Speaking of Academics

I haven't been doing a weekly report the last few weeks. I mostly do these for myself, to help me see that we really are doing some work even if it doesn't always seem like we are. Plus it is just nice to have a record of what we have done. So bare with me as I run down what we have been up to

In May we read through the Kaya American Girl series. My kids loved them. We learned all about native americans and Salmon. When I asked Sophie what she would like to do for the next month she of course said she wanted to read the next American Girl series. The next girl, moving ahead in time is Felicity a colonial girl. I thought this would be a great study and we could take the whole month of June to study about the colonial times and the people and events that lead up to the Revolution. Great lead in to the Forth of July. I didn't jump right into the colonial period without talking first about the European settlers that came and why they wanted to colonize the Americas. We started with a few books about the 13 colonies. We even read a book about Pocahontas. We finally started the Felicity stories and Sophie raced through the first two in one day. Today we started the third book in the Felicity series but have also read a bunch of picture book biographies of George Washington, Patrick Henry, John Handcock and Sophie's favorite Benjamin Franklin. We have also looked at a few picture books about the Boston Tea Party and of course looked through Felicity's world. While at the library I found a CD of music from the time period which is interesting. It has explanations that go along with the songs so you know what each one is about. I have listened to other collections by this same producer and they are all really good. Yesterday after church we introduced the kids to one of our favorite games. We have avoided this game with them because of the number of pieces and such. But they all loved it and we talked about how it related to our studies about colonization. I am sure we will be playing it again and again in the future.

I have sort of been winging it through most of these American Girl Studies but somehow we are learning a lot and enjoying the studies.

While at the library one day a few weeks ago I was looking through the biographies section where the composers are all grouped trying to think of who we should study next. Sophie came up and started to look through them with me. She found this book in the Great composer series by Mike Venezia.and she decided that for June we would study The Beatles. I thought, "why not". So we have been listening to an edited assortment of Beatles music in the car as we drive around. We also checked out the book based on the Beatles Yellow Submarine Movie. My kids love it. Sophie said it reminded her of the Wizard of Oz.

I never did pick an artist for the month. We still have our Van Gogh pictures up so I guess we are looking at his works for a little longer.

Sophie has been doing great with her Math. She doesn't fight it as much and seems to remember the addition and subtraction facts better and better all the time. She is also understanding the idea of multiplication and division. When we baked cookies last week we counted how many cookies were on one pan and how many pans we used. So we could figure out how many cookies we baked. We are still plugging away at our Singapore Math book as well as a few supplement books and hopefully will get through them by the end of summer.

We of course are still doing our outdoor hour challenges but I thought we needed to jump into some earth science which is next in our science rotation. So we are starting with seasons and will move into weather. Today we read a few books explaining why we have seasons and then made a poster with a circle divided in the four seasons. Sophie labeled and then decorated each section. Then she arranged the months around the seasons according to when we experience those seasons.

I still can't seem to fit in grammar or language arts. I have a hard time even getting Sophie to do any copy work or writing practice. She just hates it and I have a hard time requiring it since I don't want her to hate it. I am still thinking about this one. She really hates workbooks and busy work. So I need to be creative.

Well that is what we have been doing and some of what we will be doing during the next little bit. We aren't really taking a break for Summer. We take a few days here and there but plan to always have a few things going the whole time.