Homeschooling April 2017 month in review

It’s time for another round of “What the heck did we do the last month? How did we get it all done?” Where I look back at my photos and attempt to figure out our homeschooling adventures from the random pictures I took.

I’m gonna break it up a little differently than prior months, previously I’d broken it up by subject, but I’m gonna try timeframes because then I’m not leaping back and forth.

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Week 1 of April

We started off April with a bad case of Spring Fever, and we had a good long talk and decided we were going to power through our Spring Fever and finish up early.

This was also the week of the boys’ birthday party, this time all the kids made swords and spent the evening wacking  (yes spell check that is a word) each other.

We went on a brief field trip to the Compassion ExperienceCompassion Experience and it was sobering to see how other children live and their difficulties, it gave a very different perspective.

 

Week 2 of April

The boys promptly spent every single gift card they had on various Fox Trot and Baby Blues books.

We continued our slow progress through Cover Story curriculum, this time working on peer-editing, which was a big challenge.  We had to write down one thing we liked, and one thing they person could improve.  It was a challenge for Jeff and me to only write down one improvement, because both of us went into editing mode, and were about to overwhelm the kids.

 

Princess and I finished off the weekend with an American Heritage Girl campout.  Her squad was working on fire safety, so she got to practice building a fire.  Right before we left the mail came in and I had a super fun package from Dover Publications full of fun historical coloring books, AND some activity books.  I’m going to be showing you next week all about how I put together our history notebooks each year.

 

Week 3 of April

Week 3 of April saw another fun package coming, this in the form of professionally bound versions of the Printable Sermon notes I told you about.  Princess is nuts for them, and I had not realized just how much of a difference having a “fancy version” would make.  She happily filled hers out during the sermon, I’d show you a picture, but it feels weird to take a picture in the middle of church.

We had an Easter Egg hunt at home, and then again with my brother and his family.  By the way, if you’re into movies you should watch his Youtube channel.  I frequently heckle him.

This is also the week we finished up our history lessons and science lessons (When we read the breakup of Yugoslavia I posted it on Instagram, and had Gina comment she’d just posted about leaving Sarajevo, which made the lesson all the more real).  I’m actually thinking this might have happened earlier in the month, because I’m sure we were finished with those by Easter.   So, this actually happened in week 2, because I know we had two weeks of goofing off.

And for a bit of reading we watched Pippi Longstocking after spending a few weeks reading all of the Pippi Longstocking books*.  The movie version I found* was not the one I remembered watching growing up* and was…. less than impressive.

It was flat out weird.

 

Week 4 of April

Okay, this is last week, so I know for sure what happened there.  We went to a super cool virtual field trip from Minute Man National Park, which I watched part of the time while making lunch.

We spent a lot of time at the pool, actually, the kids have been swimming as often as they can convince me to take them, which translates into a couple of times a week.

The boys took two friends to Dart ‘Em Up for birthday presents, and it was an amazing hit.  If you’re local, totally go.

We made the food from my Thailand book, and despite my being convinced I had everything for the meal, I got halfway through and discovered I didn’t.  Also, I’m not so sure the lemon I used had the same flavor as a lime.  Sigh…..

 

Our homeschool group went on a field trip to the Texas Military Museum, and there I found a cool new coloring book for our Texas history plans next year.  We’re starting up the first few chapters during May so I can see how they do with the different textbook style.

After the field trip, we put together Presidential paper men from Dover Publications.  We attempted the White House*, but I discovered I should not have cut out every single piece before attempting to put it together.  I know better, and yet I still did that.  It was foolish.

 

Thursday night we watched the Secret Garden, which my kids have been watching with their Nana every time they go to visit Jeff’s parents.  Our library had two different versions, and the kids voted to watch the Hallmark Special Secret Garden* (which has Colin Firth in it!).  I wanted to watch the version I was familiar with* but lost the vote.  Jeff was working late, so he did not get to vote.  Since then I’ve been listening to the Secret Garden musical soundtrack* because our local theater company put that on ages ago, and I got the soundtrack the and remembered I had it.

 

What’s been popular this past month

• Movies for World War 2– because everyone loves a good family movie
• Tips on Teaching Distractible Kids– I might have a few of these
• Interactive Prayer Stations– I did this with the 2nd graders in AHG
• Temptation of Jesus activity– This was recently covered by Gospel Project, so that’s probably why
• Palm Sunday Craft– Everyone raved about this craft, seriously raved, I’m trying to think of ways to use this idea with different lessons

Looking for more Homeschool months, try Homeschool Mother’s Journal