A Week In The Life Of...Monday

Recently some friends started asking what we do all day at our homeschool.  In response, I decided to put together a series to illustrate what a typical week looks like!  Here it is, enjoy!

Today we have nowhere to be!  I love days like this.  We get so much accomplished.

9:00 - We started out the day doing a daily devotional.  Today's was about honoring your mother and father.  The girls drew a picture of our family.  The picture Millie drew of me is hilarious.  I'm really "stacked".  This activity took FOREVER.

9:45 - We did piano, spelling, reading, and grammar. 

I like to do something for "recess" every day.  Today we went to the pool and swam for a while before lunch.  Elise sat in the hot tub the entire time.  Millie and I pretended to be different animals, and race each other from one side of the pool to the other.

  

After lunch I put Elise down for her nap, and Millie and I did math, history, and science.  History was really fun today!  We are learning about Ancient Greece, and worked on the Sports and Entertainment History Pocket.  I read to her about it, and then we had our own mini Olympics in the living room.  We did the long jump and penguin races (which, as you may have guessed is NOT an official Olympic sport).  Millie won all of the events!  Afterwards, she wrote a newspaper article about our mini Olympics. 

That's our day in a nutshell.  Tomorrow will be a bit more interesting...

How This Mom Pulls Herself Out Of A Slump

The trouble with being a homeschool mom is that I'm with my kids all.the.time.  Don't get me wrong, I adore being with them most days, and wouldn't trade our homeschool lifestyle for anything, but c'mon.  Even this mom gets into a slump.  Thursday was one of those "slump" days.  We did our core material (spelling, math, and grammar), but that's all I could muster up the energy to do.  The rest of the day was spend napping and being annoyed.  Soooo, this is what we did on Friday so I could snap out of it:

At 9:30 I had to pull the girls out of the top bunk.  They were busy reading about baby animals.

Our first stop was Rice Park (This was an impromptu stop.  We walked by on our way to the library, and we couldn't resist).  The girls got to see how the ice carvers work their magic.  It was so cool!

 

After that we went to the library to get some books.  Most of the books we checked out are about Antarctica and raptors.  Elise is hugging a Mama Mirabelle movie while Millie checks out.

The girls were getting hungry, so we stopped by the Science Museum of Minnesota.  We went to the collectors corner where Millie used some of her points to get a sand dollar and shark tooth, had "lunch with the dinosaurs", and watched a performance called How Animals Walk.  Millie got to go up in front and demonstrate how to walk like a gorilla.  We ran into cousins Ben and Patrick on our way out.

Then, we went to the Wells Fargo Winter Skate where we met up with friends and skated the afternoon away.  Elise was super excited when the Winter Carnival princesses showed up!  The princesses were so nice, and skated with Millie and her friends!  They had a blast. 

 Of course, we were super cold and wet, and had to swing by Dunn Bros on our way home. 

When we got home, we had 10 minutes to "relax" before heading out to piano lessons. 

Phew.  I'm officially out of my slump now!  What a fun day!  Tonight Millie will go back to the piano school for a piano recital dress rehearsal and pizza party.  I hope she makes it though intact, she's exhausted!

Mid-Year Check-In

We completed the first half of our year!  So far, so good.  In fact, I'm loving it so much that I'm already starting to plan Millies 3rd grade curriculum.  Now, I promised myself that if Millie didn't like homeschooling and wanted to go back to school, I'd be OK with it.  That's still the case, but (lucky for me) she seems to be thriving and enjoying.  A LOT.  Today we had our mid-year check-in to review where we're at, and to see if there are any changes we can make.  Here's what I found out:

Questions for Millie:

Is school fun?

"YES!" (along with enthusiastic head nodding)

What is your favorite subject?

Science (because we do lots of experiments and cool stuff) and History (because we get to go back in time)

What is your favorite outing?

Going to the pool because she loves water and it's good exercise.

What would you like to do more of?

More swimming and art

What would you like to do less of?

Math  (Ooooooooh, not gonna happen.  She really seems to enjoy math.  This answer surprised me)


Questions for me:

Are we making progress?

Yes!  The most obvious progress is her printing.  She started out the year not being able to write her letters on lined paper.  It was very sloppy.  She still needs work on it, but she's come a long way.

Is the curriculum working?

Everything seems to be working except spelling.  Her spelling needs a lot of work.  I'm not really sure how to improve that other than making her correct her spelling mistakes and having her work on weekly spelling lists.  Suggestions would be appreciated!

What is most important to her education this year?

Improving her reading out loud skills and printing.

How can I slow down and focus on each child?

I spend a lot of time with Millie and focusing on her needs.  Poor Elise seems to get left by the wayside a lot more than I'd like to admit.  The steps I'd like to take to fix this problem are 1) read a story every day before her nap time, 2) go to story time at the library every other Tuesday, and 3) let Elise pick out what we're going to do for recess once or twice per week.