Saturday, August 19, 2017

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!

Friday, January 13, 2017

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."