HS: January

Seriously, sometimes I don't know why I make plans.  School in January went well but we did take some time off to prepare the house and get some things organized.  It was unexpected but we just roll with it.  It makes me really glad that we plan on schooling year round so I don't really stress too much about it.  Although, I was hoping to wrap things up before baby sister gets here.  We will see what happens!

The GREATEST thing by far this month has been our FAMILY STUDY.  This is how we are implementing the new Come, Follow Me curriculum in our family.  Mark and I read and study the lesson out the week before.  Then we sit down together and discuss what we want to do as a family.  On Sunday afternoons, while Benji is taking his nap, we go in and do our family study.  Mark leads mostly on Sundays since I do the rest of the week.  It's been so wonderful.  It is rocking our world in ALL the right ways!  

Monday through Friday we continue to meet together to read the Book of Mormon as a family and then do family prayer before Mark leaves for work.  Then as soon as he leaves, we head upstairs and begin our day with our family study.  We then dive deeper into different stories and other activities that reinforce whatever we are learning that week.  It has been amazing.  Seriously amazing.  This month we have talked about the Parable of the Sower, Elisabeth and Zacharias, Mary and Joseph, Jesus' Birth and Childhood, John the Baptism, and the Baptism of Jesus Christ.  

We are still in our third unit in MATH.  We studied three new fact families, Native American patterns, taking away five, the cylinder and cone, pictographs, making ten, the dime, and numbers 11-20.  

In PRESCHOOL, we finished our unit on lions, sharing and the color green and just began our new unit about squirrels, thankfulness, and the color brown.  

We are almost done with our unit about the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in HISTORY.  We only have one more lesson!  This month we learned about William the Conqueror, life in the Middle Ages, the Age of Chivalry, we took a lot of time to talk about Joan of Arc (she is AMAZING!), the Black Death, the Renaissance, and the Scientific Revolution.  We have also been reading Huguenot Garden by Douglas M. Jones III to go along with our unit and just finished it and loved it!

In SCIENCE we are continuing to talk about Space Science.  This month we discussed asteroids, comets, meteors, and meteoroids.  We also finished up talking about the planets, the gas giants: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.  We've also been learning about the history of astronomy and Galileo.  

Jacob continues to do well in LANGUAGE ARTS.  We have been learning about homophones, comas in a series, doing some art appreciation, EA words, discussing the four types of sentences (statements, commands, exclamation, question), AW and AU words, and decoding challenging words.  We also hit our halfway mark in our coursebook!  WOOT!  

Jacob memorized another POEM this month!  We have been really working on his presentation (keeping his hands down, talking in a smooth way, etc).  He is doing a lot better!

The Bird's Nest

By Unknown

Here upon the leaves at rest

A little bird has built her nest.

Two tiny eggs within she's laid,

And many days beside them stayed.

Now she's happy; listen well!

Two baby birds break through the shell.

Don't you hear them? "Peep! Peep! Peep!

We love you, Mother. Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!"

HANDWRITING is also going well.  Jacob also reached his half way point in this book as well.  He is now progressing to more complicated copywriting and is really enjoying it.  

We finished The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum this month.  We all LOVED it!  The kiddos were all excited to watch the movie afterwards to compare.  We all decided we liked the book better but it was fun to compare!  We are now reading Henry and Bessie: What They Did in the Country by Elizabeth Prentiss and it is adorable.  We are all really enjoying it.