It’s been awhile since I’ve talked about our homeschool year! Here’s a brief update on all things school.
My oldest was struggling with history. She loves to read and usually loves history but as this was more of a review year for her with our current curriculum, she was getting bored. She’s done small portions of American history for the last four years and this year was one big overview. I don’t think it’s possible to know/remember everything you’ve learned over the years but when I would talk with her, she clearly knew the big events, people, and time periods and was simply bored. I’ve NEVER switched curriculum in the middle of the year but I felt it necessary to keep her interest engaged. So she started reading A Child’s Geography on the Holy Land. It combines geographical, historical, and cultural information with lots of colorful pictures. She’s enjoyed it much more and it started the ball rolling for world history, which she’ll begin next year.
My second grader is loving Handwriting Without Tears…as much as a boy who doesn’t love writing can! This has been a great program for him; it combines learning and practicing separate letters with writing them in words. He’s almost finished with his current book and ready to move on to pre-cursive.
The big win for our preschooler has been UsBourne Wipe Clean books and activity books. She loves them and with the Wipe Clean, I’m amazed how she happily does the same activities over and over. She does need help reading the pages to know what to do/look for in the activity book but I can easily step away from the older kids, tell her what to do on those pages, and she completes them on her own.
I recently bought this book and we’ve enjoyed reading the entry for the day. It’s opened some questions about different people, events, inventions and so far we haven’t come across anything not appropriate for kids. We also read a nature poem a day from this book and the older kids have started taking turns reading them aloud. I think reading poems aloud is such a great skill to have!
That about sums it up! This year has gone fairly smoothly and I can’t believe we’re already in March! Another school year almost complete.
Photo by Anton Sukhinov on Unsplash