School has started!!!

After taking part of the summer off we have started school again. It surely is nice to be back into a routine again. Towards the end of the last school year I bought the Managers of Their Homes book and implemented a schedule that worked wonderfully. I still need to tweak a few things on it for this year's schedule since we've changed our history curriculum and added a few things. I hope to get that done soon-hopefully within the next week or so.

So this past week we did a decent amount of work but didn't hit it too hard. I worked Sunday and Thursday night so the days after weren't as productive.

Here is what we did:

History: We've switched to Tapestry of Grace this year and love it so far. It is a classical history curriculum that integrates history, church history, writing, literature, geography and art history. In high school it also adds philosophy and worldview. I made each of the girls their own notebooks for the first unit--it has all of their assignments and they are responsible for getting them done. The kids have been loving it so far. Ellie even asked if she could work ahead in her history reading because she loved the book so far (a book about King Arthur). For our read aloud, we've been reading about the visigoths and others who contributed to the fall of Rome. We also read the story about Saint Valentine--his work and how his faith got him killed. We had planned on starting our salt map one day this week but 4 very tired children required naps so we didn't get it started. Instead we just reviewed some of the geographical terms that we had planned to put on our map.

English: We didn't completely finish Ellie's text from last year so we are just highlighting the grammar parts and skipping the writing since she's doing writing with Tapestry this year. With Kara we reviewed nouns, pronouns and action verbs. She's also memorizing the poem Mr. Nobody. She's got 2 of the 3 stanzas memorized.

Math: Ellie took a few tests in Saxon 65 and she started with lesson 15. She also did some math fact review using Quarter Mile Math (a computer program). Kara did a couple of lessons in Saxon 2 and a few lessons in her Singapore Math workbooks.

Science: We started a unit on ponds. We had planned on going to Quarry Hill to look at the pond and do some drawings but it didn't work out. I had worked the night before so was really tired, we had a picnic that we were going to that night so I needed to do some baking, and there were 40mph winds. So we just started reading about them and learning about muskrats.

Latin: Ellie is still working her way through Latina Christiana I and did lesson 23 this week. She'll move onto LC II when she is done with LC I.

Typing: Ellie started typing this week which she has been really excited about. She's been doing it in the evenings after Darin and Natalie go to bed and has been asking every day if she can work on it.

Logic: Ellie has started working her way through MindBenders A2. She uses grids to find out the answers to the puzzles--such as who lives where, etc--based on the clues given. We aren't doing any formal study of logic till 7th grade, but she loves working on these and does them in her spare time.