This has been a very difficult year, so I have not kept up with these posts every month as I have always done in the past. However, we have kept up our homeschooling, even taking drastic measures to ensure we could continue to homeschool our children this year!

Our first official day of school for the 2018-2019 school year was July 31, 2018! This was later than we have ever started a new school year as I typically like to get us started right after the 4th of July. We closed on our new house on June 20th and Moving Day was July 2nd, so after July 4th, I was busy unpacking boxes and making this house our home! By the end of July, the house was settled enough to start our new school year.

I knew I was not going to be able to homeschool the girls without daily outside help with the boys. The boys are at ages and developmental stages where they require constant supervision. I knew trying to homeschool with them underfoot would not be good (or successful) for anyone. The season had passed when I was able to get the majority of school finished while Sarge was in room time and Beau napped. At ages 4 and 2, the boys’ schedules had changed as well and I knew my only solution to being able to homeschool would be hiring outside help. We made the decision to bring an au pair from Brazil to live in our home for 12 months. She arrived on August 23, 2018 (Sarge’s 4th birthday!). I was filled with high hopes that this was going to be God-send we all needed to get to a place where everyone was thriving and we weren’t merely surviving the days. Our au pair was able to help with anything child related, so I gave her child-related responsibilities such as: caring for the boys during school time, preparing meals for the children and doing the childrens’ laundry each week along with a few other tasks that were on a bi-weekly (changing bed sheets) or monthly (dusting bedrooms) schedule. Our au pair was with us for seven weeks and then we made the decision to terminate her position in our home for a variety of reasons. The main reason was we quickly learned having an au pair was not what we expected it was going to be and we were very disappointed in her work ethic. She left our home on October 14th and was matched with another family in New York to finish out her 12-month term here in the States.

The Lord quickly provided a new helper! From the moment Keri first stepped foot in our home on October 16th, she has been the God-send I was hoping the au pair was going to be! Keri works part-time for us and provides three hours of childcare for the boys (about 4 days per week) while I am homeschooling the girls. During their time with Keri the boys basically get a preschool experience! As I am writing this post on December 12th, I finally feel like we have reached our 2018-2019 school routine groove!

Here is what we’ve been learning this year, a record of the progress I’ve seen in the children and the fun activities and field trips we’ve had along the way:

Langauge Arts

Little Bug

I was browsing the curriculum hall at Convention and came across Daily Grams. As I looked through it, I loved what I saw and I knew even if I did this with Little Bug a couple times a week, it would be great grammar practice for her in preparation for Essentials next year. Plus, for $10 it was hard to pass up, so I decided to give it a try. I love it and Little Bug’s capitalization and punctuation skills have greatly improved after we started Daily Grams! There is also a section on the parts of speech each day so we review the memory work and then practice applying the knowledge we have memorized. The very end of the lesson is combining two sentences into one, which has also been excellent practice for Little Bug. We do Daily Grams about twice a week, so at the time of writing this we’ve completed about the first 20 lessons in Daily Grams Grade 4. I’m glad I added this to Little Bug’s language arts studies this year. In the picture below, you can see that we were learning the difference between “there”, “their” and “they’re”.

Little Bug continues on in the Explode the Code series. Little Bug works on ETC mostly independently as it reinforces phonics and spelling rules for her. She is working through Book 7, completing one lesson per week.

The core of Little Bug’s Language Arts studies is All About Spelling and CC English Grammar Memory Work. Little Bug has memorized the majority of the English Grammar Memory Work from Cycles 1 & 3. We have some in Cycle 2 to work on but I feel this will give her a head start when she begins Essentials next year. We have a notebook where we keep all the Memory Work organized so we can review daily and continue to learn the pieces she doesn’t have memorized yet.

Little Bug has completed the first nine lessons of All About Spelling Level 3. While AAS is very teacher-intensive (meaning Little Bug cannot do AAS independently, it is meant to be done with a teacher), I love this program for teaching spelling because it focuses on the spelling rules and everything is taught in a very orderly fashion. Little Bug responds well to AAS and her spelling overall has improved this year. I recently researched a more independent spelling curriculum, because teaching multiple children on multiple levels of AAS seems a bit daunting, but I was not able to find anything I liked better or equally to AAS, so we will stick with AAS for the time being since I do just have one child at this time working through AAS although that will most likely change come next year when Sweet Pea begins Level 1.

 Sweet Pea

In August, I pulled All About Reading Level 1 back out and started again at Lesson 1 with Sweet Pea. Since the beginning of our school year has had so many interruptions, it’s been hard to consistently do daily phonics lessons with Sweet Pea. For this reason, it’s been slow progress, but there has been forward progress made this year! We’ve completed the first 18 lessons and we will keep working through the lessons. Now that we are finally in our groove, being able to keep phonics lessons consistent will hopefully help Sweet Pea develop her reading skills!

Last year when we gave AAR a try (and then put it away because Sweet Pea wasn’t ready), she only read the first story in the reader. This year, she has almost read the entire first reader!

I’m glad I have our school materials organized in a way that it is very portable. I organize by subject in baskets for each child. That way, I can pick up the basket and go to wherever we are doing lessons that day. While the au pair was with us, it worked out best to do phonics lessons with Sweet Pea in Sarge’s bedroom. Now that Keri is taking care of the boys, we’ve been doing phonics lessons in the girls’ bedroom!

Sweet Pea’s favorite part of language arts is the one-on-one read aloud sessions with Mommy! We’ve read several books together this year: Little House in the Big Woods, several Magic School Bus books and The Penderwicks. Sweet Pea is also working through Explode the Code books A, B & C. She did these last year as well, but I have her completing them again because they are a great compliment to All About Reading Level 1 and also provide good handwriting practice.

Math

Little Bug

Little Bug has just a handful of lessons left in Christian Light Math Level 2! The incremental lessons on top of daily review and repetition make CLE math a good fit for Little Bug. Her basic math skills have strengthened and her confidence has soared as she has just about completed Level 2. We will move right in to Level 3 after she completes Level 2.

Little Bug has consistently done xtra math daily and it has helped her with her basic math facts tremendously.

Little Bug scores A’s on her tests and quizzes. Grades are really pointless in homeschool though because with one-on-one instruction, we move at Little Bug’s pace. We don’t move forward until she has mastered all the concepts and skills being taught, so of course she is going to make A’s on her tests and quizzes. Those A’s give her confidence a boost though and the test and quizzes do help me know whether she is mastering the concepts and skills being taught.

 Sweet Pea

As we close out this first semester of the 2018-2019 school year, Sweet Pea is working in Christian Light Math Level 1 and she is in 103. She hasn’t hit a hard spot yet and flies through her lessons! I’m thankful she will get this solid foundation in basic math concepts like her sister has gotten!

Classical Conversations

Our first week of CC was August 16th! This year we are back to Cycle 1. The girls are always excited to return to CC in the Fall. This was the first year we returned to the same Community. Meeting at our church which is just a 5 minute drive up the road is very convenient so as long as we participate in CC, I see us attending this Community. For whatever reason, I still don’t feel a true sense of “community” in our Community, but the girls love going to CC and I like that CC provides a roadmap for our homeschool, so we continue on with CC this year. Next year, I am looking forward to Little Bug starting her first tour of Essentials. She could have started this year, but I decided her starting at age 10 would be a better for both of us. After the year we’ve had, I am really glad I did not decided to start Essentials this year!

Science

Cycle 1 Science covers Earth Science and Biology! We have learned about the kingdoms of living things, animal and plant cells, invertebrates and vertebrates and plants, leaves and flowers! We try to memorize the weekly memory work, participate in the science experiments and projects at Community Day and then I also provide lots of books on these topics for the children to read.

Animal Classification project

Flower dissection

Owl Pellet disssection

A cake & candy model of an animal cell

Science experiment about temperature above the soil vs under the soil

Science experiment about pollution

The girls record their experiments in their Science notebooks

Presentations

One of the things I really appreciate about CC is that the girls do a presentation every week in their class. This year we have stepped things up a bit and I have had them pick topics to present (instead of toys) and write down their 3 points on a notecard. They have done very well with this, although, as you can see from the picture below, we do still bring in toys every so often or when we haven’t been able to really prep as I would like to for presentations. Since we are in our groove now, I hope next semester we can do more presentations on topics than toys!

The last week of the first semester the kids organized and presented a Talent Show! Little Bug was one of the main ones planning this and I was so proud of her leadership in this. At the end of the presentation, the children sang a part of the Timeline song.

History

Cycle 1 history covers ancient History. We had Memory Work on the 10 commandments, Greeks and Romans (and more!). Little Bug became fascinated with ancient history the last time we did Cycle 1 and she continued to be interested in it this year too. I decided I wanted to find stories about ancient history to read to the girls. We have enjoyed the stories I found for us to read and even did this Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting Yeh-Shen, A Cinderella Story from China to the Disney Cinderella story.

Music

The girls get Music Theory (note names and values, rhythm and scales) and tin whistle during the first semester of Cycle 1.

Geography

Geography for Cycle 1 covers Africa (ancient areas) and the World. We’ve been able to consistently practice map tracing this semester. This is what the girls do while I am getting the boys down for their naps (among several other tasks they can complete independently).

Art

The first six weeks of Cycle 1 focuses on drawing skills. We learned about OILS as well as mirror images, upside-down images, abstract art and perspective. The girls were working on their abstract art in these pictures.

Weekly Review

I post our weekly Memory Work on the wall so that it is visible when we are reviewing it.

The girls have used the app to review weekly Memory Work this year. This is something else they do after they have done their Map Tracing.

Morning Basket: Bible, Scripture Memory & Read Aloud

Every morning we begin our day with our Morning Basket. We read the Bible, work on Scripture Memory and then I read aloud to the girls. It is our favorite time of the day and a wonderful way to begin our school time!

This Christmas season we are reading A Jesus Christmas! It is an advent book that takes us from Genesis to Jesus’s birth. Each day we read a story from Scripture, read the devotion from the book and then the girls draw something from that day’s reading.

Field Trips

We discovered we live within walking distance to the St John’s River! We can access the river by Ft Caroline National Memorial! We had a day where Keri didn’t work so the kids and I worked on some pilgrim and indian puppets and then we went on a walk to the river!

We took the older three children to the Florida Theatre to see the Magic School Bus! All of the children love to watch this show so seeing the performance was a fun outing for them.

The girls got to participate in a Mother/Daughter Spa Night at church. It was the same evening as my connection group meeting, so Grams took the girls to this event!

We went to Tree Hill with our CC Community. We got to see many animals and enjoy a walk through nature.

Grams and Gramps take the girls to the library so they can stock up on new books to read!

The girls got to enjoy a late-summer trip with Grams and Gramps to Ridgecrest in August. Unk and Lauren came too!

 Seasonal Activities

I love doing special activities with the children during the holiday season! We made Fall Trees from construction paper cut into squares. They each put their unique twist on the art project and we displayed their finished products in the dining room!

Going to the pumpkin patch is an annual tradition for us. I love getting pictures of the kids at the pumpkin patch each year. In fact, we go every year for pictures and buy a pumpkin at the grocery store!

This year we carved our pumpkin! This is a tradition we have let go in year’s past, but we were able to do it this year and we had so much fun! Little Bug and Beau were totally in to the pumpkin guts, Sweet Pea tolerated it for a bit and Sarge wanted nothing to do with it!

On Halloween, the boys had a Boy’s Night with Daddy while I took the girls to Maria’s for trick-or-treating. Sarge was having a hard time around this time with all of the changes he had encountered with our move and the change of childcare, so it was best for him to not be overstimulated and out late for trick-or-treating. Our plan worked perfectly and we all enjoyed the evening!

Cookie baking is becoming a yearly tradition with Grams now that we have done this two years in a row. It is quite chaotic right now (just like egg dyeing is in Easter!), but Grams and the children had a ball. I stood behind the camera taking pictures and videos so we can always remember the chaos of a 2, 4, 7 and 9 year old making Christmas cookies!

The girls got to make a Gingerbread House with Grams!

They also got to go with Grams and Gramps to pick out their Christmas Tree!

This is the second year in a row we’ve had an artificial tree, but I think next year we will be going back to a real tree. Either way, I love our home decorated for Christmas!

The girls participated in the Children’s Choir that sang at a special musical service at church one Sunday night in December.

Sarge & Beau ~ Preschool

Sarge and Beau have a solid schedule with Keri! She arrives at 8:30am while the children are eating breakfast and then once the girls and I retreat to the office for school Keri gives the boys a daily preschool experience! The play outside, go for a walk in the neighborhood, come inside for “Learning Time/Craft Time”, have a snack and then read books together before going upstairs for Room Time where they play independently in their bedrooms. The boys thrive on the structure and routine with Keri and during the three hours she is here, the girls and I are able to complete our Morning Basket, Language Arts & Math lessons. When the boys go to Room Time, Keri prepares lunch for all four children so that at noon, they can all go to the kitchen and eat lunch! I am thankful we have come to this place of everyone’s needs being met simultaneously with the help of Keri! It is A LOT to juggle and I am so grateful for the ability to hire help during this season. Here is a little snapshot of the boys’ days at the ages of 4 and 2:

They LOVE the garbage truck. If they hear or see it coming down our street, they run to the window to watch. This day, Sarge bolted out the door and then both boys stood still as statues watching the truck go down our street and then back up again. The man blew the horn on his way out which was a thrill for the boys. Sarge consistently tells us he is going to be a "garbage man" when he grows up!

Keri takes the boys on a walk through the neighborhood on most days and even when it is veeeeery cold! The boys don't mind the cold and neither does she. I am thankful that I do not have to get out in the cold because I do NOT like it.

Keri has been working with the boys on days of the week, months of the year and weather!

All of the children adore our backyard which was one of the big reason we made the decision to move this year.

The boys have discovered play-doh!

On days when Keri isn't here to help, we have filled our morning time with nature walks through our neighborhood. On this day, we were collecting different leaves.

I pulled out some of the fun preschool fall activities I did with both girls. Sarge enjoyed this counting activity but I think in a year or two he will enjoy all of these activities I have saved from the girls even more.

Do-A-Dot markers are a favorite activity!

Painting is also a favorite!

We live within walking distance to some beautiful nature trails! Before it got cold, we really enjoyed evening walks through the trails. I know we will do this again once the weather warms up and the sun doesn't set by dinnertime.

If there is one success that stands out with these boys this year, it is that they have both developed a love for books and being read to!

Sarge has an amazing attention span for books that are way longer than I would think he would be able to listen to. Beau is two so his attention span isn't that long for listening to a story, however, he loves to get books and flip through the pages on his own. He is just beginning to want to sit and listen to stories as well. With continued daily exposure to books and stories, I know I'll soon have two little boys snuggled up beside me listening to stories!

This summer and fall (before it got cold) the boys enjoyed lots of water play!

Can't go wrong with a little pool! It provided HOURS of fun!

Sarge has gotten FAST on his little balance bike!

I LOVE reading to my children. It is probably my favorite thing to do with them! I read to the girls during our Morning Basket time, Keri reads to the boys before Room Time, the boys listen to stories on audio during Room Time, I read to the boys before their naptime. I read to the girls again before Rest Time. Then, Dave reads to Sarge before bed and I read to Beau. Once the boys are down for bed, Dave goes to the girls' room and reads to them before they go to bed! We do A LOT of reading in this house!

Give these boys a stick and they are happy!

A daily tv show has been part of our routine in this season. Sarge suddenly stopped napping cold turkey. It was literally from one day to the next he just stopped napping. His body has had a hard time adjusting. He will sometimes fall asleep around 3-4 and then he has a hard time waking up after that, so I started putting on a show after nap time to help him wake up.

This semester has had some unique challenges as far as our family dynamics go, but God has provided and been so faithful to us through it all. Now that we are in our groove, we will continue to work a little each day on our lessons and, most importantly, the character development of these precious children God has entrusted to us. In this season, I have felt like I have failed in many ways, but after writing this, I do see that we have continued to make forward progress and that equals success - not failure!

- Elaine