Can't Get Away From Charlotte Mason

In Our Homeschool This Week:
     When we began our school year this year I wanted our year to be a bit more formal than what we were accustomed to. So I decided we were going to use more text books this year. Off our year began and we've been moving right along, BUT something just wasn't quite right. We've kept trudging through our books, accomplishing things, but just not receiving what we have received in the past with our studies. What was wrong with us? Sometimes we would even have a lot of tension between teacher and student. I asked my children what was wrong. Immediately they told me, "We want to dive deeper in to our studies like we were doing when we were doing Charlotte Mason style of education. So this week we made a trip to the library & grabbed some books to reinforce what we have been studying in Science and pulled a book off of our shelf for history that they had been wanting to do. The tension has lifted & our week has been fun & refreshing.
What's Working:
    We've decided that we will keep our Apologia: Exploring Creation With Physical Science (which wasn't giving us a problem, & we love), but would slow it down and also add in library books along side of it. This just means that we won't finish this book this year & will carry it over in to next year.
    Our library book we used for Science this week was: The Atom By Elizabeth R. Cregan

    A very interesting book, filled with information. My DH grabbed this book in hopes of reinforcing our study on atoms. The book covers atoms pretty good, but has a lot of info on radium, radiation, & cancer. My children seemed to be more excited over the things they learned about them than they were the atoms. Like how they used radium in paint to paint the numbers on watches, getting some of the paint in their mouth due to the method they used to paint, not knowing that that the radium would begin to destroy their cells & cause cancer. A very interesting book. Here's a pic of my children drawing a model of an atom.
    For our history this week (& will go in to next week) they wanted to learn about the buried city of Pompeii. My DS had gotten a book from a thrift store about Pompeii so we began a study on it this week. My DS has had to do most of the reading in our book due to some nudity for their bath ceremonies. Other than that we have enjoyed the book & have looked at some pics on Internet this week. The book we are using is: The Buried City of Pompeii By Shelley Tanaka.

    Three math lessons were accomplished in our Saxon 8/7 math this week. We are getting in to Perimeter, Area, & Exponents. We have worked on this some in the past. My DS enjoys the square root part of the exponents.

Helpful Homeschool Tip:

  To pull in some English/Grammar this week I pulled out a handbook I had bought several years back and just picked out a rule for a particular type of verb & that is what we worked on this week. I chose Active & Passive verbs.

    We read the rule from the handbook, along with its examples & then worked on our dry erase board making our own sentences. Today the children had to write me three Active verb sentences then three Passive verb sentences that would accompany their Active verb sentences. That was English for the week. Here's a couple of pics of the handbook I had purchased.

     It's not very thick, but jam packed with info. It covers just the rules & gives examples in a very basic way. Easy enough that my children can take it down & find the rule they would like to use by themselves. I got it from a used book store for a dollar, great investment.
    We are still reading through Pilgrim's Progress for Literature & On the Banks of Plum Creek for a Library Read Aloud. I'm not sure if I put a pic of the version of Pilgrim's Progress we are using on here or not, but we are using a children's version. Here's a pic of it.

    Other than my children spending a lot of time outside after our studies, I think that about concludes our week. Here's a pic of my DC having P.E. this week.

     Kris usually has the Weekly Wrap Up on her blog, but she had a close friend pass away and left behind are her husband and five girls. Kris said that she will not be blogging for a few days. I'm not sure if she will have her Weekly Wrap Up this week. I encourage you to visit Kris's blog and give her a nice comment in her time of grieving. I am so sorry Kris for your loss and hope the best for your friend's family and we will be praying.
     I am also linking up with The Homeschool Mother's Journal this week. Drop over & check out what everyone has been up to this week. I'm sure you will be encouraged.

     By the way I will be starting a Give-a-Way tomorrow that is going to be continuing for a while. I have lots of books & workbooks for all ages. So get the word around, I'm sure you'll be blessed & encouraged.

Weekly Wrap-Up

 



    Here's a brief look at what we've been doing this week. Our official school year is over, but we never stop schooling. We take breaks from time to time, but even then someone finds something for us to dab into and that turns into schooling.
    We are reading a family read aloud at the present moment. It is, " The Case of the Swirling Killer Tornado" by John R. Erickson. It's #25 in the Hank the Cowdog series. Time to time we try to pull in just a fun read aloud so I figured sense we have been studying about tornadoes this would be a cute read aloud that would bring some family laughter. It has done just that. Due to this part of our read aloud time it sure is making my getting fit a hard task.   

    Dad and the children decided to work on some woodwork this week. Here are a few pic's of their handy work in progress.

Dad teaching children woodworking & saw safety.

Dad teaching children how to make their Roman projects as part of the Ancient Rome Study.

Sarahs dressed up as Julius Caesar (looks serious)

Matthew said, "I looked so mean that I scared myself."

Matthew's homemade short sword (these swords are made of wood & are NOT SHARP)

Sarah's homemade sword.(we are going to paint the blades silver to add the finishing touches)

　
    Of course, if you've been reading my blog this week, you've already seen the Home Ec. pics of my DS's fabulous strawberry pie. He and his sister did a great job helping me with supper one night this week. (You all know I'm from the south now, I said supper and not dinner, he he he.)
    Be sure to see Kris at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and checkout her Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where My Baby Turned 16. I'm sure you will enjoy Kris's blog as I did and you will find great homeschooling ideas and a good friend that understands homeschooling life.
    Other than walking and bicycling I think this about wraps up our week. We've enjoyed quality family time this week, just being with each other.

Wrapping Up Our Week

   Here's a quick wrap up of our week. We did a couple of math lessons, read Romeo & Juliet in Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare, Started reading a new read aloud, walked for our getting fit, and read and watched some videos on tornado weather.
   We watched a version of Romeo & Juliet on TV Monday night. It was highly different, more of a 20th century version. It had some comedy in it, but not exactly what I call Shakespeare.
Our new read aloud is Tiger ,Tiger by Lynne Reid Banks (Author of Indian in the Cupboard). It is about Julius Caesar and the life style of Romans during the Gladiator period. Tiger, Tiger is giving us a great view of tragedies and triumphs in Ancient Rome. We have it on audio. The reader does a great job reading it so she is keeping my children's attention. My children were captured in the first chapter when Julius Caesar bought his daughter a tiger for a pet. The author went in to lots of detail when describing the events that took place at the Colosseum. There's no doubt of the cruelty that took place.
   As for our walking this week and trying to get fit, I am extremely proud of my family. We walked 18 miles this week. We would do our 2 mile walk in the morning and decided it would do us good to do it in the evening also. So we walked in the evenings too. It's taking us about 1 1/2 hours to walk 4 miles a day. Hopefully, our timing will get better. Oh, and our dog, Prissie, is enjoying the walking also. Walking has been an enjoyable event this week with our entire family. Dad has walked with us. That was worth the walking to me.
   I suppose this about summarizes our week. So we'll up date more later. Blessings