No Write?
Whatevs.
Life has been busy for us this last few months. We bought a house and moved into it this spring, and since then have been doing the usual post-move things: cleaning, arranging, organizing; as well as the usual getting-ready-for-school things.
So life has been moving right along and I never even finished out last school year on the blog.
It isn’t all that surprising, is it. 😛 😀
But now, to the real reason I’m writing this post:
FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!! WOOHOO!!!!
Those are my feelings on the subject. The kids didn’t feel that way, unfortunately – they are more like, ‘Oh, no, Mom, you are so evil and cruel and I can’t believe we have to do school work. WOE!!!’
(You may think I’m exaggerating. Not really. That said, they always move right along with their schoolwork just fine and don’t procrastinate lol – they just like to try to give me a really hard time about it. 😉 )
So since this year I never got around to making my usual ‘What we’re using this year’ post, I figured that for this week I’ll just cover what is going on each day. This will be pretty much the same for the course of the year, with the exceptions of the weeks we have co-op, which takes our Wednesdays, or when we have random homeschool days or field trips we are attending. Then we generally just push the work that would have been that day to the next.
SO. First Day of School: Monday, August 13, 2018!
(Which reminds me, I totally need to take first day of school pics of the kids. Oops!)
I’ll start with Pink, who is in fourth grade this year.
She started the day with writing. I’m following a little bit of Writing With Ease still this year, but adding a couple other things, too. Today was just copying a sentence from the board. As the year progresses, that will become dictation.
Other subjects today included: ‘Bible’, for which we are using Christian Studies I,
An ‘extra’ – a Kumon Geometry & Measurement book, 
Story of the World 4 for history (this year I included questions. At first she was less than thrilled at the prospect of having to write out answers, but she’s a decent writer so I knew she could handle it once she got past the initial whaaaat? lol. And today she only had 10 questions… stay tuned for the first time she gets 20! 😉 )
This is a lineup of her books for today: MUS Delta for Math + the ‘extra’ Geometry & Measurement book; Christian Studies I; Latina Christiana; Christian Kids Explore Physics (both Latin and Physics were a little dull today, as they were those ‘first day intro’ type things); Story of the World 4 + supplemental reading for history. This week her assigned books are ‘Who was Harriet Tubman?’ and ‘Who was Queen Victoria?’ … I may have gotten just a few too many ‘Who was?’ books at convention this year. :hiding:
Then there is Astro, who started seventh:
This was his general face at me throughout the day. But, as I said, he still just sits down and does the work, so I can’t complain too much. He started off with Rod & Staff spelling, carried over from last year,
then moved on to Jump In for writing. The first question it asked him was ‘Why is writing difficult?’ and he was like, ‘It’s not… I just don’t like it.’ Well, honesty, everyone!
I would be remiss to not post a picture of Mittens – looking very fat here, which she isn’t as much as this looks like lol – who stays in whatever room Astro is in most of the time. She likes that I moved this chair out of my way and into a wonderful perch for her to keep an eye on things outside. 
Back to Astro – he’s continuing with the James Madison Critical Thinking Course this year. It was all just reading today, which he found immensely boring.
Then he did science. Today he read some of The Geology Book by the Institute for Creation Research, then started on Science Fusion: The Dynamic Earth. On the first page was an ‘experiment’ for him to do, so here he is doing it:
and here are his ideas for it before hand, followed by how it went:
After the fact, he was like, ‘I was supposed to do one to keep that from happening.’ Upon my asking him how he would’ve done that he shrugged. Clearly we’ll have to work more on this ‘experiment on-your-own’ thing. But whatever, today I gave them a fair bit of leeway while explaining how things should be done for the rest of the year.
His last thing of the day was math. We are continuing with Zaccaro Challenge Math and Lial Pre-Algebra this year. This week he’s just reviewing decimals in CM, a pretty easy task. Doesn’t keep him from making this oh-so-attractive face, though.
And here’s his lineup for today: James Madison Critical Thinking, The Geology Book, Who is God? for Bible (he’s on the upper end of the recommended age for this, and actually even a little above it, but that’s okay), Science Fusion Module E: The Dynamic Earth, Jump In, Rod & Staff Spelling (Yes, he’s finishing up the fourth grade book. The beauty of homeschooling is, he can be great at one thing and be working below level in another and that’s ok! So yeah, he’s not a great speller), Vocabulary from Classical Roots A (he just LOVED all the copying…. hahahahaha), and Challenge Math. He also uses the National Geographic Almanac of World History (not pictured because I forgot to grab it!) + supplemental books for history. His assigned book for this week is The Beggars’ Bible, because we discovered that he’d already read The Landing of the Pilgrims in 3rd grade. 
And lastly, our high school freshman (!) – Link.
This makes it look like he has fewer subjects and less work than the others, but that’s really not the case!
He started his day with science. We’re using Apologia Biology + a bunch of supplemental stuff. His science is pretty busy this year!
Then came history, using The History of the Ancient World and it’s teacher/study guide. I have him doing almost all the sections in the SG, so yeah, again, a lot of writing. 
His last Vocab book! He’s on Vocabulary from Classical Roots E, which he will finish in the first semester, before moving on to a Poetry workbook from Rod & Staff.
Like I said, it looks so small! But I left out the Study Guide and the science notebook for this picture, too… overall, each of the kids has a pretty big step up in the work they are doing this year. Usually they don’t all fall on the same year but this year I’m glad they did – it shows that all three of them are having to step it up, not just one, and I think there’s probably some comfort in that!
So Link’s stuff for today: Apologia Biology, Vocabulary from Classical Roots, Foerster’s Algebra I, The History of the Ancient World, plus (not pictured) Khan Academy to review his grammar and a Queen Bible Study for Bible. We’re considering either a live class or online tutor for Japanese, and he’ll start his official writing class (Essay Basics) with Lantern English next month. Oh, and his assigned reading for this week: Gilgamesh.
So that covers today! I’ll be back again in the next couple days to keep it going. 🙂 Happy Monday!
togethersolitude 