The biggest update in our school life is our location! Our system was just not working before and things have improved a lot and I think looks more like what our long term plan will be. We moved all of our school stuff up into our loft area above the family room. It's nice because we are separated but I can also just look over the side and see what Benjamin and Sarah are up too! Plus, they aren't confined to such a small space so it's a win for everyone.
We are definitely wrapping up our language arts stuff and it feels a-maz-ing. When I think of all of Jacob's growth over the last year it is incredible. He went from only knowing the sounds for some of the letters to reading full sentences. It's amazing. We review his sight words and phonics cards every Friday and continue to work on spelling.
We slowed down a lot with poetry. He actually memorizes really well and he was really enjoying it and then one day was NOT enjoying it anymore. So now we just work on poetry twice a week and even though it's still a bit of a struggle, it's been a good compromise.
Jacob started to read out of the third and last section of his reader. We did a lot of art appreciation types lessons, talked about categories, and antonyms. He also did an impressionist art project which turned out awesome.
He's also continued to work on his handwriting practice and has almost finished that up.
The SUPER exciting part of this month was that we finished our meteorology unit. I felt like we were on this unit for a LONG time! I am not really sure why it took so long because I think we both really enjoyed it but it is also exciting to think of starting something new.
This month was mostly talking about severe weather. We discussed snow, hail and blizzards, tornadoes, hurricanes, and forecasting weather. Our new vocabulary word was forecast.
We read a fun book about a regular farmer who was just fascinated with snow. He ended up taking the first pictures of what individual snowflakes looked like. Then we studied more the different forms of ice crystals. We also did a fun activity that talked about how hail is made.
Jacob LOVED learning about tornadoes - he has become really fascinated with them. We also talked about hurricanes and the different names they are known as throughout the world and labeled a globe with the different names.
Every day we have worked on this unit, Jacob has filled out a weather page documenting different things regarding the weather that day. So on our last day he graphed the different kind of weather we had and that was fun to go over together.
We kind of dumped our history program. Jacob and I both were just no "feeling" it and Jacob was starting to dread it...and me too a little bit. Now, I LOVE history and definitely didn't want Jacob having that perception about it so I just thought it better to bag it. We can definitely use the books and I think those will be great still (so I don't feel too bad for abandoning it since we will still use them) just in a different way. We will start out new program in the fall.
Instead of starting a new state this month, we just kept working on California. We didn't start it until the last couple days in March and I didn't feel the need to rush it. We made a fun Redwoods Tree craft that sat on our table pretty much the entire month.
For art we have been working on creating a tree for each season. So far, Jacob has done spring and summer.
This month we read James Herriot's Treasury for Children, Mary on Horseback by Rosemary Wells, and Here's a Penny by Carolyn Haywood.
It is nice to see things start to wrap up and see our progress. As I mentioned before, assuming anyone actually reads this, we are planning to do schooling year round but more relaxed in the summer. So I have made up our plan for the rest of this "year" until mid August and I think it's going to be great for both of us. Plus, I am planning/hoping to prep everything for next year so that I don't have to constantly feel like I need to be prepping stuff. That's my goal!
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