Other things we've been doing...

Another new development in our homeschool is Mommy is expecting another baby! Due date is November 4th, so I'm about 6 weeks along. We're all looking forward to welcoming another little one to our family and teaching about human development along the way. Caley is going to be especially helpful, I hope. Keep track of things through the baby ticker on the right.

What We've Been Doing

We are into the next unit on horses and it's been pretty fun. We have been coloring pictures of horses, learning about how to control the horse by using the bridle and the purpose of a saddle, reading books about horses and we even watched "Secretariat" about a racing horse. The girls have really enjoyed it. In the next week or so I'm hoping to visit a horse farm. The weather just hasn't been conducive for such a trip. This week we made stick horses out of Daddy's old socks. We raced them and pretended to ride them to playgroup this week.

For math we are up to about lesson 80 in the Saxon K book, and ahead of schedule to finish on time. I'm so glad! Lately I've been trying to think of more natural ways to teach whatever concept the lesson is addressing, such as by ordering or graphing Caley's toys or suckers instead of some uninteresting thing the lesson suggests. Last week the lesson was on ordering by length left-to-right, longest-to-shortest and I asked her to order my jewelry instead of whatever the lesson said. She really got into it! Another lesson was about ordinal position (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th) and we were able to work it into dancing to music and making a parade.
I've also been trying to be more intentional about involving the kids in whatever projects I need to get done around the house. They very enthusiastically helped me wash the refrigerator, vacuum the car, sort the toys in the mud room, and Caley just today helped rinse the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. I'm thankful to have a lot of time with them that we can work on things like homemaking. In my mind I count it as school, just an additional activity to their academic work.

Caley is also continuing her speech therapy, and still loves going to see Mrs. Rose each week. She loves getting stickers and practicing her words. I have a feeling she'll qualify again next year, as Mrs. Rose said she's doing very well but still not consistently generalizing in her daily speech.

And as always, Amelia is being silly!!

Another post on Missionary Moms

Notes from the Trenches

The Medieval Feast

 While learning about kings and queens, we had a medieval feast with our playgroup friends. It was so fun, probably more fun for us mommies than for the kiddos. I kind of geeked out in the preparation when I found this medieval recipe website. We had a roasted chicken, parsnip pie, saffron vermicelli (or bowtie pasta), canel cucumber, apple muse, and wassail (apple cider). We proceeded into the dining room by family and served the food in courses with entertainment like someone telling a joke or doing a dance in between courses. Then we showed them some clips of "A Knight's Tale" for the jousting and then did our own jousting! It was so fun.

Royalty

We finished up the unit on Kings and Queens and it was so fun! Caley chose to research Queen Victoria. She picked her out of a book of princesses such as Marie Antoinette and Queen Elizabeth. We took the research project very slowly, first checking out books from the library, then looking through them, then synthesizing information from them (and the internet) into a list, studying the list, choosing pictures from the book for each item we learned, photocopying the pictures, then making a poster with the pictures and the information we listed. Caley presented her poster at playgroup in front of her friends. She did very well, with my help. It was good practice for her!
During the unit we made swords and shields and studied the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18) and we made a sugar cube castle. The girls were so excited about the castle! And they snitched the sugar, surprise surprise  (so did Mommy).
We've also been doing math and are moving into money and we set up a store. We also did a painting day and I just let the girls create! I was impressed with their artistic creativity. I love these children.

During the unit we also did some playgroup activities and we did a medieval feast! That was the best part. Pictures will be added soon.

We have since moved onto learning about military and general obedience. So the last few weeks have been kind of relaxed. It's been nice after a few weeks of crazy time. Caley helped me in the kitchen cutting strawberries and her new job is clearing the table. Woohoo!