Week Four and Week Five Smooth Sailing

Both weeks went fairly well.  We have established a nice routine and it is helping us stay focused and on track.  This is one of the first years in a LONG time that I’ve even bothered with any kind of “schedule” in our homeschooling.  When my older boys were starting out we were very scheduled, but as we added new babies (toddlers,etc) into the mix we became more and more relaxed due to life’s many interruptions.  Now with ds2 in public high school and since my youngest is almost 8, having a schedule is working just fine.  So far lol.

Basically I get up around 7 and have some free time until I wake ds2 at 8.  We leave to drop him off at school at 8:50 (most times the younger boys are up by then.)  When we get home I give the boys until 10 to eat, dress, etc.  Then we start with math, writing and language lessons.  While each boy is on a different level in these subjects, they have workbooks that they can work on somewhat independently at the same time and I am free to monitor and help as needed.

Then we dive into the “group” subjects that they study together, science, history, geography and P.E.  Here is the center set up for our dinosaur study.

Various books, assorted toys and a timeline.  Love the “wanted” poster they collaborated on one day to show what they had learned about an allosaurus.  Ds4 drew the pic and ds3 did the writing, including that the dinosaur was “wanted” for voting for Romney lol.

We are studying various sports for P.E. starting with basketball.  We are using Family Time Fitness and liking it so far.

On Fridays we take a break from regular studies and do only nature and art.  For nature we are doing a weather study and took a walk along the neighborhood to observe the clouds and other seasonal changes, then drew in their nature journals.  We had an unusually wet summer and it was quite refreshing to actually have clear blue skies.  In art we learned about Marc Chagall and the boys painted their own “dream” paintings.

Ds4 went all out with paint and made a pic of his own dreams and made sure to include floating things.  Ds3 took another route and drew his “dream shelf” filled with all the game systems he would like to own.  He missed the point a bit, but who am I to criticize art?  :)