I am trying to post a little wrap-up of each week of grades seven, four and five year old kindergarten year throughout the 36 weeks I have planned for school this year.  I hope this will encourage mothers that are homeschooling multiple children (or who want to but are worried!), and  encourage mothers that even homeschooling children of multiple ages who are far apart in age is doable.  You can check out weeks four and five here.

Kindergarten:  The momentum is back!  Week four included our usual activities and then we had a week at the beach of flying kites, digging in the sand and diving into waves.  This week began with a day at the apple orchard and back to a friend’s house to celebrate Michaelmas.  This week we have done fingerplays about apples, an apple orchard circle, Suzanne Down’s story “Little Boy Knight” with puppetry, along with making applesauce and apple crisp from our apples that we picked (and getting to use one of those wonderful apple peeler/slicer gadgets with the handle to crank!), making apple prints, cutting apples to see the star inside, and lots of verses and singing for Michaelmas.  It has been a fun week with apples and gestures for fall!

Fourth Grade:  We finished our first math block, which was a review block that went over many topics  but mainly focused on deepening measurement and conversion of measurement units in a way that worked into our Man and Animal block.  Our fifth week saw the beginning of our Man and Animal block with a presentation of the human being in its threefold organization of the head, trunk and limbs.  We worked in crayon with a painting resist for a more cosmic picture of the human being, and also in clay to model the  different sections of a more cosmic being with its round and silent head that takes everything in through the senses, the body that is akin to a half moon (if the head reminds one of the moon) with its hidden part being the soul of man where the seat of emotions, passions, desires, lies (and as Christians we talked about the spirit within us and the nous) and the limbs that ray out into the world.  Our feet and legs are busy serving our bodies as we stand on them and use them to support our weight whilst our hands can do so many things to serve others in the world.  We had another horse show and then a week at the beach, so this week is week six of school.  We branched out of the threefold human being into animals who behave as if they are solely the head  of the human being.  The animals we covered this week included the cuttlefish, the squid, the clam, and on Monday we will wrap up with the snail.  We have painted, drawn with pencil, used clay for modeling.  We have two weeks left in this block to explore trunk animals and the limbs of different animals and the only true limb animal, ourselves.

Our daily practice work still involves the writing of numbers from dictation, measurement topics, times tables, and subtraction bingo.  Next week we will pick up borrowing and carrying again along with the topics from this week.  We also have been working on spelling, cursive writing, reviewing the parts of speech and animal poetry.

We finished our read aloud of “Rascal” by Sterling North and have now moved into the Waldorf book “The Invisible Boat” by Eric Mueller.  As a family we are also finishing Thornton Burgess’ “The Burgess Seashore Book for Children” from when we were at the beach.  Cross stitching and choir are still continuing, along with singing at home.

Seventh Grade:    We finished our math block of combined geometry/algebra which went quite well and began an astronomy block in week five.    We started by  looking at the stars, the constellations and circumpolar constellations, along with Prince Henry the Navigator and latitude and longitude.   We have been learning poetry about stars, drawing the constellations and drew a  portrait of Prince Henry the Navigator in charcoal.   At the end of week five, we had another horse show to participate in and then  it was time to be at the  beach for a week.  We had planned  to look at stars on the beach and even brought a telescope so we could look with the naked eye and telescope, but it was so cloudy we didn’t really get to do that.   This week we have been finishing our look at stars and constellations and moving into the sun, moon and planets and will try to get some star gazing going this week and throughout the winter months with Chet Raymo’s book “365 Starry Nights” .   We will finish up next week with a look at different astronomers and their ideas and  some painting of the moon in bluescape, the different planets (terrestrial versus gaseous).  I also assigned the book “Call It Courage” by Armstrong Sperry as an independent project.  We will come back together to go over vocabulary and talk about the book next week as well.  After we complete our astronomy block we will be moving into American Colonial and American Revolutionary War History.

Our daily math practice has included geometry and using fractions, decimals and percentages in conversions, along with more practice with some of the formulas used in Making Math Meaningful in the algebra section.  Our creative writing has included a piece about describing life in the ocean.  Horseback riding and choir are still going on, and 4H has started as well with a nice group of 7th through 12th grade homeschooled children.

I would love to hear what is going on your homeschooling adventure this week.  Please leave a comment in the box.

Many blessings,
Carrie