May 2017 Homeschool Happenings

I have come up with a genius idea this month.  Rather than waiting until the end of the month, and then sitting there trying to remember what the pictures mean, I’m going to actually write week by week for our homeschooling adventures.  Yeah, that lasted all of a week, so that didn’t really happen.

(I’ve got affiliate links in here marked with an *)

Week 1

I wanted to get a head start on our Texas history lessons for next year, and get some of the more boring materials out of the way, so they read the first chapter of the new textbook: What is History?  We also had a bit of fun writing our own Kid Declaration of Independence.

I know, exciting sounding, but we also finished off our Math curriculum.  That the kids are super excited about.  Now, we switch to summer mode for just doing a little bit of math.  That probably means using Life of Fred again this summer.  I’ll probably talk that over this coming week.

 

She doesn’t think much of #womensfashion or #shoeshopping

A post shared by Ticia (@ticiam) on May 1, 2017 at 4:49pm PDT

I attempted to get Princess new sandals, only to discover NO STORES HAVE SANDALS YET!  I’ve been waiting for over a month to buy her sandals, apparently because up North they still don’t wear sandals, that means down here in Texas I can’t buy them.

For games this week we played: Lemming Mafia and 10 Days in Europe.  I can’t remember why we didn’t play games this Friday, something was happening.  Oh and completely unrelated to the games, but I didn’t want to make this a separate section, I laminated 37 feet of math review from the 200 Timed Tests.  We use them as part of our morning time.

Oh, and we started practicing Midsummer Night’s Dream to show it off to Jeff, but I’ve got no pictures of this, because I’m one of the actors.

Week 2

Princess and I went to a funeral for one of her friend’s fathers.  It was very sobering because he died in a car accident.

We worked some on our geography and learned about Washington D.C. and Batman had quite a bit of fun showing off how he really doesn’t fit on my lap.  Seriously the boy weighs almost as much as I did when I got married.  He’s quite proud of that. I on the otherhand felt quite squished.

Oh, and we made Danish meatballs and sauce to finish up our quick bit of learning about Denmark.

 

Week 3

For Mother’s Day the kiddos put together a treasure hunt for all of their fabulous homemade projects, and I LOVED all of my presents.

We went to our homeschool co-op and the boys after a very short time headed off to whack each other with swords, which greatly amused me.

Then Princess had her awards ceremony for American Heritage Girls, and she got the Presidential service award for over 75 hours of service this past year.  To be honest I didn’t keep track of it super well, so she might have more hours.  I am not the best at paperwork.

The kids made salt dough maps to demonstrate their knowledge of geography terms, which was quite hilarious to see what they came up with.  I need to work with them on their presentation skills of materials.

In a bit of fun, I saw this sign while taking the dog for a walk, and then this is the street the car repair place we went to was off of.  Jeff and I kept laughing at the idea of Nameless Street. It felt like a “Who’s on first?” moment.

 

Look at this #happymail I got from @lowcountry.eclectic to announce the graduation of her two oldest. I am so lucky and blessed to have such an amazing friend and I truly miss them all. Check out these super cute earrings made by these new graduates @gumballjackpot #smallbusiness

A post shared by Ticia (@ticiam) on May 20, 2017 at 7:52pm PDT

Oh, and I’ve started getting graduation announcements for kids I’ve taught in Sunday School, which is SOOOO weird.  This particular one is from my friend Amanda’s daughters, I’m so proud to have had a small part in their growing up (before they moved we had an informal co-op together), and they are starting a small business while they have a gap year before heading to college.  It’s called Gumball Jackpot, and you should totally check it out. Princess was so jealous of the earings I got, she immediately asked if she could order a necklace from them, and while they don’t normally make necklaces they put together a special order for her, and she’s eagerly waiting for it.  Like, she won’t quite checking the mail to see if it’s there yet.

 

Week 4

Princess sewed a bat doll, she’s been pinning sewing patterns like crazy (between sending me pictures of cute dogs), and found this one and couldn’t wait to make it.  Then Batman made a shirt for himself that he’s pretending is chainmail.  All in all I’m quite proud of both of them.

We watched BFG* on Tuesday, and while there were parts of the movie that were quite funny, overall I’ve decided it’s not one of my favorite Roald Dahl books.  Oh well, they can’t all be hits. The kids are now reading Around the World in 80 Days* because there’s a local company doing a production of it in June.

Wednesday we went to Schlitterbahn, and since that’s a water park I have absolutely no pictures of that.  It’s also why I was incommunicado for the week because Tuesday was all “fix the car,” Wednesday was water park, and Thursday was recover from the horrible sun burn because the sunscreen was expired (well that and the kids did not do a good job of putting it on my back), and Friday was more of the “Ow ow ow my back hurts.”

This weekend has been spent cleaning like crazy because I was quite done with the disaster.  So we started our cleaning scramble and the kids worked SUPER hard.  To celebrate we had homemade frosted lemonade and watched Anna and the King* (I’d forgotten how much I loved that movie and what a fascinating bit of history it was).

 

What I think you should watch

I may have lost a few days this month obsessively watching Emma Approved. It’s a modern day adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Emma.  I also lost a couple of days watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries* and then reading the book* (the ebook has links to the corresponding episode in it, so cool) that goes with it.