The end of February hit me like a ton of bricks, and left me wondering how I got here, and how was I ever going to be ready for the boys to turn 13 this weekend? It probably also didn’t help with my plan to combat the winter blues was to go on 10 million field trips. Okay, only six or so field trips. Overall though it was a fun month of homeschooling.
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February week 1
We started off the month putting together our monthly calendar, which I still need to get us doing for March….
We headed up to the Texas Rangers Museum because we’re covering that particular time in Texas, and it was a great field trip because all the rest of the month I could refer back to the field trip and what we talked about during the field trip. We did have a rather funny moment on our way to the field trip when we spotted a giant painting just sitting out to be thrown away. While the painting of turnips isn’t particularly my interests, but it’s a gorgeous frame, and there’s so much I could do with it.
Since we studied the Civil War, and since we are Christians and I think it’s important for us to understand the history of Christianity, I had the kids research how Christians can be on both sides of the slavery issue. They hated the assignment with a fiery passion, especially Princess, but it got them starting to think about how other sides could think.
Princess and I went to our own outing, a local living history museum had a re-enactment of the wedding of two local people that happened in the 1870s, and we got to participate in that, which was super fun. Princess caught the bouquet, mainly because every other single woman at the wedding stepped back and practically forced the bouquet onto her, which cracked me up so much.
And finally, I split the kids up to read three different books. I gave them a list of possibilities and they all picked. Superman picked Old Yeller, Batman picked The Giver (he is now reading the sequels), and Princess picked 101 Dalmations. Since they weren’t all reading the same book I tried to get them from the library or the used bookstore, because my kids greatly prefer physical books to ebooks.
February Week 2
This was one of those busy weeks we get from time to time. One of the ladies in our homeschool group had over 60 egg cartons to give out, so I happily took them and brainstormed about 2 million projects to do with them, including remaking this old Very Hungry Caterpillar craft.
Princess and Batman had a cake decorating class, and they both loved it. I’ll be honest, I sat there most of the time thinking, “I could have taught you all of this,” but that wasn’t really the point, no matter how much I thought it was.
We had fun getting another of our physics experiments done. The kids had a blast figuring out the amount of work a toy car has to do to smash a banana. Very exciting stuff.
While digging through my patterns I found one of the very first patterns I used to make a Pound Puppy stuffed animal, so of course, I had to try making another one, the only problem is I’m missing one major piece. So I’m trying to figure out how to replace that.
We celebrated Valentine’s Day with the kids, which made them happy as clams. The weekend before Jeff and I enjoyed a partial weekend without the kids, so we celebrated Valentine’s day together then.
We had some fun playing This Game Is Bonkers and Five Crowns, where I totally beat the boys….
Oh, and this picture of the mob of boys at our homeschool co-op is pretty true to what park day looks like every week with all the boys.
That weekend we watched all of the movies to go with their books because the kids raced through their books. It’s amazing how much faster they read when they really like their book.
February Week 3
We completed our next Physics experiment (it really helps when you have the supplies ahead of time), and looked at how marbles do rolling down a tube and the law of inertia.
Then we had a field trip up to Waco to go to the Mayborne Museum, the boys had a blast trying out VR, and they were all amused by different old communication technologies.
Oh, and we had a wonderful simulation of what it was like to be a share-cropper, which the kids all declared to be a horrible experience because they all ended up desperately in debt. Poor guys.
February Week 4
We finished off the month with a field trip up to the Bob Bullock to look at their displays on the Civil War and Reconstruction. I made sure to point out some of the figures mentioned in our textbook, which the kids were appropriately interested by. They were particularly fascinated to look at the map of the United States with all of the different ways it changed in the 30 or so years leading up to the Civil War.
We ate and made a meal to go with our Scotland book, Clash of Swords (not Clash of Clans like I keep saying my kids keep correcting), in general, the food was a hit, but the oatcakes were not.
Each week I take one of the kids out for lunch and we plan what they’re going to make for a meal on Thursday, and this particular week I took Batman out, and he took his World of Warcraft cookbook. For being a novelty cookbook, we’ve really liked the recipes so far.
Isn’t that coffee cup awesome? I kinda want it, but in reality, I do not need more coffee mugs.
I’ve been working on putting together a store for the various items I have, so I printed off most of the stuff in there and took pictures, and then I ran out of ink. It made me super sad.
Jeff got all of the Shadows of Brimstone expansions and character packs and everything, so we’ve been having fun playing the new content, but we did have a scary moment when our level 1 characters faced a horde of vampires.
This last week of February though was really spent with me saying, “How are my boys almost 13?” I actually meant to write my annual birthday letter to them this weekend, instead, I spent Saturday with their birthday party and watching movies they picked, then Sunday was spent playing World of Warcraft and their new game Sushi Go (which Princess was even willing to play!) together. By the end I was absolutely exhausted and collapsed to read Redwall, the current book my kids are reading.
2018 Homeschool Happenings
Slowly but surely I plan to add all of the months in here at the bottom, we’ll see how that goes….
Your field trips sound really wonderful and I love the simulation! I really like all of your photo collages. You are an awesome teacher!
I know how you feel about the boys turning 13, but I have to say that Quentin’s 13th year had been amazing! He will be 14 in a couple of months. He has taken on more responsibility, has grown so much in all ways and has really stepped up to many personal challenges! I hope your boys have just as awesome a year!
Awwww, thank you! I liked the simulation too, but the kids and I all felt it needed to go a bit longer. We’re having Spring Break next week and I plan to do a bunch of writing and projects to work on, and that is one of them to make a better simulation than the one I bought.
I really think 13 is going to be an amazing year, it’s just so weird to think of them being this big. Batman cooked a turkey for all of us on his birthday, and it was amazing. They’ve grown up so much in these last few months, and I’m sure it’s going to continue like this.