August was a doozy for us. Here are the highlights of our month.

Morning Basket

I’m still trying to iron out Morning Basket time. It is a pretty lively time with all four children present and I’m thinking about changing some things up in how we accomplish this time due to the dynamics of the kids right now. The main goals during this time are reading the Bible, going over our Scripture Memory Verse and reading books to the boys before they go to Room Time and naptime. I will report back next month with hopefully a solution to all the craziness that has been going on during this time each morning!

Language Arts

We continue to work through AAR but the core of Little Bug’s language arts studies has become her Classical Conversations English Grammar Memory Work! We work on the memory work every day and my goal is for her to have the English Grammar Memory Work mastered for all 3 cycles by the time she enters Essentials at age 9 or 10. (I am undecided if we will start Essentials next year or wait and let her mature one more year before starting Essentials. I am leaning towards waiting, but we won’t make that decision until later.) I made a notebook that contains all the Memory Work for all 3 cycles so we can easily flip through and work on memorizing this foundational grammar knowledge. We are also continuing to work through First Language Lessons Level 2, which I’ve also heard is great prep for Essentials.

Little Bug continues to work through Memoria Press Copybook 2. If she takes her time and tries, she can show beautiful handwriting! I have to remind her to slow down when writing so she can produce her best handwriting. She enjoys drawing an illustration to go with her copywork. This month she was copying a poem about frogs.

This month, I made some adjustments to Sweet Pea’s curriculum. Tears + All About Reading = Child Isn’t Ready. I firmly believe that. I will not push a child to read. She will learn when she is developmentally ready. So, I have shelved All About Reading Level 1 and we picked Christian Light Education Kindergarten II back up. We had not completed Book 3 so we started again where we left off and then we will continue on through Books 4 and 5. CLE KII is a perfect fit for Sweet Pea right now. She will still get reinforcement and practice with phonics and reading 3-letter words, which is right where she is developmentally. The time will come down the road for AAR!

We will continue to work through the Explode the Code primers as well as A Reason for Handwriting K. I’ve been using ETC to teach her how to write the letters and then using ARFH for more letter writing practice.

Math

I don’t have any math pictures this month except for this one above! I packed everything in a plastic tub so it could be taken with the girls on their trip to the mountains with Grams and Gramps. I will write more on this trip later, but the girls went a week ahead of us to the mountains and I didn’t want them taking a 2-week break from math, so I sent it with them! Little Bug finished LU 108 while there and Sweet Pea finished LU 101!

I have decided to shelf CLE Math for Sweet Pea as well for the same reasons I shelved AAR. Sweet Pea needs more time than I thought to be ready for academics. The math concepts were getting to complex to fast even though she did complete LU 101. Instead, we will work on math in CLE KII and continue to learn basic math skills through playing, printables I find and games! We will pick CLE Math back up down the road when I feel she is ready for it.

Classical Conversations

Just a couple weeks before we were to begin our 3rd year of CC, I learned that our home church was going to allow a CC group to meet there. Due to the fact my home church is a 5-minute’s drive down the road from our home, I made a very last minute decision to transfer communities.

I follow God’s lead and as soon as I heard of this community I knew it was the place for us. I just had to call and see if the new community had space for us and if it was too late to transfer. It was a seamless transfer for us! We had to miss Week 1 because we were out of town, but we were there for Week 2. The director is phenomenal. She does things differently than the other two communities we have been a part of and it is really a very beautiful thing! She has a one room school house mentality so there are various ages in each Foundations class and siblings are together. This means the girls and I are in the same class every week, learning the same ways to practice the Memory Work for that week. The director also encourages the parents to actually participate in class with their child(ren). I have loved this! I get on the floor with my girls and we learn the Memory Work together. I feel like this is the way Leigh Bortins designed community days to be and I am thrilled to be a part of this community!

Geography

Wednesdays are Geography days. We play with our puzzles of the USA and work on our States and Capitals Flipbook. As an introduction to our USA Geography studies I read How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the USA to the girls!

We also work on tracing the USA map as we learn all 50 states and capitals by week 10.

Little Bug also attended Geo Draw Camp during Practicum. She brought home several maps she had drawn and the stomach bug. Fortunately, it was short lived for her and we kept it contained just to her by sending her to Gram’s Infirmary! That was not a fun way to begin August.

I did enjoy Practicum. I really was hoping to gain a bigger picture of where CC is going to take us beyond Foundations and I feel I learned a lot about the Essentials and Challenge programs.

History

Monday and Fridays are our History days. We are reading through the books I gathered to learn about American History. The girls enjoy drawing in their History notebooks about what they learned by reading the books. So far we have learned about Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims and the Native Americans.

Tot School

Sarge loves his “learning time” where we read books, do puzzles and he “writes”. He loves to get one of our little dry erase boards and a dry erase marker and write. He is learning to sing his ABC’s, he can count to 10 and he learned to say our August Memory Verse!

Vacation

In mid-August, we went on our annual trip to the mountains vacation. This is what made the month of August a doozy. With Sarge’s special needs, this trip was just difficult. It took him a full 2 weeks to recover, regulate and get back to his groove. It ended up being a very tiring month, but we got through August and “vacation” just in time to deal with Hurricane Irma (I will write about those adventures in September’s post). I am hoping the rest of September and October are boring and mundane!

Despite the hardships of traveling, there were moments of peace and tranquility. I got my quiet time on the porch which I always look forward to. This was Beau’s first trip to the mountains. He did fabulous the entire trip minus the 7+ hour drive. He apparently doesn’t like being stuck in his carseat that long and sat and cried for a good part of the drive going and coming home. We got a picture of the 6 of us on the porch at the cabin!

Little Bug found tadpoles at the pond and she went there nearly every day she was there to catch them! She found tadpoles in every stage of development. This counts as "science lesson" at this age. I love to see my children exploring the world like this...even though I certainly wouldn't want to handle tadpoles and frogs! Little Bug will touch just about any creature she finds!

The girls had a fabulous time with Grams and Gramps the week before we arrived. They got to enjoy many outdoor activities including hiking in the mountains and going to a Nature Preserve where they panned for gems. Little Bug also enjoyed catching animals (butterfly, slug, inchworm, caterpillar, tadpoles and frogs)!

We took our annual family photo on the cabin porch this year!

August 21, 2017 Eclipse

The sun was blocked by 92% and I thought we would see significant changes during the peak time of 2:48pm. Well, we learned the sun is POWERFUL because even blocked 92%, it was daylight outside and the girls were sorely disappointed! That morning for school we made a solar eclipse craft and did a science experiment with balls and a flashlight to demonstrate a solar eclipse. It was a fun, different than usual, school day! The next total solar eclipse in the USA will be in 2024 and all the children will be 7 years older. I want to travel into the line of totality!

Homeschool Routine

I feel like our daily routine has taken a beating since the end of July! We found a good routine by the end of July and then we had CC Practicum and then sickness, and then the girls left for their trip a couple days later. We joined them the following week and then had those crazy 2 weeks of getting Sarge back on track once back home. And then Irma. So, I am looking forward to being able to really get into a good routine with hopefully fewer disruptions as we head into Fall!

- Elaine