It is always hard jumping back into the swing of things after summer break. It was especially hard this year, since we had so many months off (close to 4 months).
I had promised myself that I wouldn’t start this school year until I was prepared though. Preparation and organization is so important in homeschooling. I know that there are people out there who “unschool” – and fly by the seat of their pants the whole year long. That works for them. It would drive me nuts.
I’ve made a point to start my homeschooling “week in review” posts a month after we actually started school. That makes it easier for me to keep up with the posts.
For our first week back, I combined Tapestry of Grace Year 3 Weeks 35-36 and TOG Year 4, Week 1. There were some things we missed at the end of last school year and I wanted to make sure that we covered them.
Topics studied: Roosevelt’s first term, Hawaii’s last queen, life in 1900, the Wright Brothers, John Muir, Spanish-American War.
Materials used:
Artists and Composer: Georges Seraut, Louis Tiffany, and Claude Debussy
Projects: The kids made pointillist paintings (like Seraut), paper airplanes, salt dough maps of imaginary places, the Wright Brothers plane out of Legos
Science: This week we studied the sun.
Other: Grammar, spelling, writing, and math all went as normal. Nick had a very hard time with his first week of spelling. 2nd grade and they started out with cough, tough, rough, laugh. It was painful.
Scouts: Tori is a Daisy Girl Scout this year and she memorized the Girl Scout Promise.
Memorization: Happy Thought by Robert Louis Stevenson, and The Preamble to the Constitution
All in all, it was a good starting week.
You’re amazing. Your kids are so lucky to have such a capable teacher! John Muir is from my hometown, btw. We always did field trips to his house.
Sounds great! I know what you mean by being organized! It drives me crazy not to be organized. I still have about ten boxes of my books and craft stuff to unpack and organize. I just bought another bookshelf and need to get a shelf unit to organize the quilting and scrapbooking stuff. I need to get it done because looking at it is driving me crazy!
I have been looking forward to your homeschooling posts!!! We are in week 9 of our new homeschooling adventure and as you encouraged me earlier this year, we are finding our own routine as well. I found that as homeschooling moms, we are able to cover electives such as art and music in so much more detail than public schools. What a neat art project your kids worked on, love it!!!