Wednesday, November 12, 2008

A Day In the Life of Our Homeschool Family

I had a great day today.

(I am just going to forget all of the times I yelled at my kids today and move on to the good stuff, okay?)

We did a lot of school work today and it was very enjoyable. In the mornings we do a small devotional. We sang a Primary song, which today was "Children All Over the World". It is a wonderful little song that I have fond memories of when I was a kid. My mother taught me that song when she served in the Primary. I have always remembered it. My kids love it as well. After the song, we knelt and said a prayer and then stood to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Then we read one little section from "Preach My Gospel". Right now we are in the section on commandments. When I finish all of the lessons, I think we will start working on scripture mastery.

After our devotional, we did our poem memorization. They are currently working on "Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore" by William Brighty Rands. It is a funny poem and they love it. So I would guess that they will have it mastered in the next couple of lessons. They are learning them more rapidly with every attempt. It is great.

We practiced violin next. Zach is still working on Gavotte from Mignon and Raef is still plugging away at The Witches Dance. I am pleased with their progress. They enjoy the violin (Zach all of the time, and Raef almost-most of the time).

Then it was on to a few history library books. We are talking about ancient Africa. It won't take long to get through that, and then we will revisit Egypt and the Middle Kingdom. They love the stories of ancient Africa, especially "Too Much Talk". It is a cute story.

We zoomed off to Kristina's house to meet with our homeschool group for a Mad Science class. It was on chemistry. When they finished the lecture, they ate cheese pizza and played on her little playground in the backyard.

I was so diligent and therefore I am going to pat myself on the back. I actually came home and continued doing schoolwork with the kids. We had taken a little break and then continued where we left off. We did math and they are working in their Math-U-See book and subtraction, namely -2's. They were very relaxed sitting at our new table getting all the problems done.

We then moved on to grammar and we did a little review of nouns, verbs, pronouns and the months and days of the week. We made month cards yesterday and drew a picture for each month and I hung them up on the wall today. I did this because I realized that they both did not know what months went with what seasons. It is a nice little addition to our schoolroom. Plus, they have ownership in the display because they made it, so it means something to them.

**As a side note, I just have to share the stories they wrote as a grammar exercise on Monday.

I started the story and then they had to finish it...

Raef's story...

I was walking along the road-and I stepped in quicksand with
water. I kold Dad. He bot rope. I came owt. and Dad left . The End.

Zach's story...

One morning, I woke up and discovered I had turned into a raptor.
I would swing my tail and be so mean to everybody and go outside. and bite
everybody and eat grass and step on trucks and cars and bulldozers and dumpers
and scooters.


**But I digress.

After grammar, we worked on history some more. I really want to move on to Egypt again and make some progress before the year ends. There was a map exercise in their curriculum so we labeled the map to kind of review where everything is. They seem to really know what we have learned. We also read some more books and reread some of their favorites from Africa. I also had them color some review cards so that we can keep reviewing the main ideas of the things we have already learned.

At 4pm we met the cub scouts at the church and took a few of them to some neighborhoods to pass out bags for the Scouting food drive. The kids had a ball. They ran a whole lot and didn't seem to get tired. Their favorite part was probably holding on to the outside of the car as I drove slowly down the street. They were my two little stunt men. They had a blast.

We headed to Wal-Mart afterwards because Zach was desperate to spend some of his allowance. He kept asking me what time it was while we were passing out bags because he was worried that the store would close. As we were walking up to the entrance, he verified that the store never closes. He was dazzled and exclaimed, "Wow Mom, this store is amazing!" Wal-mart may have a new tag line for their advertising. My kid has officially given it his "amazing" stamp of approval. Then he spent some of his money on a transformer and Good-n-Plenty for Raef...after some coaxing from me, because Raef did not bring any money and was not happy about it.

When Zach paid for his merchandise, he had a lot of one-dollar bills. It was fun to watch him pay. He handed the cashier one dollar at time. It was very cute.

It was a successful, educational day. Homeschooling is really a wonderful way of life. I highly recommend it.

3 comments:

Meridy said...

wow! Good job!!!

Brook and Chad said...

Ok, I have two words for you... SHOW OFF! :) Ha!!! xoxo

Kelly said...

I am absolutely a show off... hehe. But I did omit all yelling from my story, remember?

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...