...our first week of school...

Well, we finished everything this week! Yay!! Granted we haven't started every subject, but we're still off to a good start. ☺ This year we are using My Father's World curriculum. So, far it is quite painless and pretty simple to use. Joelle enjoys the hands on projects and finishing early in the day.

Here's the curriculum in the box. It's on shelves now, in several different places - that's why there's no "out-of-the-box" picture, it may get moved again. We had planned to conduct school downstairs in the basement, but when we started on Monday none of us felt comfortable down there. We're too accustomed to sitting around the table and lounging on the couch.

(Barry reading Biology; Joelle mapping her bedroom.)

Our focus this year is on Geography. Joelle, Barry and I will be taking an indepth look at our Father's world! One of our projects was turning a "globe" into a flat map. We used an orange. These oranges were from South Africa. So, we talked about where Africa is. ☺ A couple days before the orange project I found our long lost missing biology dissection kit. Sadly, aside from the dissection instruments, the contents were not salvagable. But, the scalpel came in handy!

I really like the "Book Basket" idea. We've added Geography books and free reading books. If we come to a lull - which is usually one child waiting for another child to complete a task so we can continue together - I can say, "Go grab a geography book from the book basket and read until we're ready." Other times I might say, "Free reading time." The kids know to go to the book basket and pick out whatever they want. The books are labeled Geography or General Reading with an approximate reading level.

(the girls during free reading)

Joelle posting a grammar rule to remember.

Examining our environment

(Joelle's - green; Barry's - blue)

This project was suppose to be for Thursday, but I hadn't gotten to the store to get the worms. So, we finished up this afternoon with the "Niche" project. We'll post more pictures as we observe our worms in their new environment. I also didn't have regular sand so we used colored sand that I had on hand. I'm hoping this doesn't cause any damage and will make for an interesting end result.

(**no worms were harmed in the making of this project. The "extras" were set free and our "helpers" will be set free when we are finished with our project.) ☺