January 2019 Homeschooling Month in Review

It’s January 31 as I’m writing this, and I think I actually managed to mostly keep up with my notes. Now life, that not so much. I’m frantically trying to get ready for next month. I’ve got a big project planned for them to work on, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to get pushback on that. Overall though, it’s been an interesting month of homeschooling here.

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Week 1 of January

The first week of January was filled with lots of friends coming over. The local public school kids weren’t back into school, so we enjoyed the week with tea parties, sleepovers, and a quick spa trip for my Mom’s birthday.

I had fun looking through a friend’s new Mary Poppins book club. She, of course, finished it after we’d read the book, but I’m keeping my eyes out for any book clubs she might make that go with the books we’ve got planned. I learned how to make crumpets from the club, and there are a few more fun recipes I’m looking forward to trying out.

The boys got Chronology for Christmas, and we got a chance to play it this week. It was a lot of fun and reminded me quite a bit of our Cardline Geography game, it’s the same principle, just no fun artwork.

In December we read Time Machine, and while Princess and I both really hated the book, we watched the movie together, with much muttering from the both of us during certain parts of the movie. She’s much more enjoying our current book and a movie read: Little Women (and I did put the labels on the Subscriber page for my subscribers, check your email for the password).

Week 2 of January

The second week of January we finally settled back into homeschooling. We learned about Myanmar in geography (and yes, those should be uploaded for the subscribers, there’s not much to it). We finished up learning about church history, and I realized after the fact there was one momentous event I needed to talk about to explain what was about to happen with the Crusades…. Sigh, lessons learned.

I pulled out Labyrinth to play again after it sitting on our shelf for years because Jeff wasn’t a fan of it. The boys and I quite enjoyed it, and despite my goal of playing games on our shelf to see if we wanted to keep it, I don’t seem to be getting rid of any games.

The kids and I played Books of the Bible card game to review the divisions of the Bible, and I almost won, but Superman squeaked out a win in the end.

Then one night we played a quick round of Oregon Trail (my review of the Oregon Trail game), and on my very first turn, I died of dysentery. It was sad.

Princess bought a Mad Hatter hat for her upcoming Mad Hatter Tea Party at American Heritage Girls, and had a lot of fun goofing off and putting an even smaller top hat underneath that we’d decorated way back in July.

Week 3 of January 2019

Princess and I headed over to one of her friends from American Heritage Girls to make a hat for the Mad Hatter tea party, you can barely see it, but it’s super fun and over the top. The top two left-hand pictures are from that outing. The top right picture is a common sight right now of Princess cuddled up by the fire and reading. The pillow she’s resting on is a t-shirt made into a pillow she got from a friend for her birthday it says, “I’m not arguing, I’m explaining why I’m right.”

The middle two pictures are of Superman working on his engineering curriculum. Of all the different things I tried out this year, our 42 Electronics engineering curriculum has been the best plan (follow that link for my review, I like it even more now). He built a raspberry pi computer and got the whole thing set up. It’s pretty impressive, now he’s working on programming mods for Minecraft.

The kids had their first ever experience with standardized testing this week. I tried out the Affordable Homeschool Testing, and I quite enjoyed the experience, and I’m working through the results. I’ll be writing about it more later, but for right now I’ll be having the kids take this test again later.

 

Week 4 of January

We finished up January with the boys having to repair giant holes they’d worn in their jeans, they were not excited by this. We went on a very cool field trip to a startup working on creating drones that can deliver packages. It was fascinating to learn about.

The boys, Jeff, and I played a round of Dragon Whisperer. It’s an interesting game, kinda confusing, but I’m looking forward to trying it again. It’s a trick-taking game where trump is constantly changing, and while I didn’t do great at the game, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

We had the Winter Court of Awards, it was completely girl led, so the girl leadership team planned, it decorated the room (with emojis), and led the entire thing. I was super impressed with how they did. I’m glad Princess is going to be graduating out of Explorer at the end of the year because I’m pretty much out of room on her vest to add any more.

Oh, and she made herself a shirt saying, “The only thing in my closet is a niffler,” pretty much because it amused her.

Oh, and a random cute picture of my dog.

 

That’s it for January of 2019 homeschooling. I’m curious to see how February goes. The kids are coming kicking and screaming into being high schoolers next year.

How was your January? I’m still in a bit of shock it’s over with.