February 2016 homeschool report

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact it’s 2016, and now I also have to cope with it being 1/6 done.  I’m not ready for this, but we had a good month of homeschooling, and if I’m honest with myself we were actually pretty productive.

I’ll approach this much like I do with my Inservice in the Inbox newsletters, and go alphabetically.

 

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Bible

We haven’t had anything super exciting in our Bible at home, the kids are slowly reading through the Gospels this year along with our church, and are about halfway through the book of Matthew.  We did have a great lesson about prayer, which I absolutely loved, and I’ve printed off a brand new study for me (which I’ll be sharing with you on Sunday, along with a coupon code).  I’m super excited to start it.  Continuing our lessons through the Parables has been held up by lack of ink and cardstock.  Every time I’ve gone to the store, they’ve been out of my favorite brand of cardstock (yes, it’s a ridiculous thing to be picky about).

Geography

After a few false starts in geography, this year, we’ve started back in and started learning about the United Kingdom, which meant a very fun book on Queen Victoria.  The kids had fun designing a bathing machine for her.

We also studied Hawaii, but that was amazingly boring, aside from my successfully cooking Hawaiian meatballs (though I did burn the second batch).

History

We finished up our first semester in The Mystery of History 3* with a week of funschooling, for Queen Elizabeth 1, of which a few of the activities were a big success, and some were rather, “meh, that’s okay Mom.”  Looking back over my pictures, there was even more we did for our funschooling: we had a lesson on Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the kids built LEGO re-enactments of the queens of the time (Mary Tudor, Mary Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth).  The bottom two pictures are of our Queen Elizabeth portraits activities.

We just read all about Sir Walter Raleigh and the lost colony of Roanoke, which caused the kids to go build a colony of Roanoke in Minecraft.

Math

Just as I thought we had solved all of Princess’ math problems with Life of Fred math, she insisted she wanted to switch back to her brother’s math, and “why are you holding me behind Mom?”  Which was rather amusing to me.

We’ve also implemented a fraction of the day to work on kids finding equivalent fractions and other boring things.

Science

In CKE Biology* we finished up the bird unit, and had some fun studying feathers, even if our nature walk was a bust.  We hurried through the mammals unit so we can go to the zoo next week before spring break and the massive crowds.

 

General life stuff

I almost forgot to give an update of our general life.  February was a month of busy weekends, we had one weekend free, and ended up using that weekend to help a friend move (that’s two of the pictures up there).  Another weekend was the father/daughter dance and Princess quite happily posed with Jeff for pictures.  We also spent one morning helping the camp the kids have gone to several times, they were caught in the Bastrop fires last fall, and so we helped repair cabins that hadn’t been caught in the fire.  They’re going to have to find completely new land for the camp until the land grows back.

And for a bit of fun, here’s the games we played this month:

• Kings of Israel– and here’s my Kings of Israel review if you’re curious
• Shadows of Brimstone– my boys are ridiculously obsessed with this
• Geopuzzle– the kids have been randomly putting them together when bored
• Favor of Pharaoh– I love the combination of Dominion game and Yahtzee
• Smash Up– my boys play this a lot with their friends, Smash Up review

What did ya’ll love on the blog last month?

It looks like this is the exact same as last month, which is boring to me.  So, I’ll take the next 3:

• Lord’s Prayer Craft
• Joseph’s Coat activities for kids
• Call of 12 Disciples activities

What I’ve enjoyed reading recently

• I am loving this series on zippers over at iKat Bag
• Super Bowl ads without watching the Super Bowl, I’m slowly watching these as I remember them
• Queen Elizabeth lesson plans