Science!

It's all about anatomy this year, so here are a couple of pictures of the monkeys science-ing their little hearts out.

First off is a groovy little skeleton sticker set from Oriental Trading Company. Really easy and fun for all three to do.

Then we broke out the microscope. I purchased some prepared slides earlier this summer, so today we looked at red blood cells, stomach tissue, and lung tissue.

Hoorah for science, whoo! 

And now for random photos of the kids and extra stuff. 

Duct tape wallets for the girls! Not super chic - they were definitely slapped together - but I still think they're cute, and the girls love them.

Reagan being Reagan. Wearing David's swimming goggles and nibbling on a Pirouette.

Sometimes they aren't monsters. Sometimes they're adorable.

How I keep track of our schedule

I've had a really hard time finding a good lesson planner. There are some great ones for a single child, and there are a lot of really wonderful planners for multiple children but many of them dedicate a full page to each child, which seems nice until I find that I am flipping back and forth from page to page during the day. Not a big deal, but a little annoying. So I finally ended up just buying a plain old Weekly/Monthly At-A-Glance planner from the PX. Here's what my week looks like.

First of all, notice that it's purple. Because purple is the greatest of all colors. Next, you'll see that it's fairly colorful. I write the assignments in pencil in case they might change later, and then outline in their colors. Each child has their own color - Aiden is green, Lillie is pink, and Reagan is purple. Now, Lillie and Reagan are both using the same Language Arts and science stuff, so those are both in orange. The kids all do history together, so that is red. Music is yellow, and art is blue. And I have a scripture at the top of every day to start things off right. 

Now, seeing all this you might thing I'm very organized. That is so not the case. But over the past year and a half or so, I've found that if I don't have a very specific outline for our day we won't get anything done. Also, it's weirdly satisfying to put a red check mark next to each subject as we complete it. 

How do you organize your lessons? Do you use a planner? Do you have a basic weekly overview? Are you one of those awesome people who can just look at your books and have a general idea of what needs to be taught, and go for it? Share your ideas! I can always use more!

Art Work and Family Tantrums

I finally have a few photos to show! I don't usually remember to take pictures when we are doing something fun, and to be honest we don't do a whole lot of fun stuff, but here's what I wanted to show off.

From our art class, after learning about Vincent Van Gogh, we were all trying to draw spirals that showed motion.

"Milky Way" by Lillian

"Spanish Dress" by Reagan. When she first started, she wasn't very happy with it. When I reminded her that you can't really do anything wrong in art (at this level anyway) she announced that her drawing looked like she was looking down at the top of a dress from the point of view of someone on the ceiling. As it went further, she added streamers and pompoms to it, and decided it looks Spanish. Awesome creativity!

We have a small homeschool group here in Daegu, and they've recently started a Korean language class. This is one of the greatest things ever, as far as my family is concerned. I know a teeny, tiny bit of Korean, but definitely not enough to have a conversation. I can read hangul (the Korean written language) though, so at least I can navigate around via signs in town and stuff.

So here is a shot of the kids and one of their friends with their Korean teacher, Miss Yun.

We've had two classes and Aiden is already reading signs around town. It's amazing. They can introduce themselves, and tell you what their favorite animal is as well. :D

This next picture has nothing to do with school, but it made me laugh so I wanted to share it. I told Lillie she had some clothes to fold (she's 7 years old and certainly old enough to help fold her own clothes) but being Lillie she can't have a normal reaction like, *sigh* "Fine, whatever Mom. I'll do it in a minute." No. Lillie shuffled down the hallway for a few steps, and then slid down till she was literally lying on her face. Not crying, just flopped on the ground in resistance. Reagan saw her and joined in. Then I started laughing at the absurdity, so Aiden and David joined in. Family laundry tantrum.

And finally, just because I have to share Korean awesomeness, here is a little vocabulary notebook I found on a shopping outing with some friends the other day. Now I have a place to jot down new Korean words as I learn them, and on the front it has the most encouraging elephant ever!

I know the flash kind of ruined this one, but you can still sort of read it: "You are rough and tough and can do everything". Everything! Thanks for believing in me, tiny Korean elephant.

Maybe I'll actually post here...

I really just wanted to give some quick info about some of the resources that have been crazy helpful to us. Some of these are really widely used in the homeschooling universe, but of course they can help any kid after school (or even those of us parents who need to brush up on our learning...)

We decided to use Math U See this year, and I really, really love it. Lillie has always enjoyed math, but Reagan wasn't quite getting it. Using the blocks seems to make the concepts really concrete for her. Aiden was still struggling in this subject, even after working on math a TON last year. He just could not get his multiplication facts down. So I decided to try Times Tales. He watched it, and had it down by the end of the week. Literally. I'm not exaggerating even a little. So now that he's really solid in that area I felt better about moving him along in Math U See as well, and he actually told me how happy he is doing math now. He said he thought it would be really boring, but he's totally happy to do more than he is assigned because it's coming more easily to him.

We're using Learning Language Arts Through Literature as our English program, and I absolutely love it. Every lesson is totally spelled out for you as the parent/teacher. This year Aiden is using the 5th grade book, and the girls are both using the 2nd grade.

We're also using a really cool world history program that I found for free (YAY FREE!) online called Myths, Maps, and Marvels. So far the kids have learned about Mesopotamia, they can point out where it was on a modern map, even Lillie and Reagan can tell you the two rivers it was between, they all love the word "ziggurat", and next week we'll start reading a kids' book about Gilgamesh.

Aiden is studying anatomy using Sassafras Science. Instead of a textbook, he reads a novel about a couple of kids traveling around the world as they learn about the body. It also has a logbook where he keeps track of all the information he learns and a guidebook for me with ideas for experiments. I found a microscope online that wasn't too terribly expensive so we can look at lung and brain cells and all sorts of cool stuff. :D

For music this year we decided to go with Latter-Day Learning, which is an LDS homeschooling program. There is actually an entire curriculum (except for math) but it didn't seem to fit our family learning style very well. I really loved the music section, though, so I kept that part. We're learning about the different musical eras (Medieval, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Impressionistic, and Contemporary) and studying composers from each era. Last lesson was about Hildegard von Bingen, and next one is on Scarlatti.

Our art program is Meet the Masters, and it's fantastic. It's another one that's really well planned out for the parent/teacher, and it has great activities to go along with each artist. Last week we did Van Gogh, and this week it's Mary Cassatt. The kids LOVE having their own art hanging in our hallway.

Okay, so evidently by "some of the resources", I guess I meant "our entire curriculum". Sorry about that. But now you know what the heck those weird Talbot kids are doing with their time! I'll try to keep this blog updated this year, since obviously I failed pretty miserably at that last year. Also, let me know if you have any educational resources that you and your kids love!