarrassingly large Signing Time collection.  This week we focused on signs related to our unit study like: firefighter, help, hot, hurt, water, stop, truck, trees (a la forest fires).  This is a picture of Joseph signing ‘firefighter’.  I ask each child to sign something and they show everyone how to do it, or they quiz me and see if I make any mistakes for each sign.  We also have some basic signs we are helping the 1 and 2 year old learn.  You can read the story of why we chose sign language HERE.

Fun Field Trip -We visited the police station on Monday to wind up last week’s unit on police officers.  The kids had a lot of fun seeing the holding cells, munitions room (with a machine gun!), dispatch, weight room, and more.  They even got to climb in Officer Delancy’s police cruiser and explore.  It was a lot of fun.

50 States Exam -Makayla has worked for months with the first semester of the Star Spangled States curriculum.  This week she took the end of the year exam over the course of 4 days.  In the exam she labeled all 50 states on a blank map, matched some states to their capitals, and wrote the postal abbreviations for all 50 states.  The last task was to find mystery states.  She had a list of 3 to 4 states that all share a border with another state, and had to use the map she had labeled to find that mystery state.  She felt so accomplished when she finished the exam.  I think it really reminded her just how many states she has learned about.  The only hard part?  Keeping her from telling me some of the stories she remembered from favorite states when she was supposed to be working on the exam.

Read Aloud - We try to have at least one chapter book going as a family all the time.  Our current book is Call of the Wild by Jack London.  I’ll be honest, I remembered having this as a child and my copy must have been a children’s version.  The original is a bit brutal, so I’m editing a tiny bit on the fly, but we are all enjoying it.

Random Fun - We played with lacing cards, worked puzzles, made art masterpieces, wrote letters on dry erase boards (preschoolers), and read more books!

That about wraps it up for my family, so why don’t you tell me some of the fun that happened in your homeschool this week?

Tristan is wife to one good man and mother of 5 blessings.  She blogs daily at Our Busy Homeschool and would love it if you stopped by for a visit!

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Tagged as: customizing learning, unit studies, weekly plan