Last Friday Night of the Month

It Begins ... Again.

School Year 2017/18 started off wonderfully last week. We had a lovely, leisurely morning. Listened to some mellow music, took the dog on a walk, had a laid-back breakfast, and around 9:30 decided we should probably start school. I was giddy, because all of my curricula had finally arrived!

The kids thought it would be fun to have our first day of school at the community center near our house, so we packed up their backpacks and walked over. Before they settled down to business, I got some cute "First Day of School" photos.

You can't tell the Talbot Tribe not to touch hot surfaces! We do what we want! They were really excited to start school, but they were equally excited to have "mug-shot" style photos.

Our first week went really well. The girls are using Teaching Textbooks and Learning Language Arts Through Literature. Aiden is using CTC Math and Word Roots. They are all doing grammar through Khan, piano lessons with Hoffman Academy, and we are still using Latter-day Learning for geography, history, literature, music, and art.

Our week ended by closing out a short geography unit. We talked about mathmatical geography, and made topographical maps of the state we currently live in - Arizona.

From left to right: Aiden, Lillie, Reagan

I'm not sure if the clay spread on the girls' maps or what, but the state of Arizona sort of looks weird on theirs. Also, apparently Reagan thinks there are large holes in the plateaus of the state (she knows there aren't, but finds the idea interesting). Lillie, shocking no one, sprinkled glitter over her desert. 

Over-all I think they did a great job on their first project of the school year, and I'm excited to see what is on the horizon. 

Holy Year Wrap-Up, Batman!

So the Husband-man came home from a deployment in January, then we went to Disneyland, then we went to Utah ... and the school year sort of trailed off. I'll throw a few pictures up here to remind me that we did actually do school from Jan- May 2017.

School at the library

Aiden's questionable math

School at the community center on post

                                         

Homeschool with friends

Directions to Dawge's house

Renaissance-style borders, with gummy worm pudding after studying 

Martin Luther and the Diet of Worms

Triptych practices

We actually did quite a bit, even though we were also traveling a lot and being distracted by other things. Whew!

For Narnia!

We read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for literature over the past month or so. The kids absolutely loved it, which completely warmed my heart since the Chronicles of Narnia are very dear to me. I read a couple of chapters aloud each night, and every time I closed the cover the kids were begging for just one more chapter.

At the end of the unit, we had a little celebrations. We made beaver tails to eat, played hide and seek, and watched the movie under our "pavillion."

Ctyology Cell-ebration

Today we wrapped up our study of cells by making edible cell models!

Please note that these models include cell membranes, nuclei, mitochondria, endoplasmic reticula, Golgi complexes, lysosomes, vacuoles, and ribosomes. And soooo much sugar.

#Homeschoolproblems

Today we were attempting to learn about the ocean. I had prepared a bunch of little fish with ocean facts, attached paper clips to them, and given the kids a "fishing pole" with a magnet so they could fish for facts. It was going swimmingly (heh heh heh) when the cat decided she wanted in on it.

For the rest of the lesson the kids had to try to avoid reeling in a kitten every time they hooked a fish. Abby was very happy to be surrounded by fish, and a fun new dangly thing to play with!

Captain's Log

Learning about Christopher Columbus, we read about how he kept two logs: One in which he recorded the actual distance traveled, and one in which he recorded much shorter distances. The second one was for his men, so they basically wouldn't get freaked out by how far from their home they were.

We made our own logs today, and recorded (in lovely sketches) some of the experiences Columbus and his men went through on their way to the New World.

The page on the left shows the rudder breaking, and the right page records them leaving the Canary Islands after it was fixed. Aiden attempted to draw a canary, but it didn't turn out quite the way he envisioned it, so he renamed it Winged Potato Island.

Lillie drew an example of his two journals, "Log," and "(Fake) Log." On the right, she drew the night the men reported seeing a meteor.

At one point early in the voyage, some of the men saw a crab floating on some weeds, so they erroneously assumed they were near land. Shortly thereafter they experienced huge waves, even though there was no wind. 

Reagan has also been learning her multiplication tables. Lillie recently mastered hers using Times Tales, so I thought I'd try the same program out with Ray. We started on Tuesday, and this is the test she took on Friday. 

So yeah, I'd say it works. The program uses stories and characters to help the kids memorize the times tables. So her pre-test looks like this:

Obviously a treehouse times a chair equals 36. Because there were three kites and six balloons. Duh.