In a homeschooling house full of 7 kids & 3 guniea pigs....there is never a dull moment! A lot of people show genuine concern for us and want to know how we are doing, as the road we've left behind was not a pleasant one. So, here I am, to tell some of our stories...share some of our days...and open up a part of our world to you! Come join us on our journey so you won't miss the moments that take our breath away!

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Our School week September 2-6

Gah!!!  The three day weekend leading up to this week, really threw us through a loop!  Monday, we didn't have school. 

Tuesday, Eagle began preparing for his test.  So absolutely nothing exciting for him this week!

Macaw started the week with having lots of fun with the story "Stone Soup". We read a few different versions of this story.  She completed a book summary project, a lapbook and made real stone soup!




We got the template for her book summary here
The lapbook templates came from here


Emu and Duckling anxiously awaited the FedEx guy to bring their special delivery and just around noon he finally arrived.  They were so excited to unpack their boxes!


With all the excitement going on, Dove would not stay off of the school desks, so we thought it would be a great time to bring up his desk...it didn't end up very well, lol
 He's just a bit too young to figure out the chair...so we are now on a desperate hunt for a school desk that will allow him to stay somewhat safe because obviously this one got put back up.

Being the Calvert lovers that we are, we know just how to organize everything and knew just how to get started, so we jumped right into our day!


It wasn't long into our lessons when Dove started throwing up, such a great time for a tummy bug to show up...ugh...so, we had a bit of a delay in our day.  Later, we managed to move on to the story of Goldilocks and The Three Bears.  It just so happened that we had an audio read along of this story which came in handy because I was able to tend to our sick little one while they continued with their lesson.  We also made some puppets for them to retell the story.



 We got the templates here 
Macaw remembered doing these a few years ago! I can't believe how small the kids looked when I posted about Macaw's day that day.

Our day was cut a bit short with Dove being sick. He was quite under the weather!  Hoping he doesn't spread this to everyone in the house!

We had a lot of fun this week! 

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Our School Week August 26-30

As promised, I will make more of an effort to post more about what goes on in our school week along with posting links that help us with our lessons, as this is one thing that takes a lot of time and if I can save someone from having to do the research to find something to go along with their lesson, then it has served it's purpose.  

This was our first "official" week of school, by official, I mean the time when we had to start logging our school time.  We had a really exciting week. We were able to add in a few supplemental activities and even made it to our new local library (and what an amazing place it is). 

At this point we were still waiting for our Calvert curriculum to come for Emu and Duckling who are both starting Kindergarten this year.  We opted to hold Emu back a year because he was not quite ready last year and we gave Duckling a head start because of her hearing impairment, she is likely to fail.  I don't want to feel like I am setting her up for failure, however, we want her to be aligned with other kids her age and don't want her to later be a grade behind where she "should" be.  With any luck she will excel, but I like to be prepared. 

On to our week.  Our first week consisted of mostly art projects for Emu and Duckling.  Eagle  studied the civil war, Martin Luther King Jr., and is finishing up the last few lessons before his next test.    I found some pics of Martin Luther King Jr. for the kids to color along with a nice book report page for Eagle. 


All of the kids got involved in a few of Macaw's other lessons.  Macaw learned about our national anthem and how the song came to be.  The kids all worked together and drew a life size flag just like the one that stood through the battle she learned about.  We also took some time to learn about bike safety and the food pyramid and eating healthy! As both of those topics fit in with her lessons. 

Our first week went so amazing!  We not only completed our daily lessons, but we did many supplemental activities and projects and we even had time to explore our new library!