Weekly Wrap Up: Curriculum Choices

     Our first week has been different. We have used Charlotte Mason's way of teaching for 4 years now, but decided to go with more of a structured text book method this year. We will still use many of her ideas and approaches, just by the guide lines of a text book so that my brain isn't having to think so hard putting a curriculum together.
     For my weekly wrap up I'll just give you all a peak at some of the books we have chosen to work from this year.

For Science we have chosen Apologia: Exploring Creation With Physical Science. My children are enjoying the hands on experiments. I feel like this will take us in to a deeper level of Science than what we are used to.

For History we have chosen A Beka: History of the World 7th grade. We like the way they tie history in with the history of the Bible.

     This month in math we are working out of a little work book called Steps in to Pre Algebra by Milestone. Starting in September we will begin in Saxon 8/7 math. This wasn't my first choice for our math program, but the one I wanted was out of our price range. So, we'll settle with Saxon.
     We are still approaching writing for our English so we have several books we are going to work from again this year. I want them to be able to write extremely well so we are using different techniques from several books in hopes of accomplishing a great writer.
     As for our Literature, We are going to use the A Beka 7th grade Literature book called Of People to read some great stories from. Although this book has some great stories in it, there was just not quite enough in it to quench our appetite for a great book so we are adding a great book along side each unit in it to quench our appetite. This month we will be reading Where the Red Fern Grows. Each day after we have read our set amount of pages for the day, my children have begged to read more.
     Our summer became so hectic that we did not get to use our cute little human body kit that I had found so we are working through it for some Health.
     A few years back we had used Bob Jones Spelling and my children want me to purchase BJU Spelling again, so I suppose we'll probably be doing that for our Spelling.
     Dad has a drawing book that he is wanting to give drawing lessons from and I want to add in a Poet, Artist, and Composer. By the time we integrate all of this in our schedule we'll have a loaded wagon. Oh yeah, we are also wanting to work from our American Sign Language program that we have for our Foreign language for this year.
     Along side all these subjects my children still desire a nature study. We were sitting at the table the other day and my son saw a spider outside our window spinning a web around an insect so out the door they went with art supplies in hand to do a drawing. We may have chosen textbooks for the year, but I see Charlotte Mason will continue to work in our homeschool.
Just a few pictures of our week.

Sarah's Nature Study of a Spider wrapping up a bug trapped in it's web.

Matthew's Nature Study of a Spider wrapping up a bug trapped in it's web. Can you find it? Look for the circle in the middle and a little to the right.

 Sarah's detailed skin diagram with labels.

 Matthew's colorful skin diagram with labels.

 One of our Apologia Science experiments this week was on comparing cubit to metric measurements.
What worked for old Noah in his time may not work for the whole modern day world. See what you think.

 We had to cut a string going from our elbow to the tip of the middle finger. Next we run another piece of string from our first knuckle to tip of index finger (first knuckle on the same finger next to the fingernail). Now tape down the long string and make a mark on it for every length of the short string repeating to other end. Count the marks called "finger marks" and that's how long your cubit measuring string is.

 Then we did a comparison of our different length cubit measuring strings. This could be very confusing if you told four different people, each in another state to build you a 10 cubit by 5 cubit wall and they sent them to you so you could assemble a playhouse. How do you suppose the walls would fit together and look?

Notice the various lengths of our strings. Mine was 33.5 fingers or 1cubit. Imagine measuring a table top 5 cubits and 7 fingers. We need a uniform measurement system. This is where the Metric system came about so it could be used world wide. This was a fun experiment from Apologia Science.
     Well that's another wrap-up for this week. Now don't forget to visit Kris at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers for her's and many more bloggers weekly wrap-ups.

Traci