This month slowed things way down. November was filled with sickness from the little baby and so we were completely focused on survival. We took some days completely off when we had to but we kept to the basics and did school mostly from my bed. At first I felt pretty guilty about it and then I asked myself, "Why?" That is one of the joys of homeschooling is that real life and "schooling" can be so intertwined. And I have no doubt that we will be just fine on our book work.
We are continuing our study of the DOCTRINE AND COVENANTS. This month we have talked a lot about various revelations. We have reviewed the revelations about the priesthood, war, the word of wisdom, Jesus Christ, and tithing. We also discussed the church in Kirtland, the warnings God gave to the people, the Saints leaving Jackson County, Zions Camp, the various Priesthood leadership, the Pearl of Great Price, the dedication of the Kirtland Temple and the visions that were received there, the trouble in Kirtland, the church in Far West, the name of the Church, the mobs in Missouri, Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail, the Saints leaving Missouri, and Joseph Smith asking the President for help.
MATH continues to go so well! Jacob just completed his second unit and took his test today and did AWESOME! This unit was all about addition and subtraction. We learned growing patterns, counting by twos, adding two, adding two to odds, adding three numbers, commutative property, subtracting two, number line subtraction, story problems, and doubles 1-5.
PRESCHOOL was something we just hit the giant pause button on. Poor Sarah. We read a lot of stories but nothing formal or planned. She has been so patient in waiting and finally this last week we started up another unit. This unit is all about kittens, the color purple, and kindness. She is so happy to be "working" again. I am itching to begin this new curriculum I got about a month ago (right about when I tanked) and I just haven't had the energy to get it all organized yet. Crossing our fingers for January!
We didn't do any HISTORY this month until this last week. We finally began our second unit and the kiddos are so excited (me too!). This unit we are jumping into the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. I can't wait! We've only done one lesson (that we stretched over two days because we were having so much fun with it). We talked about ancient Britain which was so interesting and King Arthur.
SCIENCE was another thing that got put on pause until this last week. We had just barely started our new Space Science unit before we took our break. This last week we started up again and the kids are so excited. We just did one more lesson about the solar system and the sun. We will begin studying each of the planets and Jacob is literally begging for more!
LANGUAGE ARTS was something we continued to plow through this month. Jacob is doing so well and I feel like his fluency and confidence has grown so much. It is so much fun to watch. This month we discussed more poetry, regular past tense, inflectional endings ED and ING, the different sounds of Y, past, present, and future tenses and adjectives. I am so proud of him.
HANDWRITING continues to go well. Jacob is starting to transition to doing more phrases and sentence type of copywork rather than just doing letters and numbers so it is a little more interesting.
It took us a whole month to get through our read aloud but we really liked it! We read Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. I had never read this before (but, of course, have seen the Disney movie, as have Jacob) and so it was really interesting to compare it to that. In case you are wondering, it is WAY different. The same arcing theme but definitely different in how it is achieved. And Pinocchio is way more of a rascal in the book than the movie. But Jacob and I loved talking about it together.
Even though it has been our hardest month homeschooling (due to me being so sick) I am still proud of what we were able to accomplish. It's also been really sweet for Jacob to witness all of the sickies. He was so sweet and patient with me.
