HS: March

Time is FLYING!

I cannot believe how fast this year is going!

This month has continued to go well.  The biggest thing on my radar with our schooling is getting prepped for next year {I felt like this year was more about survival than anything else and has actually gone way better than I thought it would} and getting a better system for where and how we do school.  Right now, Sarah and Benjamin are pretty much just up in a room playing the whole time I am doing school with Jacob and while that works - we need something better!  It is definitely not a good long term solution.  

Anyway...on to what we've been doing.  

Language Arts is going awesome.  I am so impressed with how well Jacob is reading.  We are nearing the end of our program and I am just so proud of him.  He has grown leaps and bounds - especially when I compare to where we started in August.  It's amazing and incredibly fulfilling when I stop and think about it.  I still haven't quite decided whether we will just move on with the next level or take a break.  We are leaning towards taking a breather and just reading and hop back into it in the fall.  Jacob finished all of his sight words that he needed to learn this year and he was really excited about that.  Every time he mastered a "sight word ladder" he got to color a part of this picture and he was really excited to finish his picture.  Friday we review his phonics cards (which he has already mastered) and his sight words.  

This was such a great example to me of Jacob's growth.  Occasionally, our program will have Jacob read a passage or a poem and I time it and count the errors.  I am amazed at his growth in just a few short months.  

Jacob also finished his third spelling chart which was great.  Spelling is definitely Jacob's least favorite thing we do in school.  He hates it.  And it's not so much that he struggles with spelling but he is his own worst enemy with it - he just shuts down and doesn't even want to try.  Uggg...but we are working on it.  And I am hoping to find some ideas about how to change up how we do it to hopefully boost both of our spirits during that part of our day!

Jacob also finished another poem this month and a big scripture.  This might be an area where we take a little break this next month.  He is getting frustrated with it and that's not how I want that to go.  But I will say, listen to him tell me a scripture from memory, warms my little momma heart.  

At the beginning of this month, we spent almost a whole week working on an art project together.  I've contained myself through all of the other projects but I had to join in on this one!  We had a lot of fun doing it together.  We also studied plural nouns, "EE" words, read a short story about bunnies (and then Jacob made his own story!), "AR" words, "ED" and "ING" inflection endings, and "TOO, TWO, TO" homophones.  

And Jacob is still doing his handwriting pages.  Not that exciting but going well!

We are still working on our meteorology unit in science.  This month we talked about wind, what clouds are and the different types of clouds, rain, and thunder and lightning.  Our new vocabulary words were: wind, water vapor, and precipitation. 

We made a windsock during our wind lesson!

Our lesson on water vapor...

...which we did while I made lunch.  

Making a cloud in a jar.  

We learned how to tell how far away a storm is by counting the seconds between when you see the lightning and hear the thunder (aluminum foil!).  

Made "lightning" after rubbing a balloon on our heads and putting a metal spoon by it!

Something new this month was that we started a history program.  I absolutely love history and have been itching to start something.  I know what I want to do for next year but I found another program that I thought might be fun to do in the summer.  It's more of just reading historical picture books and discussing different things about it.  And Jacob and I are not loving it.  It's a little disappointing.  Not too much because I love what I have planned for next year and we can just throw these books in when we talk about the same topic - so it won't go to waste.  I don't really know why we aren't loving it but we just aren't.  So, we will probably change things up a bit but at least read what we have until we are done.  The books I got were about early American history.  We talked about Leif the Lucky (who I am pretty sure I had never heard about before) and Christopher Columbus.  

Another {kind of} new thing was that I decided to spotlight a new state every month (like what we did with Texas).  This will take several years, of course, but Jacob and I are both excited about it.  I thought about doing it geographically or in statehood order but ultimately I typed them into a randomizer program online and wrote it down.  So we are doing the states in a completely random order and it is kind of fun.  That way we get to bounce around a lot and keep things exciting.  This month was California!  We just started it this last week and have some more we want to do with it still.  But we talked about where it is, the different state symbols, the amazing trees that are there, influential people (Robert Frost and General George S. Patton Jr.), significant landmarks (Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island) and our U.S. President from there - Richard Nixon.  Plus, it was fun to show Jacob pictures of when Mark and I went to San Francisco on our 5th Anniversary.  

This week we also made Cobb Salads for dinner to spotlight some of the food California is known for - AVOCADOES!

Jacob and I love our snuggle read aloud time.  This month we read Twenty and Ten by Claire Huchet Bishop, The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner, and In Grandma's Attic by Arleta Richardson.  We loved all of these books!

I am so grateful to be on this journey with Jacob.  It has its challenges and we definitely have our struggles but the good far outweighs any of those.  We've decided that we will probably do some version of year round school.  We love the flexibility of doing it at home and taking breaks when we need to.  And Mark and I definitely believe in being life-long learners and feel like the best way to live that is to always be learning!  We will, most likely, do a more relaxed version of school this summer to give us both a break and get us excited for next year - which also includes SARAH!  Ahhh!  SO exciting!