August Homeschool Happenings 2018

It’s hard to believe we are two-thirds of the way through 2018. I’m a bit in shock at that. We started our 8th grade homeschool year slowly with lots of breaks to enjoy hanging out with our public school friends and take advantage of the last few days our local waterpark was open. So here goes for our fun hoomeschooling adventures for August.

 

Week 1 August homeschooling

As part of my goal to transition the kids to independent learning, I gave them all of their assignments for the month and worked with them each week to plan how they would get everything done in time. This had mixed results, which is going to have to be an entire post after we’ve done this for a few more months, so I can see how everyone is handling it.

We kicked off the month with a slew of movie nights, we watched The Spiderwick Chronicles, which I never assigned when it was the right age range because we’d listened to the audiobooks, and there are so many great books to read. We had the cousins over for this, so that made it extra special.

We finished the week by heading over to see Julius Caesar at Shakespeare at Winedale. The production was pretty amazing

Week 2 August homeschooling

The boys did one of their hands on projects and imitated Minoan bull dancing, amusingly enough at the same park we did this last time.

We took a brief break to go to Typhoon Texas with a friend for the day. Princess was quite happy to have her cast off and be able to do the climbing walls.

We have some friends who moved to Alaska last fall, and sadly their oldest son finally lost his battle and died at 8 years old. He was an amazing young man, and no one ever left his presence without a smile. The family asked for people to come dressed as superheroes, so we all dressed up in our very best superhero outfits and took pictures to show our support. I may have hugged my boys extra tight when I heard the news.

 

Week 3 August Homeschooling

You know, every month I say, “This month I’m going to write out what happens at the end of each week, and I’m going to make sure I’ve got pictures uploaded for each week. You know what? That doesn’t happen.

We completed our first science experiment for our geology lessons. I was disappointed to find out, it’s not so much geology as earth science, but the kids are still enjoying it, and it’s making for a good review of what we covered before. We then went and completed the second experiment which was accurately charting a park and guiding someone to a hidden treasure.

Princess and I worked on one of her hands on projects for the month, this one was dyeing fabric. We tried out different plant dyes to try and replicate the Phoenician purple dye. The closest we came was either blueberries or purple cabbage. I need to look at our results again to be sure.

Princess and Batman started the second hands-on project testing different desiccants to mummify a chicken leg. I didn’t want to mummify a whole chicken a THIRD time. The kids were disappointed.

We celebrate our annual not back to school by going to Mount Playmore with the cousins, and generally goofing off. Then that weekend we went to my friend Sam’s house for the annual memorial birthday swim party. I do miss him.

Week 4 August Homeschooling

We’re working through Ancient history, and the kids and I are spent this week learning about Ancient Egypt and watching large amounts of videos. We’ve discovered a new YouTube channel that covers both ancient history AND different mythology groups. That’s been a big help in our history this year.

A friend is going over to London to be a missionary, and they are downsizing, so we inherited their boombox, which thoroughly fascinated Princess, this absolutely ancient technology. Oops, I put that and our back to school pool party picture (where we forgot the towels) in the second week 3 collage.

 

Week 5 August Homeschooling

The last week of August was filled with the kids’ sudden frantic realization all of their due dates were on Friday, and they were worried about getting it all done.

They did get a reprieve for two of the science chapters as one of the required elements for the experiment didn’t get in until Thursday (my own fault for ordering it too late).

They frantically worked to complete quizzes for history, science, and 2 papers. In the end they pulled off their history papers, but their writing assignment was not up to snuff. We had a miscommunication on what was expected for the article, so we spent Friday talking through what’s expected and we’re going to walk through it step by step this coming week.

We finished the week watching Mary Poppins as the kids had all read at the very least the first book, and I think in Princess’ case had read one or two more.

 

More homeschooling in 2018