When I started this blog I knew I would need to be gentle with myself. I know that if I don’t have to be at a computer I will avoid it at all costs. I know that I don’t have the time to mess around with the layout to get it to look exactly as I want and that that alone will suck motivation out of me to get on here. But, I also know that each time I write an activity in my planner or read a homeschool blog that speaks to my heart (because goodness knows I don’t mind being on my iPhone…) I am grateful that someone sat down and put the time into recording their journey so that it makes my own just a little bit easier. Because I can’t go back and fill in all of our first semester of this year, and because I have an unhealthy love of bullet points, I’ll attempt to recap September-December of 2013.
September
We decided our first few months were going to be literature heavy. So we took our time studying Charlotte’s Web.
After that, we did a unit on Africa.
Then, frankly, our lives started to get rocky. Our oldest was scheduled for open heart surgery, and I’m not going to lie… some weeks we did the (very bare) minimum. My head wasn’t in the game. It was elsewhere. There were lots, and lots and lots of doctors appointments. My heart ached and I was so distracted that most days I just let them play. Because, every time I thought about interupting them, I thought “I just want them to enjoy each other”. And so that is what we did.
October
Molly’s surgery was scheduled for October 8th. Until in the last week of September she came down with a cold and it was rescheduled. So, for a couple weeks in October I was able to pull myself together and decided we were not going to take the entire month off, and we dove into a study of insects and James and The Giant Peach. While I wanted to get things done, I was still really looking for “crutches” and used a lot of TPT materials those weeks. Here is what we used:
James and the Giant Peach Study – great vocab cards in this
Insect Unit – this was awesome. I would totally, 100% buy more stuff from her.
Molly had her surgery on October 24th. She rocked it. We were home on October 29th. This crazy trio was back in action within an hour of walking in the door.
November
We took a week or two off in November. I honestly don’t remember exactly. But I felt like we all deserved a little time to relax. breathe. sleep. smile. laugh. live. Well, as much living as you can do when you aren’t allowed to leave the house.
We started back to school slowly. We listened to/read The Secret Garden and did some math, grammar, spelling. Nothing too crazy, but a good lovely way to ease back into life.
We got a puppy. Because why wouldn’t you?
We had a PARTY. Because we could. Because she could. Because we needed to celebrate the people in our lives who held our hands through the last 6 months. Because. (It was obviously a Woodland Theme).
After that, we studied Thanksgiving, reviewed math concepts, worked on handwriting, finished up the Grammar Bundle books. A good short week that was closer to our normal schedule.
DECEMBER
In November a town very near to us was quite literally demolished by a tornado. Lives were altered forever. Molly heard us talking about it a lot, and wanted to know more. So our first week of December was dedicated to weather. We did a lot of reading, but a few projects most from this unit as well.
We did rainbow mosiacs and tied in figurative language because that was our Grammar Bundle for the week. We reviewed the water cycle, made shaving cream clouds, did the ivory in the microwave experiement, and cloud in a jar.
(Guess what? I’m running out of steam to want to explain these things. Let me know if anyone needs clarification. I think all of 0 people look at this blog anyway… unless its for the pumpkin muffin recipe. People are loco for pumpkin!)
Lucy got to pick the next unit and she picked baby animals. We got some books on life cycles, and one cool book of 101 baby animal facts. Molly was required to pick one animal a day and write a few facts about it. Lucy spent some time learning the names of baby animals. It was a fun unit, but admitedly I was a bit lost for ideas. Life cycles really saved me this week! We also broke out the Hot Dots for some math review.
We did a few Christmas activities, but now I can’t even remember what. That’s terrible. It was last year, people. 😉
Tiny Spark Academy 