Tuesday around 10 we started school. I let the kids sleep In as well. This was not our plan however we continued to push through and we did school into the afternoon. I was ok with that. What fun is homeschool if we can't be flexible, right? Right! I say that but I have a hard time when my schedule is messed with and this was our FIRST day! I had thoughts of defeat and doubting whether I should start the kids so early. Then I reviewed in my head why we started now to begin with. One reason is because it is so hot outside during late morning and afternoon hours that we would rather be inside anyways so I wanted to be productive. Another reason is because we have a vacation planned for a week in September. Starting now gives us some room on our calendar to be able to do that. One other reason would be because I don't like chaos in the house and that is what happens when we have no structure around here. We get finished with History, Bible, Art, Music, and Science around 11:30. We have lunch. Hannah naps from 1 to 2:30 while we do Language Arts and Math if the kids didn't finish before lunch. Some days they are motivated and some days they need to just take a break and do it on the afternoons. If they are done with everything they get free time while Hannah naps. Also they finish up any chores needing to be done. As you can see this gives structure to my day.
Now on to our first week. Well I have left off Friday because I am going to give a special blog post for our weekend. We are doing something very special with our school and I am so excited about it. For our History, Science, Bible, Art, and Music we are reading through Genesis. We are starting with Creation and learning History chronilogically through the Bible and learning about the events and people as we go! We will be learning the books of the Bible this year which is something that I had the privilege of doing when I was a child when I was in Bible Drill. For Science we are doing Science in The Beginning where we study each of the 7 days of Creation for a few weeks. Sarah and Caleb only do science lessons twice a week. Noah has a 7th grade General Science that we didn't start this week but he participated in Sarah and Caleb's science this week. We talked about what reflection is and how without light there is no color. Without light there's just darkness. If we have Jesus in our hearts light reflects off of Jesus onto us and then bounces off us onto others if we let Him. Great lesson! We did two experiments on which I didn't get any pictures. I will do better next week. We went into a dark closet and used a mirror and flashlight and saw how the light shining into the mirror from the flash light bounced off the mirror and onto the wall and we learned the word reflection. The next experiment included a candle and a CD. We learned about how the rainbow isn't a rainbow without light. Without light we don't have color. We held the CD behind the light of the candle and tilted it and named the colors we saw. Because the CD has a shiny surface it reflected all these colors. We also learned that there is a certain order of colors in a rainbow and an easy way to remember. We met Mr. White Light and his nickname is Roy G. Biv. This is a made up person but it is an acronym for the order of the colors of the rainbow. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue. indigo, and Violet. This was new to me. I had no idea there was a certain order of color in a rainbow. Who knew?!
With History we read a few pages from Dinosaurs of Eden. We learned that the the Bible tells us a lot about dinosaurs but they were not called dinosaurs in the Bible. We read the first chapter of Genesis and a few verses or Chapter 2. We also read Journey Through a The Bible which has a lot of pretty pictures of the days of creation. For our student sheet this week, the kids drew a picture of each of the days of Creation and the box was numbered and written in Greek. We also learned the Greek work biblos. It means book. The kids had to write sentences with this word as well as write the word and meaning every day. I think it stuck. LOL! I didn't get pictures of these in particular but I got a picture of everyone sitting at the table doing their student sheets.
These are my precious students! Hannah was just hanging out because she can. LOL!
In Art they learned about a woman who dove into shallow water, broke her back, and was paralyzed from neck down. She turned her life over to God and ended up being an artist. She drew with her teeth! They also learned that art starts with the very basics of lines. They drew horizontal lines on a piece of paper. It sounds so simple however two of my three students are perfectionist so it wasn't so simple for them! They couldn't use a ruler. It was strictly drawing a horizontal line as straight as they could. Here is a picture of them drawing with a pencil like the lady who ended up being an artist after she couldn't use her hands. This was a lesson in frustration. They were instructed to draw a butterfly and they were to copy it from the book.
Caleb-There was whining from him but he persevered and did well.
Noah-7th grade- No complaining from this guy. He just did what he was told. No questions asked and actually said he enjoyed the lesson.
Sarah-5th grade Sarah enjoyed this lesson too.
They also still practice handwriting. This year they are using Pentime from Rainbow Resource. Noah and Sarah are doing cursive and do very well. Caleb is transitioning from print to cursive this year. They usually do Pentime outside. I do require them to do this daily.
I love to peek into other's lives to see how they do school. I too have several children & perfectly understand the importance of structure vs chaos! Thanks for sharing!
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