Highlights from our School Days

We've been homeschooling for just a few months now and it has been a challenge to us all. We've overcome some hurdles, set expectations, gotten familiar with our curriculum, and are working on improving our daily schedule.

Overall, it is great. It is a challenge finding time to prepare my lessons, teach school, and get all the housework and other errands done each day. I realize that teaching my children is my primary job now and some things might have to slide a little until I can juggle my time a little better. Although I'm teaching both children at home, it is hard to really teach difficult concepts to Nicholas when Rachel is distracting every few minutes so I save most of those things for her nap time. I need to work on arranging more activities for her while Nicholas and I are focused on school.

Here are some highlights from our last few months.

I created a file folder game to help Nicholas learn the constellations. He loves playing games so we play this a lot.

Math is going well. He is really a wiz, especially when we get to pull out the LEGO bricks to use for manipulatives!

We did a craft project on Joseph's Coat of Many Colors. Nicholas used crayons to completely cover a piece of paper with all different colors.

Then he colored over the whole thing with a black crayon.

We then used the end of a paper clip to scratch out Joseph's coat.

I know I've done this kind of craft before when I was little but I think I used black paint of some kind and it had a much more dramatic result. We might have to try this one again because Nicholas just loved the concept.

We talked about how a magnifying glass concentrates light and used chocolate to demonstrate it.

One piece of chocolate had magnified rays while the other two did not.

Look how bright the light is.

In the spot where the rays were concentrated, the chocolate was melted but the rest of the chocolate was not.

But they all tasted equally good!

We're having fun and creating a love for learning while we're at it!