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How goes your January Learning?
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Hi everyone! How is your January learning going? Has anyone made some changes for January? Are you still on break or back at the routine?
We are back at the routine, started last week. In typical fashion we’re also balancing medical appointments (18 this week alone – a lot got packed into one week…lol) and Mason has at least one surgery coming up after a year with no surgeries (a double eye surgery, though we expect to confirm at least one more surgery in the next few days).
For learning we’ve had a few changes for January. Makayla (9th grade) asked if she could put her writing curriculum on hold (she’s doing One Year Adventure Novel). She wants to use the next 6 weeks to dig through the rest of Apologia Biology and get it over with. Then she will be free to focus on writing and will still keep working on herpetology for science because that is her interest. Other than that she’s still working away at the usual things.
My 5th, 4th, 2nd, and 1st graders are doing pretty much what they were working on before our baby birth and Christmas break. This month they are really loving our book club title, Ella Enchanted, so we’re doing a lot of fun activities related to that and learning more about fairy tales as we go.
My little guys, after a few birthdays, are now 5, 4, 2, and 2 months old. They’re still quite happy to play and listen to books and explore. It snowed several inches today (first real snow this winter for us) and so we’ve had fun exploring snow. The 2 year old obviously doesn’t remember it and watching him discover it has been sweet.
I’m hoping to get two more solid days of learning in before Friday, which we’re taking off due to 10 medical appointments that day. I love the winter homeschool season because everyone is content to snuggle up and read, play games, and be in the house learning. It just seems to be the nice steady work months for us. Once spring arrives everyone wants to spend every minute outside so we try to get a good few months of work in now with short breaks so that we can enjoy a longer springtime break.
Hope all is well in your homes and that you’re finding joy in the little moments!
We are full steam ahead back into our routine. It took longer than I planed, just like last year took longer. So I wrote that down so when I plan our next school year I will actually plan more time off. We are about 1/2 way through most of our curriculum and 12 lessons in to MUS alpha, just chugging along with that. I am truly enjoying early modern and am looking forward to mordern times next year. I always get the itch to start planning next school year after the holidays. I will have 2 school age children for the first time.
Ooo, I get the itch to start planning too Kayla! How about I start a post where people can chat about that?
I’m very happy to be back in our school lessons! We took a long break for December. I think we are about 1/3 of the way through our lessons. I have several family members mentioning visiting in the next month or two…I’m a little stressed about that since we really need to keep up with school. I love family and all, but we really can’t take off constantly! Since we usually finish before lunch (or soon after), I’ll probably just start our days a bit earlier when we have company.
School-wise, we made a few changes. For our SCM Middle Ages study, I replaced the Famous Men books with SOTW 2. This has been a huge hit with my DC! We also changed our science a bit. I liked the Burgess bird study, but felt it was a bit too light for the ages of my older DC (one of them is about the recommended age range). We are currently using CKE Earth & Space alongside Signs and Seasons. I have one day set aside for a living science book, so we’ll probably finish it up then. My third change was adding Harmony Fine Arts (grade 6). We’ve just finished the first week, but so far it’s been a huge hit.
Outside of school, we’ve done some sledding/snowboarding and ice fishing. In December, we were busy with Christmas programs, church services, and cookie baking. I’m just happy to be back on a somewhat regular schedule again!
We started back on January 4th. We actually tried to start back Dec 28th, because due to illness we started break early, but it was too hard with our routine still off (DH teaches so when he’s home, while we love it, it’s also disrupting to our regular routine) and New Year’s etc… So we only got a couple days in.
We made some pretty major changes. We ditched our CLE language arts and reading, since I realized that really it was largely review, so he was sitting doing almost an hour of seatwork for stuff he didn’t need. So we’re now doing literature daily (mixing it up between a good childrens novel, poetry and fables/tables) with narration and copywork. We’ll start grammar (Harvey’s Grammar), dictation and spelling (we’ll draw our words from his dictation/written work) in the fall (grade 4). We also ditched the science program we were going to do (Science in the Ancient World) and are just focusing on nature study and living books – I bought the Burgess Animal book to read through, but the chapters are a bit long for my 8 year old who is highly visual and doesn’t do great with auditory input. We have two old texts that are great “A Book of Canadian Animals” and “A Second Book of Canadian Animals.” Great living books, the chapters are shorter, so I’m thinking of not doing Burgess, and instead just reading a chapter a day of our books and once a week having him do kind of a journal entry where he chooses one and draws it, and can do a written narration about that animal. For history we’re sticking with SOTW which is going fabulously, as well as our CLE math. We also are getting more serious about picture, music, poetry and hymn study.
For my daughter (5), for the most part we’re continuing informally. She does love workbooks, so we’re using CLE KII workbooks that I just let her do as she wishes. She joins in on our daily Bible reading and she’s been doing very simple narration with that, as well as our picture/music etc… studies. She’s also doing daily copywork. She knows her letter sounds, so I’ve been working with her informally on word building. Mostly using games, letter tiles. When it comes time to get more serious I plan on using the McGuffey readers, but I imagine we’ll hold off till fall for that. For math, again, we’re just doing informal number work. She already knows her numbers to 100, understands the concept of subtraction and addition, knows her clock, can use a ruler, understands whole and half, calendar etc… so… really we’re just spending the year focusing on math in the context of daily life. We do have a great little Montessori-style game, where she rolls two die, and then adds the numbers together using manipulatives. She then writes out the number sentence on her slate. She loves doing that.
So far, everything is going well. January looks to be our “easy” month, only 2 appointments!!! We have several appointments coming up in February including an overnight one, so I know schedule/routine is going to suffer that month. We’re looking at a possible bowel biopsy for DD as well later this spring, and dental surgery, but I’m hoping those will be much later in the spring. Our fall was horrible with so many appointments and running around, I would appreciate some “down time” to just enjoy our lessons!
Holly – I agree, we love family visiting but still need to have somewhat of a normal routine going for school at a certain point! The Famous Men books – some of my kids clicked with the one we did and others did not. Definitely thick material to wade through if you are younger!
2Corin57 – sounds like you’ve made some good changes! A lull in appointments is always nice. I honestly love quiet weeks and routine days the most!
Things are going pretty smoothly. We only took a week off in Dec because DH only had Christmas Day and New Years day off. It was a nice holiday time, but nice to get back to routine. I feel like more than a week and tough to get back on schedule. For us what works is either go big, summer vacation, or keep breaks short, week or less.
We are almost into the third trimester, day 100 was last Friday (Our state requires 172 days) It gave me the extra “boost” to start with excitement 🙂 We start early Aug and finish late April. It is so nice to take May off and Aug is so hot starting back early works well for us. It also gets me over the Feb “slump” because we are so close to being done 🙂
We are really enjoying Early Modern Times, Visits to North America, Apologia Swimming Creatures, , MUS, SW, ULW, picture study, poetry study and this year hymn study for the first time.
I anticipate no big changes for next year, just moving up the next level. This year has been our smoothest year yet even though the busiest with things other than school. The kids are taking a lot more “ownership”
We started back on Jan. 4 after a 2-week break. We started the fall just with skills (phonics, math and handwriting) and lots of books to read aloud.
I’m switching our math from Abeka to CLE – because I’ve got a rambunctious 4-year old and he was derailing math time. Abeka was too many 2-minute activities and manipulatives and sets of flashcards. Now we are settling into CLE with 1 set of flashcards, 2 sets of manipulatives and a shorter time to keep the 4yo occupied while I sit with the 6yo. Whew!
We’re starting ELTL level 1 next week. Then after that is going I’ll add in some science…..have been looking at using Outdoor Secrets and getting nature walks started. Not sure whether I’ll add in history this spring or wait until next August. My daughter turned 6 right at the state cut-off last August so I called her “kindergarten” and we’re in an in-between year. Also still deciding between AO history, SCM history, CMH history and BFBooks history.
Sarah – I love when you have a year that is smooth! And we usually do better with 1 week breaks instead of longer ones too.
KMHStore – I have a few that really fall on ‘inbetween’ schedules due to birthdays. Slow and easy is a great way to work into things.
Well, the theme for this school year seems to be “Life Happens.” We got off to a late start at the beginning of the school year……and a late start coming back from Cmas break.
I am pleased to report that our first two days back to school have gone well. (YAY!!!!) (That’s after a 3-week break!! Double Yay!!)
We have to count 180 days — and this year, I decided to keep track of our “book days” (you know, the real school days, with books and following my plan and everything) and our “life-school days” (the field trip days, the count-church-as-school days, the kids-have-been-crafting-all-day days, etc.) separately. So, we have between 56 and 60 “book days” done (each girl is on a different day, just because some girls like to work ahead, others don’t). And we have about 25 “other” days done.
I started counting this way because it was so discouraging for me to always feel behind in our History and Math (the only subjects I buy that are mapped out for me). I do like that our “book day” number matches our History Lesson number, but it feels a bit discouraging to think that we’ve only done 50-some days of school! And it’s January already!!! And I really wanted to be done by the beginning of May.
Anyway, I am feeling encouraged and ready to move on to our 2nd term subjects next week – new Artist, starting SCM’s Tennyson, new composer (Arthur Sullivan!), etc. And I might think about hurrying through some of our SCM History, just to put us on track to finish the whole module. (Right now, though, we are thoroughly enjoying Ink on His Fingers and Adam of the Road.)
I’m trying to figure out what I am going to expect for the next couple of months. We started back into a regular schedule at the beginning of this month, and it was going pretty smoothly, but we just found out for sure that we will be leaving for Africa in mid-Feb. For a while it looked as if that might not happen, so I’m trying to shift gears now.
I still want to keep on top of history, math, reading and copywork. We do memory and a hymn at breakfast, so that should continue no matter how our schedule changes.
I guess right now I am just trying to find the balance between getting the things done that need to be taken care of before we leave, spending time with family before we say goodbye, and school. My preliminary thought is to drop many of our “extras”; we read aloud often as a family, and the kids are pretty good about doing art, writing, music etc. on their own time anyway. If we cut back to maybe an hour of school a day, it would help a lot.
Does that sound reasonable? I just don’t want to drop everything for a month and then try to jump back in in the middle of adjusting to a completely new normal.
We start our school year in January, so this is the beginning for us! I have decided to pack less formal school work into our days and make playdates and field trips more of a priority. Also, Wednesdays are usually busy outside the home, so it is not a school day for us, unless we have a bit of catching up to do. Already I can see this is working well. All of our subjects start fresh – a new poet/composer/artist, a new time period for history and another continent for geography. Math is the only one where we are picking up where we left off before Christmas.
Outdoor activities such as hiking, bike rides and free play are filling in the days.
My DS6 is an only child and needs lots of time with other kids, and lots of room to move, so I am enjoying connecting with other families.Glad to see everyone’s year is going well! 🙂 Looks like we are all making good progress.
We area 3/4 through General Science and 1/2 through Pre Algebra so those are going very well. Everything else is harder to peg down. We are using Truthquest for history and we are about 1/3 through the book so far. I can’t schedule out how long it will take us to finish since every day’s lesson is different. The other subjects are just things where we finish one study and simply move on to the next whatever time of year it may be.
Our days were getting too long so we have decided to rotate picture study, Shakespeare and Plutarch instead of doing one of each per term. That has allowed all 3 to fit into one time slot and helped quite a bit. We were also finding that we were moving too quickly through the picture portfolios and were going to run out of artists to study if we didn’t slow down! I love the picture portfolios and really don’t want to use anything else for picture study at this time. I’m eagerly awaiting the release of new artists to study! We are covering art history through Truthquest so that adds to our art study as well.
Over all, I am very pleased with our progress so far.
@Melanie32, there were several posts freed from the spam trap this morning. I’m guessing your post was one of them that was freed. ?
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