Homeschooling.

I love Home Schooling. 

I knew it was something that I was guided and inspired to do this year. But I didn't know how much I would love it. 

Sometimes Maddie jumps in and helps/plays with us in between her college and high school schedule. 

One goal I had this year was to teach my kids US geography. It's not part of any of our curriculum per say, just something I wanted them to learn. Here we are playing Scrambled States of America. It's helping us learn the name of the states and where they are in the U.S. It teaches us the capital of each state along with the nickname. It's one of our favorite games so far.  

 I found this Leap Frog USA at D.I for a whopping $3 it's helping us learn too. 

Our first unit in science has been Human Anatomy. 

Here is our playdough brain. We learned our brain has different sections and each section does different things. For instance, the orange piece represent our Frontal Lobe. That part of our brain helps us problem solve and creates our emotions. The brain stem (blue part) is the part of the brain that tells our body to do things we don't think about like breathing, swallowing and telling our heart to beat. I am learning just as much as my kid's in our home schooling journey. 

It may have been a little bit of a stretch playing Operation one Friday afternoon for science while Emily was at work. We were learning about bones at the time so why not!

But learn them they did! We had Mr. Bones on our back door for a few weeks. The kids enjoyed matching up the names with the right bones. 

We learned about our spine and why we are able to bend the way we can. 

Here we learned about tendons and why we are able to move our fingers....how it works on the inside. 

We've also learned about our lungs. It's been so fun to "make" things that replicate some of our organs/body parts. To see how and why they work the way they do. 

For History our 1st unit study was on the Ancient Native Americans. We learned about the many different areas of North America the Indians lived in. And what tribes lived where. For one of our STEM activities they were given different supplies and told to make a tool that the Indians may have/could have used. Emily had watched a short documentary on a pully system and tried making a replica. 

For a combined Language Arts, Social Studies and Art class everyone wrote a story about a Native American. They had to type it up and then using petroglyphs re-write their story as the Indians would have. 

At the end of our Ancient Native America unit I asked them each to create a slide show on google docs. Then they made a diorama. Kylie said this was her favorite part in Social Studies so far. 

She was so proud of her clay sculpting. She made the fire flames and rabbit's all by herself. She wanted to show how the Indian's cooked. The didn't have a stove like ours. 

Everyone chose a different tribe to learn about in a different part of the country. 

These are the things that will help them remember what they learned these first few weeks of school. 

So how does our day look? 

We start school about 8:15-8:30 everyday. Sometime they are still in their p.j's and sometimes they are dressed. The kids like doing math first. They all sit at the table with their math workbook in front of them. Emily is in Algebra, Brayden Pre-Algebra and Kylie in 3rd (times tables). They each do 2 pages, both sides. We get through one chapter almost every week, just like public school. Math generally takes us 20-40 minutes. Just depends if it's a new concept or reiterating what they learned during the lesson. They generally do math by themselves with Mom checking their answers when they are done. While they do math, Mom's making breakfast. By about 9:30 at the latest we are doing our Language Arts. Again each has their own notebook with lessons. I dictate spelling words and sentences to them out of their individual books. Their lessons can include writing several sentences about the book they are reading, using words such as witch/which in the right sentence. Lots of Grammar, correct sentence structure and writing essays. Our program also includes a little Geography. They have learned the names and where each ocean is. They are currently working on States and Capitals which totally helps me accomplish my goal. This typically lasts 45 min- 1hr. By 10:15 we either move on to Science or Social Studies. We do each two times a week. I try to be completely done by 11 when Kory gets home from work for lunch. After lunch we play! We play our "educational" games that most of the time they don't even realize that's what they are. We subscribed to Kiwi Crates this year. Once a month each child gets their own activity kit. 

This was Kylies first crate. She made a claw grabber and big pom pom monsters. She uses her grabber to "help" clean her room. 

One of Brayden's kits was a paint spinner. He had to build the box, build the electronic to make it spin and then created his own custom art. 

Through our homeschool program Brayden was given Lego Wedo 3.0 He builds a robot and has learned to code them. He can make then drive forward, lift, turn, reverse and stop. He loves this!

Emily's tech class is photoshop. She's learning how to change the look of different photos and remove unwanted objects from the photo. Kylie is also doing a adobe create program. She is learning how to draw characters, names and change their colors. So far so good!

I love the "extra" time I have with these kiddo's of mine. It's given this young man time to create. He put our new office chair together. 

I love that we are usually done with our text book school by 11 and by 1 their tech classes are done. When they have essays and other projects they are assigned this is the time they use to do those. I love the extra time I have with my kids. We go to the library once a week, the kids are in a group swim once a week and Emily is on a club swim that meets 4 times a week. We participate in a Common Wealth on Thursdays for a few hours that we have met more homeschool families. On Friday mornings several homeschool moms meet at a local park. The kids usually end up playing something like kickball, or flag football. The younger kids play on the equipment. 

I am really enjoying our school schedule this year and the kids seem to also.