Trying Espanol

This past weekend I went through the girls clothing to take out all of the summer items and replace all the shorts with pants since the weather is supposed to stay cool, with the highest temperatures in the high 70's for the rest of the month. I love the Summer but I love Fall even more! With cooler temperatures, wonderful decorations (both natural, like the leaves, and man made), and cider mills being in full swing Fall can easily be considered my favorite season. Saturday we took a ride up to the local library to get some more reading material for our individual reading and for science. Right now I'm having the girls work through some of The Magic School Bus DVDs for science, picking a different subject every week, and taking some worksheets off of the internet when I can find them. I also made sure that YCJ got a Magic Tree House book to work through for part of her Language Arts, using the information I find here. She owns some of the later books but we're working through the earlier ones right now. We do a chapter a day Mon. through Fri. and work on the reading maps that I print off of the website. There's lesson plans for most of the books and some even include math which would be a good way to do an entire year of unit studies using this one site for both language arts and math. There's even special education information for most of the books! The rest of the day was spent inside with DVDs, books, and games due to the almost all day rainy drizzle.

Sunday we spent most of the day outside. The weather was wonderful and even I didn't want to be stuck inside of the house. Each year we try to reach a goal of 1000 hours spent outside. We've been doing this a couple of years now, usually going from Labor Day to Labor Day, because I like doing the 1000 Hours Outside Challenge. This way I can try to balance screen time with outside time. Being that we're living in Michigan again I know for sure the hours during the Winter are going to be limited so I try to make up for that during the other three seasons. We take a lot of walks, garden, do a lot of experiments that are just better done outside (thinking of the mess a lot of them make), and nature hikes. 

I did manage to finish one of my crochet projects for Christmas gifts on Sunday, including washing and drying it. It's a blanket for my father in law so that both he and my mother in law no longer will fight over who gets the blanket that I'd originally made for my husband but somehow ended up at their house in the last year and a half or so.

During the week we had a pretty ordinary week. I don't think you want me to give a day by day run down every week. We began working through the alphabet mini lesson from Spanish for you on Monday. I found this YouTube video of the Spanish alphabet song to go along with that and then discovered shortly thereafter that Discovery K12 also offers a year long Spanish course through their extra curriculars for all levels as well. I like using Discovery K12 and Easy Peasy to supplement what we're already learning just to make sure that the lessons actually sink in all the way. I did a post earlier this week about Spanish for You and hopefully I'll be able to do a full review in the months to come after I actually fit it into my budget (really it's rather affordable, just not in the budget for the next month or two). Here's a link to the post that I wrote earlier this week about our Espanol (Spanish).

ECJ's new blanket for Christmas that I finished Monday night.
(Yes, he knows he's getting it for Christmas lol.)

Wednesday I had an appointment with my psychologist (I'll be posting about this another time, not to worry) and the girls hadn't slept well the night before. So, while ECJ and I got up at 7:15 AM and began his school day, the girls were still sleeping at 9:30. The joys of homeschooling means that if I have an appointment, or one of the campers does, we can just do our lessons later in the day or before our appointment depending on what time it is. Since my appointment was for 11 and I wouldn't be home until around noon, I let the girls sleep. When they woke up around 10 I made them scrambled eggs and asked if they'd like to do lessons after I got back from my appointment or if they'd rather either double lessons Thursday or lessons on Saturday. They opted for double lessons Thursday. Wednesday was also International World Peace day and so we touched lightly on what World Peace would mean and our hopes for it to happen within our lifetimes. 

First day of Fall

Eating Watermelon

Thursday I had another appointment (this time at 12:30) and so we did lessons in the morning before I had to go to it. All of our book work was done by 11 and both girls were able to do some things online before I had to leave. When I got back we went down to visit Grandma and Papa for a little while. I love that we can do this in the middle of the week without having to wait until school lets out. Even with double book lessons we nailed it! The weather was a little warm for the first day of Fall being that it was in the 80s but that was fine with the campers! Any excuse to play outside is a good one. So, when we got home they played outside with all of the neighborhood children.

Thursday night walk by the
bridge to Canada in
Port Huron, MI

Let's debunk a little homeschool myth shall we? I hear often that dreaded question, "What about socialization? Don't they miss kids their own ages by not going to real school?" Well, just as a quick example, there are close to ten other children right around the campers ages who live on our street alone. Most afternoons, and every weekend, my yard seems to fill up with all of those children at once because they've come over to play or hang out. I seem to have the gathering spot. My children seem to be popular with every one of the kids on the street and they're the only homeschooled kids! Wow! I think that's socialization don't you? *Ahem* Just had to add that in here for the curious. And no, I'm not going to add pictures of the entire crowd because I haven't asked all of the parents if they mind (and I'm sure some would, this is the internet after all). You'll just have to take my word on it.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers for the Weekly Wrap Up.