Plans for the Fall and Review on our Summer

We have certainly had an interesting and busy summer, but we are all ready to get back to a more school based routine.  We have played tons of educational games, watched some great educational shows and movies, played in the sun and water, collected rocks, observed insects and other wildlife, and relaxed with lots of books.  This past week we transitioned into a more structured type of schedule.  The kids have certain chores they have to do each day, and if they do not get all their schoolwork and chores done, they get no tech time or games with us in the evenings.  They have been doing a fantastic job of helping around the house and working on school diligently.  I have to keep sticking to my list and schedule now, so that we all are able to keep the house in order, and get as much fun and school in as possible.

We have done some cool things over the past month.  We put a mostly to scale glow in the dark solar system up on our school room ceiling.  Pluto is in the kitchen.  We are planning to add some constellations over the next couple of weeks.  We have gone to the library several times, and played chess.  We have been learning more about space, and visiting the planetarium at Mystic Seaport.  We have had several playdates, and listened to great audiobooks.  We learned about Pasteur, Jenner, Jane Goodall, and Annie Oakley.  We have taken some great classes locally, and I have been teaching some preschool classes, which I will talk more about in another post.  We have studied fractions, adding and subtracting money, done crafting, building, nature studies, gone fishing, gone to the zoo, reviewed money, learned to climb trees, jump rope, and swing better on a playground swing.  We have gone to the CT Science Center, learned about bees, harvested honey, learned about Machu Picchu, studied plurals and contractions, visited the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, and the Florence Griswold Museum.

We are planning to take a trip this autumn to the Eric Carle Museum, and the Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory.  We will visit the New Britain Museum of American Art, and make frequent trips to Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center, Mashantucket Pequot Museum, and the Mystic Seaport.  We are going to delve into some great read aloud books, starting on some classics, now that the kids are ready.  We are going to do weekly hikes, and bring our science notebooks to write and draw what we observe.  We are going to focus on writing this fall.  So if anyone has good ideas on teaching writing, I would love to hear them!  It is my least favorite subject to teach.  We will continue our cooking and baking lessons, games, geography, and start units on dinosaurs, insects, and Greece and Rome.  Looking forward to a great fall, with trips to the orchard, to pick pumpkins and apples and to do lots of canning and baking!  Can't wait for that nip in the air, and the crunch of leaves, it will be an inspiring season.

Here is our past month in pictures.

Catch Up

It has been a very busy few months.  We have been suffering with crazy allergies, we have all been sick repeatedly, and we just seem to be forever on the go.  Since my last post we have done so much, and covered a variety of topics.  I have been making it a point to add some physical education into our routine, mostly using family time fitness for homeschoolers, we love it.  We also do yoga, as a family, and the the kids do it along to a video.  We have made it a point to spend lots of time outdoors, working in the garden, working on our geocache/letterboxing trail, and hiking.  We set up small obstacle courses for the kids in the yard as well.  In addition we take every opportunity to take the kids swimming, and they are steadily learning to swim and be comfortable in the water.

The kids finished ccd for the year and did a week of vacation bible school.  While they enjoyed it, I was less than thrilled with their teacher, who told me that they would be better, ie know to raise their hands, if they were in public school.  Though this is the same teacher that had to admit that CJ and Eliza were the only two in the class to discuss the bible readings at all, and they did so with insight and understanding.  That was a fun week!

We do weekly baking and cooking projects/lessons.  The kids are learning to use the stove and knives, and are doing great.  They get excited to look at their cookbooks and pick new recipes to try.

We have done painting, coloring, crafting of all sorts, and several art projects.  The kids are loving their scratch art kits, and their spyrograph art kits.  We still do puzzles, playdough, legos, building toys, and other fine motor activities on a regular basis.  We did a solargraphic nature art project with special paper.  The kids thought this was great, I thought once was enough!

We are now members at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and have been going often, and even have gone to the Tantaquidgeon Museum that has a great exhibit on the history of the Mohegan Tribe.  We have been doing lessons in our Human Body kit, and studying space.  Also learning about oceans, and other habitats.  We have been studying maps and learning about latitude and longitude.  We have been watching Cosmos which has lead into some great extension activities and excellent discussions.  I highly recommend buying it.  We have studied insects through a butterfly kit and some great toys we found at a local store.  In addition the kids built a bug house at Home Depot, and have been using them to safely trap and study insects before releasing them.

We also have a membership at the Mystic Seaport and the kids have been enjoying the science exhibits they have for the summer, the planetarium, and all the history they have learned.  This was such a great investment!  The kids have enjoyed their unit on Greek Mythology, and continue to practice chess.  Both kids have finished memorizing all their sight words and read voraciously daily.  They are learning multiplication and taught themselves to add simple fractions through use of a fraction tile toy.  We have learned parts of grammar and sentences through a great game, Silly Sentences, and have been practicing reading comprehension through discussion and written questions.  We have also made several trips to the CT Science Center, as usual.  We are also trying to finish up our Draw Write Now curriculum.

One of the coolest field trips we took was to a replica of the Nina and Pinta that were visiting the Norwich harbor.  We were able to board the vessels and ask questions, and the kids thought it was great!  We bought some cool books and resources to continue studying about the ships of that era, and of Colombus himself.  One of my favorite field trips was to the Mark Twain house, and the New Children's Museum.  That was a great day.  We also studied the Ice Age, and Mesopotamia.  And one of the kids' favorite lessons was all about Mozart.

We have studied Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Neil Armstrong.  The kids took classes on rocks and minerals, and on Castles Kings Queens Knights, both of which were fantastic.  We learned about the Wright Brothers, and the kids have put on a reader's theatre puppet show of Green Eggs and Ham.  Also we acquired two adorable kittens, who are teaching the kids so much about animals, responsibility and paying attention to non verbal clues.

We have not been following actual lessons and curriculum for awhile, but are now going to start buckling down to doing more schoolwork.  It will be a great summer and autumn coming up, with some great topics and field trips planned.  Can't wait to share more!