Homeschool Wrap Up Week 29

Week 29 in our Homeschool

Bible: We finished up the Old Testament in the 10 Minute Bible Journey.

Read Aloud: We read 3 chapters in the biography on Laura Ingalls Wilder.  We started the Last Battle and read 3 chapters in DragonKnight.

History: We started working on a review called Pathway to Liberty.  This is very different from what I am used to and it's a but of a learning curve. They also watched an episode of Drive Thru History.

Science: We started a review of Techie Homeschool Mom's Famous Inventors.  This week's lesson was on Archimedes.


Poetry: We worked on The Happy Farmer.

Individual School (2-7th)

Emmie completed 3 lessons in Dimensions Math.  She finished the unit on colonization from Homeschool Complete and completed one lesson in AAR Level 2.

Lily completed 3 lessons in MLFLE and read chapter 9 of Little House in the Big Woods.

Christian and Anthony completed 3 lessons in Rod and Staff Math and step 15 in AAS Level 6.


Other Activities this Week

Monday we worked a little bit on updating our SeaPerch for the International Competition.  The girls had their last gymnastics class for this year.  Then it was time for our  4 H County Talks, Talents, and Fashion Review competition. 

Lily played Fur Elise and won 1st place for Junior Instrumental.

Alex played a song ( I can't remember the name of it) on the guitar that he built and won 1st place Senior Instrumental.

Emmie competed in Cloverbud Fashion Review Purchased Casual and won 1st place.

Anthony did an Innovative Technology Talk on Drones and won Junior 2nd place.

Christian did an Innovative Technology StopMotion Talk and won Junior 1st place.

Nick did not participate because he was at a soccer game in Arkadelphia (they lost)

Tuesday we decided to take the day off and go play at Mid America.  We hadn't been since last summer and the children had been asking for awhile when we could go again.  It was a fun day!  The dinosaurs noises did scare the baby but he was better as soon as he was away from them.

That night I took Anthony. Alex, and Nick to the Farm Bureau Board Meeting with our Ag Agent.  They talked about the SeaPerch competition and the money that we needed to raise to go to Internationals and they gave us a very generous donation to help pay the teams expenses.

Wednesday we had Kid's Club and Children's Choir.

Thursday was dance, trap practice, and soccer was at home.  We went to the game along with Chelsea and Liam.  Nick did not get to play (he is one of the goalies #1, not the starter) and we lost 1-0.

Friday Art and I headed to Hot Springs for the week-end.  We had not been away overnight in more then 5 years.  Chelsea came and stayed at the house with the children and drove them the places they needed to go (music lessons and trap shoot.) 

The first place we went was Garvan Gardens.  We had never been and I wanted to go for a long time.  Not everything was blooming yet, but it was beautiful.  We bought a family pass and I hope to take the children soon.

Inside the cave

We went out to eat and to the movies.

Saturday we wandered through downtown Historic Hot Springs for awhile, even though it was cold and rainy.  We went to the Wax Museum and did a bit of shopping.

Sunday we did a big, big, shopping trip to Sams Club.  I spent a small fortune but hopefully won't need too much from the grocery store for awhile. 

I came home to a little princess with a sore throat, but I think it is just allergies.  Everything else is back to normal.

I hope you had a great week!

Happy Homeschooling!

Homeschool Crew Review: Poetry for the Grammar Stage from Memoria Press

Memoria Press is a family run company that publishes Classical Christian materials in a variety of subjects for homeschools and private schools.  Memoria Press curriculum is easy to teach and requires no previous knowledge of the subject being taught, but have high Academic Standards.  We have used several different products from Memoria Press and have been very impressed with all of them.  We recently had an opportunity to use and review Poetry for the Grammar Stage Set from Memoria Press.

For our review we received:

Poetry for the Grammar Stage Anthology
Poetry for the Grammar Stage Student Guide
Poetry for the Grammar Stage Teacher Guide

Poetry for the Grammar Stage is designed to be used with students in grades 3-7.  In this course, students will study and analyze 33 poems that increases in difficulty as you go through the book.  If used alongside Memoria Press literature, science and history courses it is a supplementary study intended to be completed over 4 years.  It can also be used as a stand alone course. As with most Memoria Press curriculum how it is used is very flexible.


The Anthology is a small paperback book that is 62 pages long.  This book contains just the poems being studied.  Some of the poems have black and white illustrations.

The Student Guide is a 160 page paperback book.  At the front of the book there is a section on How to Teach a Poem. Then the consumable workbook pages begin. All of the poems are included in the Student Guide.  Then there is a place for the student to draw a picture of each poem and a section for them to copy the poem.  Each poem has a vocabulary section listing some words and definitions that may be unfamiliar to the student.  Then there is an analyze section where the student labels the rhyme scheme of the poem and answers other questions like "Who is the speaker of the poem?" or "What figure of speech is used in the first stanza?" Next the student answers comprehension questions about the poem.  In the back of the book there is an appendix with a glossary and the history of Paul Revere's Ride.

The Teacher Guide is also a 160 page paperback book.  It contains all of the student guide ( I love that about Memoria Press!) with the answers included.

We have memorized poetry as a family for the last several years but have never studied or analyzed a poem so I was very interested in having an opportunity to review this set and use it with my 4th grade daughter alongside her language arts curriculum.  I was very thankful for the glossary in the back of the book as soon as we started.  Since we had never analyzed poetry before, and it has been just a few years since I was in school I needed a quick refresher on rhyme scheme.  It is included in the glossary along with some examples.

We spread the poems out over  our 4 day school week.  The first day we read the vocabulary and the definitions and read through the poem together.  The second day she illustrated the poem and completed the copy work.  The third day she read the poem again, underlined the rhyming words and worked on the Analyze section.  The last day she read the poem again and completed the comprehension questions. 

I love the set up of the Student Guide.  My Lily is artistic and loves to draw and color and she enjoyed having a place to illustrate the poems.  We do a lot of copy work and I like that there is a spot in the book for that as well.  I appreciate the vocabulary being included as there are unfamiliar words in the poems  (Have you ever called jacks jackstones?) Once we had a handle on what rhyme scheme was, it was fun to go back and underline and label the poems.  I think going through the comprehension questions help the students to gain a better understanding of what they have read.

I love the poems that were selected.  Some were very familiar to us such as The Spider and the Fly, Trees, Paul Revere's Ride, and All Things Bright and Beautiful, but many we had not read or studied before.  Some of the poems are fairly short 8-12 lines, while others are pretty lengthy 172 lines for the Lady of Shalott and 143 for Paul Revere's Ride.  With Lily being on the younger end of the age range for which this is intended, we plan on working slowly through the book completing a poem each month or so.  If I had a child who was on the older end of the range and using it as a supplement, I would move faster maybe even completing the entire course in a semester.  But as I said before Memoria Press products are very flexible and you can use it how it works best for you.

Once again I have found that Memoria Press has stood up to their goal of providing quality curriculum that is affordable and easy to teach.  Member of the Crew reviewed several different products from Memoria Press including Latin, other Poetry products and Classical Phonics.  To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!

Our Week in Review (March 18-24)

We took the week off of school for Spring Break.  We had pretty weather every day but Wednesday so the children spent quite a bit of time outside.  We had a lot of stuff going on this week so we didn't get to do anything "special" for spring break but it was a nice break from school work.

Monday we started baking for our bake sale on Wednesday.

Tuesday we did more baking all day and then the boys had Trap Practice.  Over the course of those two days I made (with help) : 3 apple pies, Milky Way Cake, Peach Crumb Bars, Brownies with Peanut Butter Chips, Caramel Corn, Snickerdoodles, Oatmeal Raisin Coookies, Corn Bread, and Ooey Gooey Chocolate Chip Bars.

Wednesday morning Alex, Anthony, and Nicholas went and did a live interview about the upcoming International SeaPerch Competition on a local radio station.  Then later we had our Bake Sale to help pay for expenses for their trip.  We were at a local bank from 11-2 and then moved to a local grocery store from 2-5.  It was not a very nice day.  It got colder as the day went on and started raining in the afternoon (luckily we could move under an overhang outside the store and not get wet.)  But, it was a very successful bake sale!  We had a ton of stuff to sell and sold almost everything.  We had people just come by and give donations.  It was definitely worth the work we put in to the sale.  Every member of our club baked and came out and helped with the sale.  We will have a raffle coming up in a few weeks to raise money and a silent auction at our banquet next week.

Lily made our signs.  Lily and Emmie did not stay at the sale they went to play with Liam at Chelsea's house instead.

Thursday we had 4 H Entrepreneur Day Camp.  For this camp we learned about what being an entrepreneur is and goods and services children can provide.  For this camp we made and decorated sugar cookies with royal icing.  They named their business, "bought" all of their supplies, and made and decorated their own cookies.  We packaged and delivered some to local businesses that support 4 H and then got to take some home to eat.  They plan on doing more of these camps with different themes.

After it ended at 3 we cleaned up and stayed for a few hours to work on our SeaPerch.

Friday the girls had music lessons.  It was Emmie's first mandolin lesson.  She learned the C and G chords.

Saturday Christian and Alex had a Trap Shoot.  Alex shot 46/50 and Christian shot 15/25.  It was their team's fundraiser so we stayed the whole day and helped clean up when it was over.

The week went by too fast and now it's back to school.

I hope you had a great week!

Happy Homeschooling!