Merry Christmas + Changing Things up a Bit after Break

We've been busy here lately planning and preparing for the holidays. Which has meant that in addition to our break from our regularly planned curriculum and working on a beefed up version of the Build Your Library Winter Holidays curriculum (which has been fun!), we've been working on special things that we haven't been able to share on the blog due to some of them being gifts that are to be given to family members. Some of whom read our blog so...we'll share about those items later!

I'm feeling a little bit excited and somewhat hopeful that changing up our class/subject schedule will help us feel like we're not so harried and all over the place when working through our school week. Lately Zoey and I have both agreed that it seems like we're taking on too much every day and there isn't the feeling of actually "getting into" any one thing to really enjoy and learn whatever it is that we're working on. We've agreed that math will still be an every day thing but we're thinking of something like this for the rest...

AT HOME
AT CO-OP
EXTRA-CURRICULAR
AT LIBRARY
INDEPENDENT 

Monday: Math, Science, Reading, Drama, Dance
Tuesday: Math, World Religions, Reading,  Geography & Language Arts @ library 3-6pm
Wednesday: Math, Science, Poetry, Art/Music, Reading
Thursday: Math, Geography, Reading & Language Arts @ library 12-6pm, Dance
Friday: Math, Science, Grammar, Spanish & misc. homework @ library 1-6pm
*Independent Projects (Zoey wants to work on nature projects led by her interests as she has time)

My thinking is that we'll attempt at covering multiple days of science, geography, and language arts on the days she has them so that we are still covering the same amount of content, just covering them in less days of the week. Hoping that will help Zoey feel like she's really getting into the meat of things and that she isn't hopping around as much from subject to subject.

We're still trying to figure out what it is that we'll be doing for music. I'm hoping to start that up on the same day as she begins drama which is January 9th. I think we're going to utilize this site and search out an electric keyboard that's somewhat inexpensive for practicing on and purchasing some of John Thompson's beginner piano books.

That's where we're at right now! Seems kind of funny that it's the day after Christmas and I'm busy planning away...but truth be told, we're kind of getting antsy not working on school stuff and want to get back into things. I am back to work tomorrow already and know that if I don't get these things worked out now it just won't get done.

Off to enjoy my family or a bit of reading now before bed! We hope your holiday was great! Here are some of Zoey's favorite gifts this year...lots of things for her interest in plants and botany and a funny STEM remote controlled car which has been an absolute hit! She also got some awesome Lego sets, books and some doll stuff. We're feeling very blessed!

We Had a Happy Thanksgiving!

It was nice to have a little break from school for Thanksgiving! It's interesting though...the past few days I've been itching to get back to our school schedule, kind of funny.

Our Thanksgiving consisted of us staying home this year and just celebrating together, the three of us. My husband is taking classes for his work and needed to catch up on some projects that were coming due, so it just made sense. Because we stayed home, we got to enjoy spending a little bit of down time (finally!) together which was so very long overdue and so very nice. We went to the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (LOVED it!!!). We went downtown and enjoyed our community's Christmas celebration and took in the local museum while we were there too. I had no idea that it had so much to share AND that it had a train set up in the basement. Very cool!

Checking out our local museum reminded me that there are definitely hidden gems right here in our community to seek out and take advantage of. It's so very easy to get comfy here at home and think there isn't anything to do that's exciting, not the case!

We also put up and decorated our Christmas tree, we have a longstanding tradition of doing this after Thanksgiving. My husband also put up outdoor lights this year which is fun. My daughter and I have our own little tradition too of setting up a doll Christmas tree and scene...this is ours for this year.

A couple of rounds of my all-time favorite game ever was played too...

It was a beautiful break! We're now excited to be back in full swing with school though and resuming our studies of the winter holidays.

We hope you enjoyed a wonderful holiday break too!

Winter Holidays Unit Study | Winter Solstice

 

We've been continuing our reading of our books on the Winter Solstice and have been enjoying the tales from around the world especially so.

Our weather is finally starting to get a bit cooler so we fashioned some simple bird feeders using pine cones, peanut butter and bird seed.

There are actually lots of ideas for Winter Solstice bird feeders/winter bird feeders at The Crafty Crow. Last year we made ones using hollowed out orange peels and filling the orange peel halves with seeds. I always think these feeders are so pretty hanging from the trees.

We read today that a long time ago people would hang apples and other fruits and foods from the evergreen trees to remind them that spring was to return again and that greener days were ahead.

I got Zoey's pointe shoes sewn up for dance class, I've done them up three different ways now and they are still popping off the backs of her heels so it looks like her dance teacher is going to try and find a different pair for her. I'm happy that she'll be getting a different pair but am nervous that it's going to be too late to break them in on time for the upcoming Nutcracker performance coming up in mid December. We're going to stay positive and see what happens though.

Yesterday was my birthday. We had a somewhat quiet day of school mixed in with some sewing of Zoey's shoes for dance and then I had to head in to an evening of work at the library. I came home and then was up until at least 3am due to having a sharp pain in the middle of my stomach that wouldn't go away, I was convinced that I had appendicitis and that the evening/morning was going to end with me going in to the emergency room but somehow I made it through the night and then slept for a few hours in the morning. Upon waking the pain slowly subsided and I've been alright for the most part all day. Praying that I stay healthy here these next few days. Not exactly the way I would have preferred to bring in the start of my "new" year but, things could have been way worse!

XO,
Jen

Winter Holidays Unit Study | Winter Solstice

In addition to our readings today from The Return of the Light: Twelve Tales from Around the World for the Winter Solstice by Carolyn McVickar Edwards we read the book The Shortest Day by Wendy Pfeffer.

I also had Zoey watch the following short videos. 

She thought they were a bit cheesy (the voices mostly) but they are good review on the "why" of equinoxes and solstices I thought.

 

Most of our afternoon (after some math and other work) consisted of sewing Zoey's new pointe shoes that just came in for ballet class. They've been back-ordered since the start of her dance class this year and she has yet to go on pointe at her lessons which hasn't made me feel very good about her upcoming performance. After sewing them this afternoon we discovered that they pop off the back of her heel while walking, let alone while going up and down from being on pointe. Not a happy mama or daughter! We're going to take them apart tomorrow and try sewing them a different way, but if they don't work out we'll be having a discussion with her dance teacher. I feel like it's pretty late in the season for discovering we have shoe issues! Plus, all of the other dancers in her class have had their shoes for over a month or two! She should have had her shoes for some time now. Grrrr...

Tomorrow we are hoping to make some simple bird feeders and dig more into our Winter Solstice study. Hoping we can rest easy about her pointe shoes getting figured out too!

Winter Holidays Unit Study | Winter Solstice

We started off our Winter Solstice study by creating a crown using yule greens, (or what we could come up with here that look like or are similar to yule greens). Since people celebrating the solstice (which is around December 21st) are known to dress up, I thought this might be right up Zoey's alley since she loves dressing up. In celebrating Yule, some say you should enjoy yourself as much as possible on the Winter Solstice (this including dressing up) because this will bring back the light (and lightness) into the world. The Winter Solstice marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year.

For our project of making a Winter Solstice crown we gathered as many natural materials as we could find from our woods and I bought some floral tape and wire at our local dollar store.

We measured Zoey's head and looped several loops of the wire into a circle and Zoey covered all the loops with the green floral tape, creating her bare crown.

We started creating a base for the crown by attaching evergreen using little bits of wire that Zoey looped throughout the greenery so it was snug on the crown. She then added other bits here and there doing the same with little lengths of wire that we cut.

She wanted a simple crown and I think it turned out just sweet as can be!

Of course I had to take a few pictures of her modeling her Winter Solstice crown.

Our first project was a hit! I'm feeling thankful that we had nice weather to work on this project together outside today. It really was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

Winter Holidays Unit Study | Winter Solstice

This week we are starting our Winter Holidays Around the World unit of study from Build Your Library. I've mentioned it already in previous blog posts, but I'm really excited about it and so is Zoey! I hope our excitement is warranted. We are adding in lots of additional projects to make it a bit meatier since we are pressing pause on our normal geography and science curriculum just during this unit study. We will be continuing on with math, grammar, and handwriting. Geography, writing, reading, art and some science is incorporated with our unit study. 

Our areas of study in the following weeks will be:

Winter Solstice

Hanukkah

Kwanzaa

Chinese New Year and

Christmas

We're starting with studying about the Winter Solstice and our first project will be to craft a celebration crown of sorts using some yule greens along with other bits and pieces that we find. 

One of the books that we will be starting this week is The Return of the Light: Twelve Tales from Around the World for the Winter Solstice by Carolyn McVickar Edwards. Along with this book of stories we will be reading several picture books as well. I'm a firm believer (being a part-time library employee) that it's fantastic to read picture books even if you are well into adulthood! I have been known to tell people that some of my all time favorite books are indeed childrens books, so I don't feel badly that we are working these into our studies. 

It's been kind of difficult for us to get into the spirit of the upcoming holidays here since the weather has been so unusually warm and sunny! Two years ago at this time we had 17 inches of snow already! Zoey has been checking the weather online every day and there hasn't been any snowfall foretasted in the near future as of yet. To say she is patiently waiting for snow would be perhaps a false statement if there ever was one. She can't wait for it to snow and I have to admit that I am anxiously waiting too! 

I'll be sharing some more of our Winter Solstice activities here throughout the rest of the week...it feels good to have a little bit of the weekend left to enjoy finally! After being sick for so many days and working with Zoey on school and at the library through it all, I'm ready to get back on track again. Sitting at my desk and organizing for the week ahead has me already feeling more prepared. 

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine Homeschool Review Crew

Upon starting homeschooling Zoey I was turning to many homeschool blogs to read about resources that other homeschooling families were using and to see what seemed to be working for other families that had kiddos my daughter's age as well as just for some support. Upon doing so, I happened upon a few bloggers that have since become favorites of mine that I regularly check in with, when I can. One of Zoey's favorite blogs (she's the one that found it!) and now mine, is the Unexpected Homeschool blog written by Christy Schaefer. I think Zoey likes it so much because Christy has an only child who happens to be a girl and is (seemingly) just a bit older than Zoey. One day while reading Christy's blog, she posted about openings in the Homeschool Review Crew for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine and shared a link to an application. After thinking about it for a bit, I went ahead and sent one in. Zoey was encouraging me to do so as she wanted to be just as much a part of this as I. Several days later we received notification that we were accepted and have been invited to be an official part of the crew! We're so excited! 

For more information on how to become a contributor and reviewer for this group yourself, be sure to check out this post on the Schoolhouse Review site. I believe they are still seeking applicants for additional reviewers for this upcoming year.

I can't wait to learn more about the opportunities we will have now that we will be writing reviews here and there for the Schoolhouse Review Crew! Very honored and very excited for the mentor-ship, aide and support that we will be given along with this opportunity! Feeling very blessed.

Election Unit Recap!

Zoey and I ended up both getting really sick here this past week and a half or so. Not fun...sore throat, congestion, hacking cough, etc. Yuck! The good thing though, is that hopefully this means we won't be sick for the upcoming holidays. Zoey is still fighting the cough...but is on her way to full recovery soon, barring any setbacks.

This past week was kinda crazy. Our garage door broke which caused all sorts of interesting issues all on it's own (including my husband being late for work). We had work done on my car and discovered we needed even more work done on it upon picking it up. Zoey had a routine dentist appt. which ended up in making another dentist appt. to get a filling on her first ever cavity and then being told that we need to make a visit to an orthodontist now for some other areas of interest. Blah. It was the kind of week that you just wanted to have be over and done with. Thankful that it now is!

Zoey worked diligently on her election unit despite not feeling the best. We covered a lot of ground using this guide for young people written and shared by a fellow homeschooling parent. We added in suggested books from Build Your Library's election unit (we really enjoyed the book, See How They Run), along with some additional ones that I found at our local library and added in some videos and other fun things from our paid Brain Pop! subscription. I also had requested (for free) some materials from kids.usa.gov and they got here in time for us to use them which was great. For printables and worksheets I used free downloadable ones from Time for Kids. On the day of the election Zoey finished up her project board and that night she filled in her electoral map as the states were called one way or the other. She ended up going to bed a bit after midnight, as did I. Something that never would have happened if she was in public school! But sleeping in the next day and picking up where she left off was just fine. She watched Donald Trump's speech as well as Hillary Clinton's concession speech and a bit of news and we spent the rest of the day enjoying time outdoors and taking full advantage of this unseasonably beautiful weather we've been having. We also talked about a bit of poetry on this day...

We are wrapping up a few loose ends here with this current unit these next couple of days and plowing through her math, handwriting and grammar at the same time. Next week we start our unit study of winter holidays around the world and we're both so excited!!

Geography Project Presentation + Happy Halloween!

Zoey's choice for her Geography project this time around was to create a portfolio board and present an oral presentation covering fashion trends in the United States. She also created a quiz for her audience to complete.

We are wrapping up our current studies of North America and this fits in with that and incorporates something that she is interested in as well. She created a little red "runway" of sorts for her Barbie dolls that were in different styled clothing and took pictures of them all on the runway sharing the category their clothing style fit in to.

She is a very good speaker and she did an excellent job. She also shared some of her clothing that fit into each category of dress that she spoke about as well. You could tell that she had done her research as she knew what it was she was talking about and could field my questions when I asked her several. It was a fun project that she completely did on her own since I've been busy these past several days with library programming and Halloween festivities etc. through my job working at the library.

Sunday we finished up reading the book Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. Zoey cried and was pretty upset upon finishing it up because it was so sad. She's a pretty emotional and empathetic kiddo. She doesn't choose to read books that she knows will be sad so this was hard. We had a good talk about it though and I'm so glad we read it. So many important things to ponder over with that book. So many gifts to be had from it.

Hoping to press pause on our geography curriculum and start in on our election studies tomorrow!

And because it's Halloween...here are some silly photos of Zoey as a mad scientist!

Happy Halloween!!

P.S. In case you have some candy in the house that you would like to get rid of, why not try one of these leftover candy science experiments?

Busy Week!

This past week has been super busy for us. I had some additional programming to take care of at the library (where I work part-time as our community's youth services librarian). Extra work for me meant for mostly independent work for Zoey and the feeling of less school over all (with the exception of math and reading which she diligently worked on moving forward with). I kind of feel like this was a bum week for us, our first this year. That said, I'm trying not to feel too badly about things because one of our area public schools had Wed-Fri off this week. We're a bit "behind" where I thought we would be at this point but will use this next week to get back to where I want to be. I guess the beauty of homeschooling is having true flexibility! 

One of her new favorite books that she's reading for science lately is this one...

She is continuing to really enjoy Guest Hollow's Human Anatomy studies. I am too, it's content rich, includes many different ways of reaching the learner and for me, it's laid out so clearly that we can just pretty much open and go and if I need materials I can seek them out in advance and feel ready for whatever is coming next. Super awesome.

For geography, literature and reading we are hoping to wrap up her current study of North America and the two books that she is reading Walk Two Moons and Navigating Early. She is also wrapping up her project on Fashion in the U.S. (her choice geography project).

After starting in on Writing with Skill I think we're backing away from it again and going to stick with the copywork, dictation, and narration suggested that's written into the Build Your Library curriculum as well as incorporating some of Brave Writer into the mix. Zoey is finding it (WWS) dry and repetitive and I am too. When I look ahead and see that it appears to be more of the same, just presented in different ways, I think it would make for a very long and perhaps not joyous year of outlining, outlining and more outlining.

Some things that I'm excited about that are coming up...

We're planning on wrapping up our current studies upon finishing up our books next week and moving into a study of the election process. Mostly using books, online resources, and some electoral maps I've found online. All of the books we're using I found through the library. Yay!

Upon finishing our mini election unit study we're (so excitedly!!!) going to move into a month long study of Winter Holidays around the World. Zoey is so pumped about this and so am I. This will be our rebel act of homeschooling this year I think (haha!). We're making it fun! It will fit into our geography studies nicely and also allow for us to ease into the holidays ourselves. That's the idea anyways. I am finding the books that we'll be using through Thrift Books and it's a mix of non-fiction chapter books and picture books featured around the Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and the Chinese New Year celebrations. I'll be using a mix of BYL's Unit Study and other things, beefing it up a bit with other resources so that it's a bit meatier.

So, that's what's up in our corner of the world lately...lots that we're doing and even more that we're planning.

This Week...

This past weekend Zoey volunteered to help out at her third birthday party through her dance company...this is the second one that she's walked away with a tip afterwards. I think this taste of financial greatness has been a good one for her. It's just enough for her to perk up at the idea of "working" at something other than her schoolwork or housework/chores. I can see her mind thinking ahead to possible part-time jobs that she could have in the near future, which is fun to see. 

This week we are talking about muscles, joints, and tendons in science. One of our activities today was to have her do some tasks "thumbless" by taping her thumbs down. She did some writing, cutting, sweeping, tied shoes and made a cup of hot chocolate all without her thumbs. It was pretty tricky! She also made a model of a long bone and discovered that her skeleton is estimated at weighing just 16 pounds!!!

In geography we are still talking about North America and she had to choose to do another independent project. She chose to do one on fashion in the United States. We got some supplies for her project today and she's really excited to get started in on it. Some interesting books that she is reading currently are Material World: A Global Family Portrait and Hungry Planet: What the World Eats...both really shed light on the places that she is learning about. Her reader for geography currently is Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool. My...this book is a good read! We are taking turns reading the chapters aloud to one another and today we were both in tears! 

We are also reading the book Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech and wow...wow...WOW! I can't say enough good things about this book. I can't believe that I haven't read this book already in my lifetime, perhaps I should be embarrassed about that? We are actually listening to the audio book before bed every night and I find myself thinking about things from the story the next day. Rolling them around, savoring them. This is a goosebumps kind of book. At least for me. :) One that I know will stick with her and I both, long after the story is over. 

This is about where we are at in the book right now and this particular quote hit me and left me thinking and my heart aching a bit actually, if I'm being honest...

"As I walked home, I thought about the message. In the course of a lifetime, what does it matter? I said it over and over. I wondered about the mysterious messenger, and I thought about all the things in the course of a lifetime that would not matter. I did not think cheerleading tryouts would matter, but I was not so sure about yelling at your mother. I was certain, however, that if your mother left, it would be something that mattered in the whole long course of your lifetime."

Photo credit Journal Prompts

I'm so excited about the books that we are reading this year...it's just so amazing, this journey we both are on. 

We've started in on Writing with Skill for some "official" writing...I kind of am still in test mode here with this curriculum, but so far, so good it seems. It's starting out with having her work on narrative summaries which is kind of boring but important. She's wordy like me so it's hard to pare things down to the bare minimum when summarizing! I'm still working on incorporating Brave Writer into the mix of things too which really isn't that difficult so far. 

This week and next week I have some library programming that will pull some of my attention away from schooling but it shouldn't be too difficult to manage seeing that it's Halloween stuff for the most part and is programming that Zoey and her friends will be able to participate in as well. 

If I'm being honest, things are going swimmingly so far...I find myself having these moments of pure joy when I think that we are homeschooling. I want to shout it out to someone, share our excitement, but really don't know if there is someone that would "get it" at this point. We'll just continue to go on being secretly thrilled with life for now.