School 2011-2012

We have embarked on a new venture this year—homeschooling. Ainsley is in 2nd grade and Asher is in Kindergarten. We have done eight weeks of school so far. We started in the summer because it was so hot that there wasn’t much to do outside anyway. It also gave us some flexibility to take some trips to see family later in the year.

For curriculum we are using My Father’s World.  For math, we are using RightStart. I am enjoying it so far—and I think the kids are, too. The academic part of it is really fun—the kids are learning a lot. We are also learning how best to work with each other, which some days is a challenge, but is good for us.

I took a few pictures to show us working.

Most of the time I am not very creative or “artsy”, so I am sure to get a picture of those times when we do anything like that. Here are a few of the special projects we have done.

The kids are making world cakes here. I colored the frosting and let them create it how they wanted. The letters on Ainsley’s say N.A. and S.A., for North and South America.

We accidentally had her hold it upside down for the photo.

After we studied Mexico, we did a Mexican fiesta. It was fun, even if we were using frozen burritos!

Ainsley made these paper flowers. The other decorations were from Dollar Tree.

The hit (ha-ha!) of the fiesta were the “piñatas” that Jon made. The kids whacked them with pool noodle light sabers from Ainsley’s 6th birthday party.

Most days it is just regular subjects—math, language arts, handwriting, spelling, geography, science, Bible, reading, learning about different countries. I do have an art curriculum, too. I have only done two lessons from it, but I like it. We do a picture study of a famous painting, and then use specific materials to create our own artwork. Today we used watercolor crayons.