June 2018 Homeschooling in Review

I’ve been joking for most of this year if I survived this June I can do anything. As of Saturday, I survived June, so I guess I can do anything now. This was a jam-packed month, though most of it has no photographs because it was jam-packed in that my kids were never home. That’s right, we’ve hit the stage in our homeschooling career where my kids travel on their own now. It’s weird.

June Week 1

This was our down week and I tried my best not to schedule much, but there were still a few things we worked on:

I gave the kids a project, investigating the pre-history of man. Basically the stuff before written language, and the parts covered in the first 11 or so chapters of Genesis. To do that we looked at what 5 worldviews had to say about early man: Buddhism, Christianity/Judaism, Hinduism, Humanism, Islam. I threw humanism in there as a catch-all for the non-religious groupings. Then they worked at some writing prompts and they looked at Flood myths around the world.

They started on that and finished it last week in a mad spate of working like crazy.

We had a giant storm early on that destroyed a whole bunch of trees and knocked down all manner of stuff, so while we were walking over to our neighborhood pool, we picked up a lot of debris knocked down.

We went to see a production of Much Ado About Nothing (my second favorite Shakespeare play), and it was amazing, as the Penefold Theater’s productions always are.

We worked on our home production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Basically, the kids and I read one scene a day and then act it out for Jeff. That means lots of quick costume changes, so our costumes consist of hats. It’s a lot of fun to do.

I’ve been working on drawing characters from Ancient history as part of creating notebooking pages for our history lessons next year. So far I’ve got Ancient Sumeria done, and I’ve started on the Mediterranean world with bits and pieces of Roman and Greek history done. I really started at it in a rather haphazard manner before realizing I should get done the first portions I plan for us to cover.

And we finished the week off with a Spanish meal from one of those monthly subscription boxes whose name is escaping me right now.

We also finished off our New Mexico unit study.

I totally forgot, we watched Sherlock Holmes after the kids finished reading some of his books, and the boys insisted on sitting on my chair, so I sat on them. They were quite amused. We also played a round of Torches and Pitchforks, a fun monster hunter game. It also did not end up being given away (same as Torres which we also played). We’re not going to end up giving anything away at this rate.

 

June Week 2

We dropped the kids off for Boot Camp with our church, and they spent the week down in Houston teaching kids clubs and doing service projects.

Jeff and I celebrated our anniversary down in Fredricksburg where I had a blast sharing odd bits and pieces of history that I found amusing.

I bought a new camera and promptly experimented with it and used it to create a “this is how you put dishes away” cheat sheet because I was tired of wondering what happened to dishes. You’d think after years of putting them away they’d know where they went, but no, they don’t.

I also took actual good pictures off all manner of projects I’ve been working on before this. Now to get the files all cleaned up and uploaded to the store…

June Week 3

We dropped the boys off at camp for the week and headed home with just one kid. So Princess and I spent the week doing all the things her brothers hate and working on AHG badges.

We started with swimming with friends from co-op, then we completed the puppetry badge with her friend and made marionette puppets. That was Monday.

Tuesday we watched movies, had the same friend over to spend the night (we were leaving early in the morning to go hiking for the day), and had a different family over for dinner. So, yes we ended up with a lot of people over for Tuesday.

Wednesday we had our half day hike, and then collapsed and watched more movies. In case you hadn’t noticed, we were watching all of the movies her brothers would hate. It was a lot of fun.

Thursday we had a special lunch, and then my Mom and Aunt came over and we watched Momma Mia to prepare for the sequel coming out (I was also reminded of why I hadn’t shown it to my kids earlier, thankfully a few of the things I’d forgotten about went way over her head). Thursday night we watched an amusing Peter Pan prequel from the BBC and the first part of Pride and Prejudice. I’d promised her if she read all of Pride and Prejudice we’d watch the BBC mini-series (I hooked her by accident while watching Lizzie Bennet Diaries on YouTube, someday I’m going to buy the DVDs).

Friday we finished up Pride and Prejudice and then went to pick up the boys. They again got all 11 verses memorized, and got awards for archery and riflery. Pretty good job on their part.

Movies watched (we may not have always paid complete attention): Prince and Me, High School Musical 3 (on Netflix), Prince and Me 4 (it’s as bad as it sounds, as is HSM3), Pan (a Peter Pan prequel, which despite watching on Prime I can’t find), Mamma Mia, and more that I’ll add as I  remember them.

June Week 4

The kids were frantically working on completing their pre-history unit, and I was doing a lot of “This is what I meant,” and “No, that’s is not acceptable work” in the mornings.”

The afternoons I dropped the kids off at the various teen host homes and then in the evenings went to watch the kids at their various places they served. Superman and Princess taught kids clubs and Batman was part of the service team. It was pretty hilarious listening to Batman explain each day what he did, basically, he did a lot of yard work for people. He was perfectly happy to do it.

I took the kids out for treats a couple of times during the week to help them keep their energy up, and to help me survive the rest of the week. As an example of how tired they were at the end of it, my kids actually slept in past 8:00 on their own!

Friday night we had an after-party at our church and we all ran different booths part of the time and the rest of it we had fun wandering around and eating the food.

Saturday we took Jeff for a belated Father’s Day (because on Father’s Day we were taking the boys up to camp) to see Jurassic World 2, and at the end of all that I collapsed.

 

Prior 2018 Homeschool happenings