Homeschool Journal | April 2017

In my life this month…

I am feeling energy and excitement for spring, enjoying the rainy days, and soaking in the sunshine when it graces us with its presence.

I got my genetic test results back and have answers to most if not all of my health concerns. I am on the path to healing and may attain it sooner rather than later, praise God! My healing word for the year was only mentioned in passing when I wrote my homeschool journal in January, but healing has consumed most of my thoughts and actions over the past three months, and I'm excited to actually be on the path to healing with the information that I now have.

I've resigned myself to accept some things won't change, and I feel peace and even joy at having released these things into Heavenly Father's hand.

In our homeschool this month…


we finished Student Writing Intensive A (affiliate link). Our last two lessons were on Taking Notes from your Brain, planning a composition, thinking of details, asking questions, and writing. In deciding what one thing I thought was most interesting to someone else, I chose the topic of homeschooling. I wrote a paragraph using the my Brain Inventory and Composition Checklist and titled it Delightful Learning, but if you choose to read it, let me first confess that my goal was to teach by example and have fun with it, so I got utterly carried away with alliteration! I struggled a bit with the use of the adverbial clause, too. I ended up using an advanced clause we haven't learned yet, so I'm not sure if I did it right. Malachi's topic was "competitive soccer requires refs," and Elli's topic was "cats make cute companions." (More alliteration, LOL!) I've so enjoyed SWI-A, and I'm so thankful that I took a chance with IEW! Next year, we will do a themed writing unit (aff) to review what we've learned in SWI A.

Eliana finished All About Reading 4 (my review) and All About Spelling 4 (aff link)! Yay! She started Readers in Residence for a Crew review. She's completed two modules so far and likes it! I'm excited about this because she is able to work on it independently. I went ahead and added it to her schedule for next year, and she will be 9 weeks ahead when school starts. (I'll have her finish the first four modules of Unit 1 so she does not leave off in the middle of Sarah, Plain and Tall.)

Malachi started SpeedyPrep for review. He is working through US History 1 and has completed Civil War and Reconstruction and is now working on Conflict and Causes of the Civil War. After this, he plans to start at the beginning with The Colonial Period. This is a college prep course, but the Classical child in him loves memorizing facts, names, dates, and locations so he is loving it! I am doing a course, too, on Natural Science.

Bo and I are rowing The Tale of Peter Rabbit and having so much fun with it. I can't wait to share this first week of our row with you next week. (We rowed this over two weeks, so I divided our row into two posts.) If I am still feeling energetic, I'll row Mrs. Katz and Tush with him next week.

We're also watching The Gospels DVDs from Drive Thru History - a cool video series on the life and ministry of Jesus, and we started removing the leaven from our home for Passover week.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…

to the the WYO Theatre to see A Year With Frog and Toad with friends then out to eat for dinner.

to the YMCA fields for soccer.

one-on-one dates with my littles. Eliana and I walked to Java moon. She had a peanut butter cookie and hot chocolate, while I had herbal tea (chamomile) and a caramel roll (a big 'ole cheat for me). Bo and I went and got carrot cookies from Red Velvet Bakery for a Peter Rabbit tea party at home. I still need to have my date with Malachi.

one-on-one dates with my husband. We have not really budgeted for dates yet, but we are setting a limit and trying to have creative dates such as an herbal tea and pastry, or just a chips and salsa date. One day we had "his" and "hers" burgers from the burger wagon.

My favorite thing this week month…

feeling more energy, and

rain followed by sunshine. 

What’s working for us…

sliding into the end of our year with a nice, easy, and enjoyable workload. We can get our school done in an hour - longer if we linger or take our time. After a spring break, we'll be starting our Prairie Primer unit - Farmer Boy, so that will fill up our days a little more and then our school year will be over, and we will take a summer break.

going to bed on time and sleeping better.

Homeschool questions/thoughts I have…

Would I be a better homeschooler if I didn't blog? Or am I a better homeschooler because I blog? 

I have immensely enjoyed blogging over the last 8 years, and I love the accountability and creativity it gives me to have to journal our days here on the blog. So I lean towards the latter, but I feel confident that I would still document what we do if I didn't blog because I have been documenting our life for 20 years. Still... I wonder.

A few links to share...

Some of my favorite links that I shared on Twitter this past month:
A quote to share...

"Pain gives us wings to fly more gratefully and happily through the good times."

- Erica Layne at Get Through the Hard Parts of Motherhood With *This* in Mind 

A photo to share...


On my blog in case you missed it…
Thank you, Crystal, for being willing to let me feature you! Having two guest posts this month gave me a little blogging break, a chance to work on a few things around the house, and time to work on a few reviews! 

Reviews:
*We are still using Eclectic Foundations, but we are only doing the poetry lessons and a few other lessons here and there like a grammar lesson where Bo studied a picture and answered questions in a complete sentence -  picture study + a grammar lesson! 

What's going on in your homeschool this month?

1 comment

  1. I like your homeschool question/thought. I have often wondered that myself. It would be a good experiment to see what would happen of we both stopped, but then I would miss you posts!

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