Another month of learning!  Below you will find highlights from our February homeschool fun!

You can see our detailed curriculum posts by clicking on the graphics below.

   

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All Together School

We have a wide grade and age range between our three kids, but I am thrilled to say that we have found quite a few subjects to learn all together! 

We do the following subjects all together, and I will share mini updates below!

 

Mystery of History

Our Mystery of History time together continues to be a favorite of mine.  We do lessons 3 days a week, and then work on our timeline and review on the 4th day.

At the end of February we had completed through week 17, lesson 51.  I just love this time of learning with my kids!

 

U.S. History ~ William Penn

We use YWAM’s Heroes of History as our U.S. History foundation. It is novel based and a perfect fit for us.  We finished John Smith and are almost done with William Penn now.  We all have loved this book, lots to learn about this amazing man of such integrity!

We read together 3 times per week at least, and the kids all get to play with something quietly while we read.

 

Sometimes I find some interesting shots on my phone when we are done.  My kids will sometimes play with my hair while reading.  Apparently this day my oldest had a little too much fun.

 

 

World Geography

We finished the book Passport to the World!  I also shared our geography country cards printables here!

We have moved on to using Children’s Atlas of God’s World!

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7th Grade

 

PacMan is almost entirely independent this year.  I teach him writing and Who is God? and the rest he does independently.

Daddy continues to be in charge of overseeing Pac’s science {Apologia General Science}! I caught them one day learning together. They were both obviously so very thrilled with me.

 

He is doing really well with Teaching Textbooks Pre Algebra. Daddy oversees this too and helps when needed.

We are really enjoying reading The Hiding Place together, I don’t normally read aloud to him but I love this book so we are reading together this time!

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3rd Grade

 

All About Spelling continues to work really well for him.  We are well into level 3, and he is really absorbing the rules. Below you can see him working on a page from the Homophones workbook.  We pull these out whenever they show up in the lessons.

 

 

He is reading a book he is really enjoying now, The Wright Brothers.  I just love when he gets into a good book.  It is hard to find ones that really lure him in, and thankfully this one did!

 

We continue with Write Shop D for writing and it is going well.  Still not my favorite thing to teach but we are moving along. The hands on lessons are our favorites, but he still struggles when it comes time to write.  Not his favorite thing.  Although if you give him a blank notebook and no rules, he will write his own chapter book!

 

We are almost through First Language Lessons {starting with book 1 and moving quickly} to work on oral comprehension and solid grammar skills.  In addition to this he is using Growing with Grammar 2 which I am loving. I like to do both with him since one is auditory and one is a written workbook style. Below he is working on Growing with Grammar.

 

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Kindergarten

 

I do specific posts for much of Ladybug’s Kindergarten.  Here’s direct links to the posts showing her in action during January {click on the graphic to see the posts}.

 

     

 

She also has other Kindergarten fun that we don’t blog specifically about, and I will include in the wrap up posts here!

Recently I bought the Daily Literacy pack from one of my favorite TPT sellers, Lavinia Pop.  I just love her work and whenever I want something in my head but don’t want to create it myself, I check her store.  I had been wanting to create daily literacy work for years and finally figured it was too late for me to make my own and I just loved hers, so I bought it! Ladybug does one page a day {most days} and it reviews handwriting, letter ID, sight words, CVC words, and beginning sounds.

 

 

I’ve gotten some questions recently, since my Instagram has been showing Ladybug using All About Reading Level 1. I did not give up Logic of English Foundations A to switch to AAR, we are using both.  It’s complicated, I know.  But you see, I was given AAR to review back when Krash was younger, and we loved it.  Then this past fall I was given LOE to review and decided to use it with Ladybug, and we loved it.  So I used LOE up until I felt she had a solid phonics base {all letter sounds, how to blend CVC words, identify beginning/middle/end sound} and then we put LOE away and started AAR 1.  We still have ten more LOE lessons left and we will do these during AAR 1.  The last ten lessons of LOE pull in consonant blends, and when AAR gets to that point we will tie the two together.

With Krash I began AAR 1 a little too early and he struggled in the beginning and we had to slow down a lot.  With Ladybug it was perfect timing and she is soaring! The foundation she got from LOE was awesome.  So, I know the big question is, “"which one do I like better?”  The answer is both!  If money wasn’t a struggle for someone,  I would recommend using AAR Pre, then LOE Foundations A, then AAR 1. They are both amazing programs, based on similar thinking in regards to teaching literacy. You really can’t go wrong with either one of these programs.

So, for now we are using AAR every day, she begs for lessons.  At the end of February we had completed through lesson 10.

 

 

Anyone who has used AAR knows the fluency pages are a struggle for some kids.  I had this struggle with Krash and after the first day of struggle with her, I decided to make it the best time of the reading lesson and pull out the fruit snacks.  I am not a big fan of rewards of food during school and rarely do this, but in some cases I do and this is one of them.  She gets a snack anyway when we are done, so we just use the snack to make it more fun! She collects her snack one section at a time. Here’s more ideas for making the AAR fluency pages more fun!

 

I love, LOVE the All About Reading readers.  They are beautifully illustrated, simple and fun.

 

I still use Lessontrek for all of our weekly lesson plans.  It’s so simple and I love it.  For Ladybug, I have general subject areas and then add in what we actually did each day in pencil on the sheet.  I have a very loose plan for Kindergarten and this method works well for us. {use code OPO3 for 3 months free to try Lessontrek yourself!}.

 

Lately she has been reading on my bed a lot.  I give her a stack of books and often she will be there for an hour or longer! Lately she has loved getting a stack of AlphaTales books, Brand New Readers, Bob Books, and Scholastic Folk & Fairy Tales.

 

 

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You can also see much of our everyday homeschool life on Instagram!

 

Old Wrap Up posts from this year are below!

   

Linking to ~ Weekly Wrap-Up