The School Year

Our school year officially began yesterday. 

I'm excited.

The last two school years we had a lot of hiccups....winding roads...mountains to climb...

chaos...if you will. 

This year I feel like I have a plan, I have the space, and my heart is in it. 

I will try and put up a blog post at least once a week to share what we are up to in the world of homeschool. Without further ado :

SLIME. 

We made it, it was a hit.

Making a gooey concoction like this is a great hands on science experiment....

the conversation can be about formulas, polymers, how to follow a recipe...the list goes on. 

 We used this recipe! Give it a whirl...it only calls for water, glue, and a little borax.

We are going to learn more about Mr. Edgar Degas for our artist unit study this week.

I found a nice book at the library and also some youtube videos. 

Have you heard of the Who Was series of children's books?

My kids LOVE them. This week we are reading aloud Who Was Maya Angelou, 

my two older kids have a chapter book that they read from every night before bed.

We are going to focus most of our attention on South America in geography this year. We usually choose a country (this week is Brazil) and we find a book about the culture, history, economics, that kind of stuff. Then we may do a craft like create a flag for their notebooks, maybe cut out foods from a magazine or pictures of plants and create a collage for the country. I LOVE the Expedia Travel Guides on youtube - they are anywhere from 2 minutes long to 7 minutes and they are colorful and bright and interesting. Yesterday we watched about Rio along with reading about Brazil. It's fun traveling the world right in your living room. 

One of the biggest blessings of homeschool is being able to create a beautiful environment for the kids while they work on workbooks - classical music in the background, a cup of tea...maybe some cinnamon honey toast. I found some black masking tape at the store that I'm going to use to hang their art projects on our library door - I think that will serve MUCH better then our kitchen refrigerator. What are some of your plans for this school year? 

"What we learn with pleasure we never forget."

- Alfred Mercier