Our Homeschool Journal, March 25, 2011

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The Homeschool Mother's Journal 
Hip Homeschool Hop 
Homeschool Highlights in MFW 

Please check out some other great blogs by clicking these links! 


In my life this week...

It was a busy, busy week!  We had to go out of town both days last weekend and then twice during the week.  I'm looking forward to a more "normal" schedule this week!  J had his annual appointment with the pediatric ophthalmologist and he is getting a weaker prescription in his bi-focals because the crossing has improved again!  The doctor said that he probably won't even need surgery if it continues to improve this much!  When he was 3.5 years old he had one eye that was legally blind and you could see one of his eyes cross every now and then, but I can't even see him doing it anymore. Praise God!  There was a time when I didn't know if he would even see out of that eye and his vision is almost normal now!

We had a day of 70 degree weather and 1 inch of snow within the same week!  That's what happens when you live in Indiana!

In our homeschool this week...

We were tackling Creation to the Greeks, Week 27 this week. We did have an unusual week, but we got as much school work done as we could on Monday morning before driving an hour away to the appointment.  We read more about the prophet Elisha and the miracles that God worked through him.  I found a Spanish/English memory game that a friend had given us a few years ago before the children knew any Spanish and it was fun to pull that out on Friday.  We are stopped doing our scripture copywork this week to do more review of some of the cursive letters.  The children are making progress through their other lessons.  We did do a fun experiments to demonstrate stress on an object.  We balanced a piece of spaghetti between the back of two chairs and hung a cup from it with a paper clip. We could only add about 5 pennies to the cup before the spaghetti broke!  We found that the more pieces of spaghetti that we added to the "beam", the more weight it could hold!

Spaghetti and science!

J really wanted an "action shot" of the cup falling on B

Places we're going and people we're seeing...

We had the opportunity to visit a Classical Conversations community last Thursday! It was about an hour 's drive from our town, but we visited because a CC community will begin next fall in a town that is only about 25 minutes away from us.  We were excited to make new friends with the Director of the beginning CC Community, her children and other families that are going to be a part of it.  I enjoyed the Foundations activities that were planned for the children and all of the information that they absorbed that day.  I could see how this type of support system could help to motivate my children  in areas where they are not as motivated now, because they would be learning with and presenting things to their tutors and peers in their weekly meetings.  I feel that the Essentials English grammar and language arts program is outstanding, but flexible enough that I think my son could do it next year.  It really is set up for the parents to oversee the work at home and  I would be able to make the assignments manageable for him, allow him to type them on the computer, or modify them so that he could be successful!  That was a big concern for me, given his diagnoses of learning disabilities with reading and writing.  We have been talking about it at home and I am praying for wisdom to know what is best in planning for our next school year.

My favorite thing this week was...

We were THRILLED with the progress that our alma mater, Butler University, has made in advancing to the Final Four in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament!  Go Bulldogs!!!

What's working/not working for us...

Getting back to a "normal" schedule this week will be nice - did I say that already? :) 

Homeschool questions/thoughts I have...

I am thinking and reading  about  the Classical Conversations program for a classical home education method.  I have been reading The Core by Leigh Bortins, founder of the Classical Conversations movement.  It really explains it thoroughly!  

I am trying to figure out how to combine the things that I LOVE about our My Father's World curriculum with this type of weekly program.  I have also been reading blogs about CC and trying to find other families that combine these two programs.  My new friend Angela uses both CC and MFW and she wrote an excellent post describing how she uses the CC memory work in her homeschool.  You can find it by clicking on this link:  My Classical Homeschool

My Father's World uses Classical and Charlotte Mason methods in their unit study approach.  I see value in all of it, but I am trying to pick out what is really best for my students at this point in their education and what is best for our family!

A photo, video, link, or quote to share...

B was anxious to plant some seeds, so we started an herb garden for the kitchen!

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