In Annie’s words: “Sixth grade is a lot harder than fifth grade!  But I like it!”

So I’m beginning to question whether attempting to complete 2 Sonlight cores this year was the best idea.  The only core we’ve ever used previously was Core K, which was a fun, sweet year snuggling on the couch and reading fun books.   Core 1+2 is more of the same, but Core 6 is A LOT of reading.  A LOT.

Other than that–everything seemed to just fall into place very naturally.  Here’s what our basic day looks like.

9:00 — prayer, pledge of allegiance and then we read a bible story together from the Golden Children’s Bible.

9:15 — Annie goes and does her religion (and then starts her reading) while I read to the twins (religion, history and read aloud)

10:00 –everyone does math

10:30 –Annie finishes her reading while the twins read (Dino boy still reads to me)

10:45 — I get the twins started on their lang. arts and then Annie and I start in on her reading.  We basically read until Cutie wakes up from her nap, and then finish whatever is left at the next nap.

11:30 — break and have lunch.

*************free time after lunch**************

1:30 — Annie and I finish her Core reading

2:00 — Annie does her lang. arts

If it’s M/W/F we also do science in the afternoon.  Otherwise we’re done for the day.

I’m contemplating just reading to the boys from Child’s History of the World and using the read alouds for bedtime stories, just to save my voice a bit.  They aren’t big fans of sitting for long periods of time listening to stories.   They’re boys, lol.  But we’ll see.  We’re already about to drop the first read aloud–Red Sails to Capri.  We are just not enjoying the story at all, and from what I can tell, it’s not going to get any better.

It’s funny how I decided to use Sonlight to make my days easier.  The strange thing is–I like having the work done for me, but I also don’t like it.  I feel like we’re stuck and don’t have time to add or change.  Of course, I can always tweak and change, but then it’ll be something different.  I think we’ll probably end up doing Core 6 over two years, or at least a year and a half.  The twins just seem to do better with straightforward, workbookish type schooling.  Which drives me crazy, but there you go.  We’ll see what happens with their core.  It may get dropped altogether, or just tweaked into something that suits them better.  I need more than 1 week to decide entirely.

We had our first day of school today, and it went really well!   Here are a few pics from our day:

Monkey bread--our traditional first day of school breakfast.

Everyone happily working on science.

The only downside to the new school year so far is the typical “Sonlight laryngitis”, lol.  My throat is killing me right now, and I didn’t even finish all the reading!  Oh well, we’ll catch up as soon as my voice adjusts.  That’s what I get for tackling two cores this year!

This week we are finally wrapping up the American Revolution–it feels like we’ve been studying it for years.  The kids are so glad to be finishing it up.  It’s been an enjoyable study, but we’re all ready to be done now.

We planted 18 sunflowers this past weekend.  I don’t know why I keep trying, every time we plant them, they get eaten by the neighborhood critters.  This time we’re starting them indoors in an egg carton, and when they get tall enough, we’ll move them outside.  I refuse to get my hopes up, but it would be nice if even just a few of them can survive.

Tomorrow is Cutie’s first therapy session.  Her eating has dramatically improved over the past month, so I’m thinking she doesn’t need the feeding therapy now.  But we still need to work on getting her to talk.  She is babbling now, but no words yet.  Probably she’ll start talking when she’s good and ready, but since the older 3 were all talking by 6 months, it makes me feel better to get her some help.

We’re doing a lot of reading these days.  Here’s what everyone is currently reading:

Annie: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate
(she’s going to do a guest review here when she’s done.  I LOVED that book, and she’s really enjoying it too).

Gamer boy: Day Of The Dragon-King (Magic Tree House 14, paper)

Dino-boy: An Alphabet Of Dinosaurs

Read alouds: Patron Saint of First Communicants: The Story of Blessed Imelda Lambertini (Stories of the Saints for Young People Ages 10 to 100)

The Silver Chair (The Chronicles of Narnia, Book 6)

Shh! We’re Writing the Constitution

Mamsaurus: The Host: A Novel

In honor of Earth Day yesterday, the kids and I finally tried out the first kit we received from Young Scientist Club.  Our kit was about recycling, which made it perfect to use on Earth Day.

Our project was to make recycled paper.  Now, this didn’t come out quite as we’d imagined.  They wanted us to use the paper to make labels for recycling bins.  We already recycle, and didn’t really need to make the labels, and honestly, I don’t think our paper would have held up for labels anyhow.  It was fun, but the kids were a tad disappointed that the paper wasn’t what they were expecting.

tearing up the paper

We measured 1 cup of shredded paper

Then we soaked the paper for about 5 min.

After running it through the blender, we drained the pulp on a screen

Annie sponged off the excess water

Dinoboy rolled it flat

Finally, we dried it out in the sunshine.

It was fun, but I’d like to try it on a larger scale, and with different types of paper.  We just used some regular printer paper with some bits of colored paper that they provided.

We also did an experiment on composting, which I’ll report on in a week when it’s finished.  And to finish off Earth Day, we planted a tree in our yard.  The kids even decided to name it.

Meet Bruce the Spruce.

And of course, we also spent plenty of time just playing outside.  We were blessed to have an absolutely gorgeous day yesterday, so we took advantage of it.

And I think we’ll miss it when we’re done.   This past week we learned about the different ecosystems in Russia and each of the kids made a diorama of their chosen ecosystem.

From left to right: Tundra, Taiga and Steppe

Gamerboy said to me today, “Can we make a diorama for everything in school?”  I guess this project was a pretty big hit with my artsy kids.  

We also have almost finished up reading Sovietrek: A Journey by Bicycle Across Russia
and The Night Journey.They have all decided that a trip to Russia is out of the question, based upon the foods mentioned in SovieTrek.   They do eat some fairly unappetizing things–fizzy warm horse milk, raw eggs that you eat by poking a hole in the egg and sucking it out, cold chunks of pig fat…Steve and Dan Beuttner are pretty brave guys. 

The Night Journey though, what a beautiful book.  I can’t believe that I never read this when I was a kid.  it’s the story of a Jewish family’s escape from Russia during the early 20th century.  It’s told by Nana Sashie, who is telling her story to her great granddaughter.  Rache isn’t supposed to talk to her Nana about the past, because it might make her upset, but Nana Sashie seems to have this need to tell her story to someone, so Rache begins these secret conversations with her about the past.  It’s based upon a true story, and it’s just such a fantastic book.  There are so many things to discuss and the story has so many layers.  I HIGHLY recommend it to everyone.  

Next week we’ll wrap up our trip to Russia.  We’ll finish up our books, read The Magic Nesting Dolland paint our own Matroyshka dolls, watch Anastasia and Fiddler on the Roof, and possibly make a Russian meal (if we can find something that the kids will agree to eat, lol).

We jumped into our Russia study!  

We read A Symphony of Whales (what a neat book!)

We started The Night Journey (Annie is loving it, but the twins aren’t sure yet–it might be a little over their heads)

We also started reading SovieTrek  (so far it’s a huge hit–my kids love the idea of bike riding across an entire country or continent)

Annie is reading Angel on the Square .

Here’s a few pics of our Russia Map/Poster

Dinoboy drew a Beluga whale to go on the map for A Symphony of Whales

Annie is now officially a Girl Scout.  She had her first service project this week helping at the local food pantry, sorting food and discarding expired stuff.  She is so excited.  

We took Cutie to the children’s hospital for follow up’s with neurology (no real problems there but they want to see her in 6 months anyways–hopefully that will be the last time!) and hematology.  Hematology was much more interesting.  It seems that her Thalassemia, which we new was rare, is so rare that she is in fact the first ever case.  They’re even going to name it after her.  Thankfully it’s mild enough that we don’t need to worry now, but it looks like we’ll be back every 3 months to have her blood checked.   I’ve also set up an appt. for her to be evaluated by early intervention to see if she needs any speech therapy.  And of course, she said mama for the first time immediately after.  I figure, if she suddenly begins babbling/talking over the next month, I can always cancel the appt., Murphy’s Law and all.

Also, Cutie has suddenly started eating real food, and keeping it down.  It would seem that she’s finally learned to swallow without gagging.  Now if I could get her to eat something other than banana, we’d be in business.

Yesterday we finally got a chance to go to the library, and I was  psyched to see several copies of Carpe Demon available for check out.  It’s apparently the book of the month.  I had heard about it months ago at The Homeschool Library and it’s been on my to-read list ever since.  Basically the idea is what would happen if Buffy the Vampire Slayer grew up, and  became a soccer mom?   I’m only a third of the way through, but it’s really good!  

Phew…February got off to a busy start, and I don’t think it intends to let up anytime soon.

Yesterday we finished up our unit on the human body.   I think we all learned a lot and everyone enjoyed the study.  Gamerboy says his favorite was learning about the heart, and Dinoboy says he liked learning about bones (why does it not surprise me that the future paleontologist was most interested in bones?).  Annie’s favorite was watching The Miracle Worker.  

Here are a few pictures from this past week when we focused on the 5 senses, as well as the completed lapbook.

The mystery box and tasting game

Annie trying to guess what's in the box.

Gamerboy playing the tasting game.

The cover of Dinoboy's lapbook

The first section of Dinoboy's lapbook.

The middle section

The last section--I stapled all the worksheets to the back of the lapbook.

I am loving the unit study approach to school.   Just before we all start to get bored with the human body, we move on to the next unit.   We’re all looking forward to studying Russia for the next month.

It’s almost that time of year again.  I don’t know what it is, the fact that it’s mid-way through the year, or maybe it’s the fact that it’s the dead of winter, but right around February every year, homeschoolers everywhere start to feel burnt out.  Everyone is a little stir crazy, and suddenly, all that great curricula that was so fun just a month ago is so boring that it brings tears to your eyes.  I wonder if it happens to school teachers as well.  

Over the years, as I’ve realized that this is a recurring trend, I’ve planned for the February doldrums.  If we’re finding that the curriculum is boring, I change things up a bit and we do a fun unit study.   This year I planned it out so that we’re doing something different each month so that we don’t get bored.  

Some other ideas to avoid burnout:

• Spend  a week or two (or the whole month!)  just reading aloud some new (or old favorite) books
• Peruse Homeschool Share  for some fun unit study ideas.
• Take a field trip
• Grow some plants indoors to bring some green back to the cold winter months
• Or try some fun winter nature study ideas. 
• Let the kids take the reins.  Maybe they have an interest they’d like to explore.  Spend a few weeks focusing on just that, maybe doing some fun projects together.
• Have a science experiment week.  (or an art project week)
• You know all those fun little kits/books/projects you bought way back but never got around to them?  Pull them out now and just focus on that for a few weeks.  

Sometimes Mom needs to focus a bit on herself this time of year as well.  Maybe get a new hair cut, or read a good book, even just taking an nice relaxing bath can make a huge difference.  And of course, don’t forget your dark chocolate.   I’m convinced that dark chocolate can solve any problem.

I try to keep Friday’s fun–usually we get all our major work done Mon-Thurs, and then on Friday we play math games, and do any games/crafts/etc. to go with the rest of our studies.

Today we played a fun and really easy game to go along with our human body unit.  We spent the last 3 days learning about the skeleton, and learning the names of some of the bones.  So this morning I made up a little game to see how much they remembered.

I just wrote down the names of the bones on post-it notes, then the kids too turns putting the post-its on the correct part of their body.  It’s simple, cheap, and makes for really cute photos!

Use your cranium!

Annie went first–she got 6 right out of a possible 13.  

Then it was Gamerboy’s turn.  He got 6 right as well.

Oh no! My femur fell off!

Finally,  it was Dinoboy’s turn.  Rob gave him a quick study session before his turn, and he was the winner with 10 correct.

The winner!

Note: Please ignore the giant snow boot mess in the background.  What can I say, it’s winter and we have a lot of shoes!

I have spent the past year struggling through reading lessons with Dinoboy.  We’ve tried many different programs, from 100EZ Lessons, to Starfall, to Explode the Code, to Sonlight, to Little Stories for Little Folks.  It just wasn’t clicking for him.  We took the month of Dec. off for vacation, and I didn’t make him read hardly at all.  

All this week, all we’ve done for reading is he reads to me from The Cat in the Hat, and then he copies 2 lines from the book for copywork.  That’s it.  Not only is it just about stress free, he seems to suddenly be doing so much better!  We’ve just about finished the book, and I’ve seen a huge improvement.  I don’t know if it’s just that it suddenly clicked for him, or that my low-stress-snuggle-on-the-couch approach is what he needed all along, but either way, it’s working!  

It’s like that with so many things, isn’t it?  There’s so many different curriculum’s out there that scream to you that they’re the best, or that they’ll revolutionize your homeschool.  And it’s easy to get sucked into that.  I can testify that we have lots of programs just collecting dust on my shelves because they just didn’t work for us.  Sometimes all you need is a good book and someone to cuddle with.