In case you were wondering . . .

I have not been sitting around twiddling my thumbs pretending like I'm too busy to blog. ;) This is what I've been doing.

I almost lost a couple kids in these stacks of homeschool junk! Um, I mean highly enthralling, educational, and intellectually stimulating homeschool manipulatives and resources. :O

Well, I finally got it all sorted and restacked in a different location! :)

Seriously, I am so relieved to have some order again! We have had four very successful homeschool days, one zoo day, and one tomato-picking, in-touch with nature day (aka. "throw as many rotten tomatoes in the mud puddle as you can before Mama tells you to stop because you're splashing mud all over yourselves and your little sister day"). Bleh!

The kids really seem to be enjoying school so far. We start the school day with Bible-reading, verse-quoting (Proverbs 1:7 this week), hymn-learning (Blessed Assurance), state and capital drilling, Spanish vocab drilling, and reading a quick story for character-building. All this takes about forty minutes. We then work on copywork while listening to some classical music. Right now our poem for copywork is "The Moon" by Robert Louis Stevenson. It's a cute little poem. :) We're trying a different approach to math and I must admit that I'm a little nervous about how it's going to work out. It's ProfB's Math for the Conceptual Learner or something like that. I don't have it in front of me right now and can't pull the name of it out of my brain.

While the older kids are doing copywork, Hannah colors, Andrew plays or naps, and Benjamin and I work on writing his name and identifying letters and their sounds. He is so excited to get the one-on-one with me. I forget how much it means to each child to get individual attention and not just be one of the kids. :/ I really need to work on this!

We're also doing Apologia's Exploring Creation with Astronomy this year. Jesse is pretty interested in learning more about space and identifying constellations and planets. We've never put much emphasis on this aspect of science. We're all about animals and habitats! :) This should be a fun learning experience for all of us. We are also using the Simply Charlotte Mason History/Bible/Geography module this year. I am really excited about this! I don't know about you, but I never really attached Biblical history with "real" history. They always seemed so separate. This study shows how history began in Genesis and continues on to today. I'm looking forward to seeing what I missed when I was in school!

The only other things I can think of that we do are Jesse and Abigail individually read to me so I can correct any pronunciation problems and I read to all the children from the "Little House" series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We LOVE these books and have trouble stopping at the end of each chapter. :)

Well, that was long-winded! I'll try to let you know when we have our next adventure. And how do I know there'll be another adventure? Because, when you have this many little kids, every day is an adventure! ;D