Homeschool Wrap Up Week 6

When I started this blog in 2008, I did it for 2 reasons.   I wanted to find a way that I could reach out and encourage other homeschool moms and also have a way to record our homeschool journey (which by the way has come in handy more than once for things like 4 H Record books and high school transcripts.)  I wanted to show the realities (challenges and blessings)  of homeschooling by sharing our life and showing others that really anyone who has a desire to homeschool can. I wanted to show that each family and child is unique and there is no right or wrong way to homeschool. Along the way I was incredibly blessed to be part of an opportunity to use and review homeschool curriculum, books, and other family friendly items and hopefully have been able to bless others through my product reviews.  In the beginning, the only people that read my blog was my husband, my mother, some friends, and a small circle of homeschool moms.  Over the years, The Happy Homeschool Mom has grown a bit but is still relatively small compared to a lot of homeschool blogs.  I was very honored to have been part of a list last week called 18 Homeschool Blogs You Should Be Following and wanted to take this time to welcome those who may be new to my blog and to thank those who take the time to read what I have written, those who comment here and interact with me on Facebook and Twitter.  I so appreciate each and every one of you!


What we have been up to in Week 6:

Bible:  We finished Lesson 4 and started Lesson 5 Where Does Your Time Go? in What on Earth Can We Do?

History:  We completed lessons 7-9 in Mystery of History Vol III.  Lessons 7 and 8 were on Christopher Columbus and Lesson 9 was on Ghana, Mali, and the Empires of West Africa.  I have to say that I learned quite a bit about Christopher Columbus that I have never heard before.  The younger children made a craft with the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.  Christian also decided to make a boat out of craft sticks and was thrilled when it floated (Anthony made a house and Lily and Emmie glued random sticks together.) We also completed the map exercises and added the timeline figures to our timeline board.

Science: We are working on Lesson 4 in Apologia's Exploring Chemistry and Physics.  We finished reading the chapter and did several fun experiments!

 Here we are making homemade bouncy balls.  This was VERY messy and I wished we had done it outside.

We also tried to but a bamboo stick into a balloon without popping it. It didn't work.  We popped it every time.

We also learned why you shouldn't clean metal with vinegar.  We put one penny that was not copper to show the difference.

And did the Diet Coke and Mentos experiment.  We actually did that one twice :)

Math: Math started off a little rough on Monday for Christian when he lost his DVD and did not understand my explanation of the lesson (see my When Mommy Needs a Time Out post.)  We started fresh on Tuesday and by the end of the week he had a good understanding of place value notation and adding double digit numbers.  The rest of the children completed their week's worth of Math U See lessons with no issues.

Spelling: Alex completed Step 16 in Level 4 of AAS.  After the Monday incident, we decided to repeat Step 3 of Level 2 of AAS with Anthony and Christian.

Literature/Writing/Grammar: Christian finished Joseph Had an Overcoat and the corresponding lessons in Lightning Literature.  Anthony finished Sarah Plain and Tall and the corresponding assignments in Lighting Literature Level 3.  Nick and Alex completed Lesson 5 of Fix It! Grammar and Lesson 4 of IEW's Medieval History Themed Lessons.

Language: Alex and I are still working on Lesson One of Chinese.  Nicholas Completed lesson 31 of Visual Latin 2.  He had a bit of trouble remembering his vocabulary from last year as it has been awhile since we have done Latin.  We are going to be working on that a bit :)

My Father's World Creation From A to Z

Lily worked on the Moon unit this week.  One of the things that I love about My Father's World is that everything is related to each other.  While learning about the letter M she is also learning about the moon, and her Bible lesson had to do with us reflecting the light of Jesus (like the moon reflects the sun's light.  So we completed worksheets on the letter M and it's sounds as well as the number 2, continued with our calender and counting to 100 worksheets, read books about the moon, watched the first astronauts land on the moon, and watched a rocket launch.  We also made a moon badge that says "I am the light if the world", a 4th day of creation mobile with the sun, moon, and stars, and made a moon cake.

Other activities this week:

Christian had his first soccer game on Monday.  The older boys played on Monday as well and everyone played again on Thursday.

Lily had gymnastics on Tuesday.

Thursday we had our 4 H meeting.

Saturday we had a great time at the fishing tournament.


I hope you had a great week in your homeschool!