Love learning!

Wow!  Can't believe is almost the end of 5th week of school!  This 5 weeks has gone by pretty steadily and quickly.  I used the first 2 weeks to test out the schedule that works best for us.  In my past experience, trying to time everything only caused stress and take away precious teachable moments.  I was always watching the clock and rushing so that we can squeeze as much as we can, keeping up with the curriculum.  This made me very irritable and teaching wasn't as enjoyable.  This time around, I wanted to do things differently.  I split up the teaching time into morning and afternoon.  Here is my schedule:

Worship/Bible
Language Arts/Math with Ethan (Noah teaches Bethany ABCs or numbers)
Language Arts/Math with Noah (Ethan plays with Bethany)
Snack break
Play outside
Lunch
History
Spelling with Ethan

I tried to put the time for each "subject" the first 2 weeks but decided to take it out.  It only gave me stress.  Sometimes it takes longer to teach a new concept for Math or Language Arts, so why limit the time?  We've enjoyed the outside time a lot, running, climbing, riding on bikes and scooters really help the 3 kids to bond, thrive, and learn even better.  They also got more opportunities to meet new friends at the playground.

Before the school year, I was pretty nervous about teaching History because I didn't enjoy it as a kid myself, and I wasn't sure how to make it interesting. Indeed, I didn't do too well the first 2 weeks, I was sticking to reading aloud the whole text and bringing it a lot of details.  I didn't feel that the boys enjoyed it at all and was afraid they would hate History because of me.  So what did I do?  I turned to my husband for help.  He looked over the History book, and bracket out the parts he felt are important, and left out the rest.  He believes that the boys are going to learn US History at least a couple more times in their schooling years, so it's okay to just teach the basic and not include too much details.  Thanks to my husband, I got my direction back!  Since then, I have greatly reduced the amount of text, and always make sure I draw on the board to help the boys visualize the stories.  Both boys end up loving History time!  Of course, the cool crafts included in the curriculum helped a great deal too.

Another encouraging thing is that Noah has started to LOVE spelling.  He's been working on phonic blends and reading more, so his confidence grew and he's constantly trying to spell and write words and ask us to read them.  What more can a homeschooling mom ask for when your son begs you to teach him how to spell?  Ethan also love his spelling tests and are doing great with them.  He looks forward to getting perfect score and be rewarded with ipad, wii time, or candy.

Another fun we added is baking on Fridays!  I bought a stand mixer and started with boxed brownies to corn muffins, and last Friday we made peanut butter cookies!

Ethan making Native American tepee

Different Native American housing in pioneer days