HS: February

Seriously, where did February go?!  

I am in complete denial that tomorrow is March.  

Language Arts continues to go great!  I am so impressed with how much Jacob is learning.  I love this program and it is has been so fulfilling seeing him read and thinking "WE DID THAT - TOGETHER!".  It's awesome.  And I am proud of us.  Jacob has mastered all of the phonics cards for his level and he is super excited about that.  We are now just reviewing them once a week.  He has mastered three more of his sight word ladders.  Jacob is also over half way done with his spelling list for his level and he was WAY excited about that!

This month we read a short story about kindness, learned capitalization rules, did a reading review, learned about the first job of silent e, and talked about SH, CH, TH words.  

Jacob has also been a total rockstar at his poetry memorization.  He memorized another poem and a scripture and is working on another poem.  

He also continues to do his handwriting pages and loves them.  

We actually have stopped doing math [insert gasp here!].  Obviously, not permanently, but for the next couple of months.  That has been the hardest subject for us to love - and not so much because of the subject (I actually don't mind math at all) but Jacob and I just haven't liked how it has been taught.  I would normally just continue to plug along BUT the curriculum we have completely fallen in love with is releasing their math curriculum in May and it just meshes perfectly with us and so I feel confident that it will be a great fit.  So rather than plug along with something we aren't loving, we are just taking a little break until we can get our hands on our new curriculum.  

Science continues to go well.  We are still working on our meteorology unit.  We kind of took a break from science so we could do a study on Texas before our trip.  This month we talked about air temperature and how temperature affects air.  We learned two new vocabulary words this month: expand and contract.  

This was a fun experiment we did while talking about how temperature affects air.  The balloon was over an empty bottle and we put it in a bowl of boiling water and the balloon inflated.  

Then we put it into a bowl of ice water and it deflated.  Cool!

We also put dents into a ping pong ball and then put it in the container of boiling water and it made the air expand and the ping pong ball came out PERFECT!

We did add a study about Texas to our learning this month.  This was awesome and I was so glad we could do this together and really get excited about our trip to Texas.  We talked about the different state symbols of Texas, what presidents are from there, and discussed some of its unique history.  We made a Chuck Wagon (which is the State Vehicle) and made Texas Sheet Cake for fun!  YUM!  We also read two books to really get us excited - The Legend of the Bluebonnet by Tomie dePaola and Armadillo Rodeo by Jan Brett.  We also decided that we will probably do a state study every monthish so that we make sure to get them all in.  I am pretty excited about it!

We did one formal art project this month, a Line Quilt.  

And, as usual, we read lots and lots!  We finished The Apple and the Arrow by Conrad Buff (and I LOVED it!  I had to resist the urge to read it at night after Jacob went to bed!), Davy Crockett: A Life on the Frontier by Stephen Krensky (we read this for Texas), Abe Lincoln and the Muddy Pig by Stephen Krensky (we read this for President's Day), A Grain of Rice by Helena Clare Pittman and The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes. 

I probably say this every month but I truly enjoy getting to teach and learn with Jacob.  He loves learning...even as I am writing this he is sitting on the floor next to me working in some kindergarten workbooks we found today while cleaning out the office that I had gotten before we decided to homeschool.  I admire him for wanting to learn and hope that stays with him his entire life.