Early Explorers

This year in Social Studies we are covering early American History. We are starting out with Explorets like Erikson, Columbus and Smith. 

Viking adventures, ship building and pilgrim projects, stories and videos abound. We can't go wrong with boys on this! 

Boymom homeschool life

The first few weeks of the school year start the pace and flow. Week 1, ideas are coming together as is the search for materials and supplies to make those ideas a reality.  Finding ideas that appeal to kinesthetic learners is fun when it appeals and clicks with the boys.

A big focus for me is how to streamline 3 different ages while still respecting the different places they are learning. 

The boys are all in different phases with their letters . The two year old is recognizing them, 5 year old is starting to sound out words and read while the 6 year old is learning spelling rules. We've had Montessori letters for years and so I started making mats. I filled in some and some I left blank depending on which boy is using them for their current scope and sequence. 

We are starting with their names this week since the bible focus is on learning the Names of Jesus. 

Munchkin asked for more school after quiet time. That's a homeschool win . 

This week a significant amount of time is being soent on getting back in the routine for table time. Remembering to listen quietly while others are speaking or reading and waiting turns while mommy helps brothers.

 Munchkin is frazzled when others don't follow the rules. Change in general is a challenge for Doodlebug and  Lionheart is wanting immediate attention and to do exactly what big brothers do.  Prayers appreciated ! 

2nd day

Love doing celebrations the whole first week of school. We are introducing the material we are going to cover for the year. There are so many fun ways to get excited about learning . 

Made signs with the kid's information : 

We worked on the pledge, talked about maps, and introduced Science for M. We found a couple videos about the what Science is . 

App time appropriate for each child . M worked on geography :  

D music: 

L counting: 

D and L are both covering days of creation this week in their separate curriculum. (So great when they line up) We'll do water and sky activities today : 

Creation video:

D's free time choice: 

2 year Preschool for Lionheart

Our third kiddo is starting ABC Jesus Loves Me. The intentional play including bible, character, letters, numbers , colors, shapes, fine and gross motor, critical thinking, learning his information 

This will be my first year to coordinate three curriculum, prayers appreciated 🙏

Kinder for Doodlebug

We are huge fans of the kinder year of My Father's world and can't wait to do this with our middle son. Doodlebug will enjoy the unit study approach including all the subjects around a weekly object from God's creation. Science, Bible, Character, Handwriting, Literature, Math, Art and Music are all in there. 

The first two weeks cover Creation and are followed by 26 - 6 day units going in phonetic order through the alphabet. We blogged about each unit two years ago. 

First day of school !

Fun first day traditions for us.

Requested breakfast was cinnamon toast and English muffins. 

Yes, they did school in jammies the first day and we all loved it! 

2 out of 3 boys wanted to have their photo taken this way. It was doodlebug's idea 📸

All about Me pictures: 

2nd grade for Munchkin

We are continuing to use My Father's World for our oldest. He turns 7 in the fall. I bought the curriculum second hand from an older homeschool mom and it's on par with 1st in our local public school.

We chose the recommended Saxon for Math and Rod and Staff for grammar. The curriculum provides social studies, literature, Bible, Art and Science. We'll be adding Rosetta Stone Spanish for a foreign language . Music will be piano lessons. 

Music Lessons

Dream item for our homeschool was a piano and over the top generous friends gave us one over the summer. I've bought key stickers and music books for the fall 

Sheet music I already had

Love when our friends come over and play! 

End of the year

2015-2016 was a different year with doodlebug doing outside preschool for speech and behavioral therapies. 

We didn't do the best at end of the year photos. We had one lingering project we didn't finish. 

I am calling it good. As with any educational and learning pursuit it's aboit progress, not perfection. 

Our family in June

Spring learning: 

The time we spend together as a family and in God's word is worth the hard days when either me or the kids aren't motivated that day . We push forward because for our family , the pros outweigh the cons. We will continue to take that decision a year and child at a time. For now it works and I'm loving it ❤️

Academic Learning Games

Reinforcing what we are doing through games is ideal for us. The boys are relaxed, invested and engaged. Here are a few of our favorites for this year. We do different activities with the games depending on which child is playing the game. 

Math: 

Science : 

Language Arts: 

Books of the Bible

We took December off for Advent season. We got back in the swing of school this week. For munckin, I am most excited about going through the books of the bible. 

I've gathered some videos that go through the bible including Jesus Storybook Bible, What's in the Bible and we stream The Bible Project series online. I found individual flash cards and coloring pages for each of the 66 books.

This felt set by Betty Lukens is still really great! 

Some of our favorite bibles. 

Here's a closer look at a few of the books in the top collage that we have as resources to pull from while going through the bible . 

We pulled out our Books of the Bible bookcase this week. 

The boys love this, worth every penny! 

We are using flattened cereal boxes as pouches for each Brooks's activities :

I found a few other activities to do along the way: 

Inside the pouches for now, we'll add as we go along: 

Word search -

Bookcase coloring page - 

On our cork board to keep us on track: 

This was our kitchen table reviewing Exodus and introducing Leviticus Thursday morning. Love everything about this ! Daddy ran errands with our youngest then picked up our middle son from speech and behavior therapy . I got the chance to have a really great talk with our oldest son about words like atonement, sacrifice and redemption. We looked them up, looked for verses and takes about how we could apply them in his life. I wish I could have recorded today. It felt surreal and holy. Love this parenting gig.

Learning

Munchkin has started balling at some of the learning especially phonics. So glad the curriculum had alternatives suggested. Spelling out our new sounds and having him create his own words worked wonderfully! Love being able to make learning applicable, real and fun for him. 

My other favorite moment this week was coming up with our bible times costume as part of the intro to the bible that we are doing . It's still a work I progress, but it's been fun brainstorming.