February 2017 Homeschool Happenings

I feel like I start off every single post to sum up the month with “Where did the month go? How is it already time for the next month?” But, it’s true, of course I also go into these posts thinking we did nothing, but this month I KNOW we did a lot.  So, here’s our homeschooling adventures for the month.

 

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In my life this month…

We had a mini-vacation. So, that’s the big thing I’m remembering right now. Pictures for that below under places we’re going.

 

I got started brainstorming on a super big extended version of my current Bible curriculum, and because of that started a second Pinterest account, and set up a whole slew of craziness.

 

In our homeschool this month…

This is how I know we’ve been crazy busy.  I’ve got about 3 new chemistry lessons to write, and a whole bunch of book and a movie posts because we’ve been reading a lot, and listening to audio books.

So, here’s the quick rundown of individual things: we started off sick, homeschool in the park, made pH paper (also forgot and left the burner on, and scorched the fabric I was dyeing that did not smell good), field trip to local museum, playdate with fellow homeschoolers, Little Princess movie night, learned about the start of World War 2, tested various liquids and powders for acid/base content, and worked on our magazines for Cover Story (see our writer’s notebook).

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…

We headed down to Houston for the Holocaust Museum and then over to Corpus Christi to see the USS Lexington and the Texas Aquarium.  It was super fun, and kept us busy.

Princess also got to paint with a friend of hers as a birthday present for the friend, super popular.

The boys earned their black belts.  That was super exciting, and they worked unbelievably hard.

Games we’re playing

We didn’t play a lot of games this month.  I’ve had to sit down and talk with the kids about how they are playing games.  There are two separate problems going on.  I actually keep track of this by going to my Instagram feed and seeing that.

1. They will sit on having the win condition for a game, and thus draw out the game FOREVER.  I had to sit them down and explain it is not fun to sit and know you can’t win for rounds because you’re pretty sure someone has the win condition (this came up earlier this week playing Five Crowns and both boys could go out, but weren’t, and I knew my ability to go out wouldn’t happen for at least 5 rounds if not more).
2. Not playing to win.  Princess does this because she doesn’t want to make people feel bad, and that makes the game way too long, this happened most recently playing Killing Doctor Lucky, and was driving me nuts.

Here’s what we played: Castle Panic, Five Crowns, Kill Doctor Lucky*, Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Quiddler

My favorite thing this week month…

 

Feeding the rays

A post shared by Ticia (@ticiam) on Feb 28, 2017 at 9:35am PST

Visiting the Texas Aquarium, it was super a lot of fun.

What’s working/not working for us…

I picked up Homeschool Planet* this month to organize our schoolwork, and I’m really loving it.  I am so glad Crystal over at Triumphant Learning told me how she uses it.

 

Homeschool questions/thoughts I have…

I’ve found our history for next year, which has made me super duper happy.  Now I’m looking at math curriculum, I’m leaning towards Teaching Textbooks.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…

Here’s our recent FB live video of how World War 2 started. A little later today we’ll be doing a live activity of World War 2 bombing…..

On my blog in case you missed it…

Here’s what’s been popular this month, a lot of favorites, and I’m amused to see the Prayer Stations seems to be replacing Distracted kids as a favorite.

• Prayer Stations
• Tips for teaching highly distractible kids
• World War 2 movies– I’m at least a half dozen of these views as I’ve been picking movies for our upcoming WW2 marathon
• Jesus showed us an easy way to resist temptation– that’s 4, so that’s an odd place to stop, so here’s 5:
• Call of 12 Disciples Activity

I’ll be back next month with our overview, as a quick idea of what’s coming up, here’s my in theory plan:

• Project Passport
• Killing Doctor Lucky board game
• Misty of Chincoteague
• The error of sin (I’m still working on a good title, I’m not in love with it)
• Favor of the Pharaoh