August 2016 Homeschool Happenings

I wish I could still be in denial that homeschooling has started back for the school year, but really I can’t.  We’ve dived in full force because we are taking off three weeks in September for a trip to Williamsburg again.  So, I’ll admit half of my time has been taken up with sewing like a mad woman because….

 

I’ve made Colonial Costumes for us

And by us, I mean the kids and I.  I’ve been looking for an excuse to make myself a gorgeous colonial costume pattern I picked up.  I’d already started playing around with some of the parts, and then my kids all said “We need costumes!”  So, I ordered Princess a pattern from my favorite pattern company, and got myself the matching pattern.  For the boys I had to resort to a men’s pattern, which doesn’t really fit in the least because it’s so big, but there is no kid’s colonial boy costume that I could find.

If you’ve been following my instagram feed at all, you’ve seen pictures of my costume in construction.  I made a chemise, corset, bum cover, petticoat, and the dress.  As of Tuesday night when I’m typing this, I’m still fiddling around with bits of my dress, and I have yet to sew Batman’s uniform coat.  Superman requested an inventor costume (think Ben Franklin) with funny buttons, and Batman wanted to be a soldier.  I’m kind of making that costume up, because the pattern I have doesn’t have the right coat.  It’s complicated.

And of course because all of that wasn’t crazy enough, I made clothes for all of their owie dolls.  I’ve discovered the owie dolls fit the 16” doll patterns from the mainline pattern companies.

 

We started school

Which so far has mainly been us learning about the American Revolution, the Seven Years War, and the French and Indian War.  We briefly learned about some composers, but I want to go into more detail on them later.

The kids are loving our chemistry lessons so far.  I’m putting together a super fun project for them tomorrow (Wednesday, hopefully I’ll update with some fun pictures after we do it)

We had our first THREE field trips, that would average out to one every week, only they all happened in the same week.  First we had our annual Not Back to School celebration and went to Schlitterbahn, for which I have no pictures because I left my camera at home and phone in the car.  Then we went to the Blanton Museum, which had a fascinating Goya exhibition, only it was mainly his ink drawings, and many of those are rather surreal/disturbing.  Finally on Friday we had our Back to Homeschool party with our co-op, for which I also have no pictures because I was busy talking with the other homeschool Moms.

We studied Washington/Oregon for geography.  I paired them together because searching books for turned up books on the Oregon Trail and those two states were formed out of the Oregon territory, so half the time the travelers ended up in Washington and the other half in Oregon.  I feel I’ll be all set when we get to Westward Expansion for our homeschool history lessons.

 

Random pictures that amused me

Princess threw quite a fit about sharing her chair with the Bouncy Bands, at one point she had about 6 post-it notes on her chair.

We practiced real life math as one of the boys measured the leftover cake to figure out exactly how much each kid got.

That is what the boys think they need to watch a movie, and on a completely unrelated note, we found the dog hiding under a table one day during school.

I walked upstairs to get school started and was ambushed by the kids.

I like frogs.  I don’t know why, but when I go for a walk at night and find these random little guys I almost always chase them down, and talk to them for a minute, before letting them go.

 

I should have been more specific in my directions. The kitchen floor is covered in plaster. #ihsnet #homeschool

A photo posted by Ticia (@ticiam) on Aug 29, 2016 at 1:39pm PDT

I learned not to tell the kids “Go make volcanoes with plaster and clay while I sew.”  What I thought would happen is they would go outside mix up some plaster, and make cool volcanoes.  What actually happened is about 30 minutes later Princess came in nearly crying because her volcano wasn’t turning out right.  Batman said “I’ve nearly got all of the plaster off the cabinets,” and Superman came upstairs saying “How can I get the plaster off the floor?”  I came downstairs to Batman attempting to scrape the whole mess into the disposal.  Needless to say I learned my lesson.  Don’t do that.

 

What was popular this month?

Tips on Teaching Highly Distractible Kids

Bible Curriculum

Joseph’s Coat Activities for Kids

 

How was your August?