january 2018 homeschooling week 3

January 2018 homeschool happenings

Can we call January the practice month for 2018? I’m not ready to believe we’re supposed to be done with an entire month of homeschooling for the year, and it’s taken us a good 2-3 weeks to feel back into the groove.

(this post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure page for more information)

Week 1 of January

We started off the month with the flu. I don’t know how it is in your area, but the flu seems to be particularly bad right now. So, my theory of jumping right back into school was a bit delayed.

week 1 January 2018 homeschooling

But we weren’t sick for two days that week. One day was spent catching up with a Texas Revolution project, studying the artwork inspired by it. Then we worked on our monthly math calendar (I’ll have a full post on that Monday, it’s my next thing to write). The other well day was spent hanging with the cousins before their oldest cousin headed back to public school. Everyone had a blast and it amazes me how much use we still get out of the wagon the boys got for their first birthday.

Of course, the awesomeness of not being sick for a couple of days turned into Superman getting the flu. WHEEE!

Wait, not wheeee. In some ways, I much prefer when everyone is sick at once because then we get it all over with at the same time. That is probably a  little crazy to think about.

 

Week 2 of the 2018 practice month

Sickness…. so much sickness. I swear Superman was sick forever. But in other news, we made imaginary countries as we thought about what Texas had to go through to set up their own country. The kids actually created two countries. One a bit more serious, and thought out. The second a silly one, which meant I got Marshmallowia as a country.

It was different.

January 2018 homeschooling week 2
my dog seems to think if he turns around and isn’t facing me I will believe he can’t hear me.

I also worked on my outfit for what turned into the 1920s ball, not a World War 1 ball, which meant I had to completely change my planned outfit.

We played Oregon Trail and Ex Libris, both of which I got for Christmas this year. Both have also been played 3-4 times since Christmas. Fingers crossed we’ll play Oregon Trail today because it goes with our current chapter of Texas history.

Week 3, everyone’s finally not sick

january 2018 homeschooling week 3

With everyone better they all did their country reports, they had some truly hilarious ideas. It took a couple of tries for the boys to get their reports just right, they didn’t have quite the right idea on how to present it.

We headed down to San Antonio and went all through the Alamo because you can’t take pictures inside the Alamo itself I didn’t get super a lot of pictures. We had a lot of great discussion as we drove home as we talked about sacrifice, why Santa Anna’s plans backfired so spectacularly and the amazing re-enactor we talked with for about 20 minutes as he told us all about what it was like to be a soldier in that time, and some surprising things you don’t expect to happen.

January homeschooling week 3 busy

Friday morning we headed over to Down Home Ranch and spent the morning potting plants for their fundraiser. It’s amazing how tiring just standing for four hours can be. Also, it ended up happening on one of the colder days of the month, and so I was outside watering the new plants in 40-degree weather. It was not pleasant. In the end, though our homeschool group ended up potting around 2000 plants for them to sell in a month or so.

Saturday Princess and I went to the Williamson Museum to make accessories for the 1920s ball (to which I was going and she wasn’t). It was a big hit and she had a blast making a headband, and then a necklace to go with it.

And in all that we played another couple of rounds of Oregon Trail and Ex Libris. Like I said, those games have been a big hit.

Week 4, why did I wait so long to make this dress?

january 2018 week 4 homeschooling

So, I’ve known this ball was coming for two years. I bought the pattern for my corset about a year ago. Despite all of this knowledge, most of this outfit was constructed in the last week.

Why?

Because somehow in my mind I had infinite time to get all the things done. Here are all the crazy things I decided to do this week:

  1. Modify an existing pattern into a 1920s vest for Jeff. I might have made about three practice versions on him, and was sewing his vest together right up until we left for the ball. I might have also cut the buttons off one of my shirts to get buttons I liked for his vest. I swear I had the right buttons somewhere, but just could not find them.
  2. Researched an in-depth lesson about the Mexican War. Which was a lot of fun to talk about, it would have been even better with the information I learned at our field trip yesterday, but it was a lot of fun to talk about.
  3. Finally did the Physics experiment I’ve been trying to do for the past few weeks.
  4. Designed my dress from scratch based off of the One Hour Dress idea. Sewed a toile out of an old sheet.
  5. Had a book and a movie night for Tom Sawyer, because I was tired of the kids continually putting it off.
  6. Sewed my dress from the fashion fabric and revising a few things. I might have stayed up a bit later than I really should have a few times last week.
  7. I think I even took the kids to park day. Why? I didn’t have time for that. I have this strange feeling there was a lot going on last Friday and I, for the life of me, can’t remember any of it. I just have this vague memory of last week being busy.
  8. Oh now I remember, I had appointments of some sort on every single day last week, and most of them kept me out of the house. Thankfully I kept this week free of busyness. It really was insane last week.

How did you survive January?

Were you like me and really don’t know how you survived? Or did your month go smoothly?
Slowly but surely I plan to add all of the months in here at the bottom, we’ll see how that goes….


Comments

3 responses to “January 2018 homeschool happenings”

  1. What a awesome month, less the illness. So far we have avoided the flu, but it seems like a daily battle to keep it at bay. I so want to see the Alamo someday.
    Blessings, Dawn

    1. The Alamo is a pretty awesome place to visit. The recent addition of the Living History corner is pretty cool to listen to.

  2. This dress looks awesome. Glad you survived the flu – we’ve all been mildly sick twice in January, but not bad enough to miss school and work.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *