It's hard to believe the first two months of our academic year are already behind us.
We deliberately started off slowly in September with a lot of review and informal academics: Math Facts practice, Letter Writing, Reading. We slowly added more academic subjects so that we were going strong by mid-October.
We completed Wrong Way, Jonah! and plan to begin Lord, Teach Me to Pray as soon as I can procure a third copy. We finished reading the Lamplighter book Christie's Old Organ and have started reading Teddy's Button. While we enjoyed parts of Christie's Old Organ, the story could have been told much better in half as many pages. The book is very evangelistic in nature, and I realized that my kids don't really need that. They know the Gospel and believe, and now need to grow in Christ, so I'll be looking for books that are more focused on sanctification and character development in the future. We finished our book about Mary Slessor and need to start another missionary book. We also completed Little House in the Big Woods and are almost done with Little House on the Prarie.
We started again with our reading through the Bible. My parents have the Zondervan Book of Life set and it goes through the Bible providing historical context, pictures, and archaeological findings to complement the Bible stories. We started in Genesis a couple of years ago and just crossed the Red Sea.
The kids also got their new Saxon Math books. 1ds9 is enjoying Math 54 and is moving through it at an accelerated pace. 2dd7 is in Math 3 and 3dd5 is in Math 1.
I'm still working through the Veritas Press Phonics Museum with the middle girls and ds is finishing the last section of Rod and Staff English 3 before he starts English 4. I did feel validated when I pulled it out to work on it again and we were able to breeze through many lessons and skip assignments because the material had been covered informally through the summer and by letter writing. A relaxed approach to learning can produce results!
We started Botany and are thoroughly enjoying it, although I'm watching the plants die as I skim through the book; wishing I had been able to start in the summer. We'll make it work though!
We also started our study of American History and added Truthquest to the litany of resources that we're using. We actually started American History last fall, but I was not having the kids do any notebooking. We have always read and discussed and done a lot of Oral Narrations, but I haven't been good about having them keep a written record that we can refer to and use to review and remind us of what we've studied. I now regret that I didn't do that in Bible and History. I wasn't about to start over at the beginning of Genesis again, but we are beginning to notebook for our Bible lessons, and I did decide to start over again with American History. We had read up to the American Revolution last year, so I'm now reviewing all of that material, and having the kids make notebook pages. I intend to go at a faster pace as they should (I hope) remember the material. So, we've again completed Columbus and are now briefly studying the other explorers.
Add to all that, Piano lessons for the older two, singing Hymns together, miscellaneous art projects the kids concoct on their own, impromptu nature studies on bugs, birds, and trees, a few field trips, Boy Scouts, and plenty of time outside running, riding bikes, jumping on the trampoline, playing on the swingset, and working in the yard. We're off to a decent start, but I still need to add Spelling and Handwriting/Cursive, and become more consistent in the other subjects. There's always room for improvement!
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