Fall Semester Recap

I love updating our school wins (and some losses) at the end of a semester. We had a lot of great experiences in each of the groups we belong to as part of our school culture. I'll share some highlights in each of the main topics of our education - Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Man, and Knowledge of the Universe.

Knowledge of God

We have been reading through the book of Acts and following our Morning Time Menu with scripture reading, memorization and catechism. I have felt the calling of the Lord with the word "JOY" to be present in our homeschool this year. When we get in the car and drive to choir every morning I blast the song by For King and Country and feel that it is my "pump up" music for the beginning of the week! I feel like the catechism work that we have done is a "win" because it has prompted theology discussions at various times in our daily life with Christian and Eva Mae. I feel like my losses in this area are due to not being as faithful to a daily devotion scripture reading. In the New Year I am going to work with Christian and Eva Mae on how we should approach our duty of Christian service and life from a loving heart and desire for a closer walk with the Lord.... and not something that is being forced by mom and dad. I would love your encouragement and suggestions!

Another win for me is the involvement we have had in our church. Nick and I became official members and are thankful for the programming it provides our family. We've had great conversations after church and I'm really thankful for the leaders that have been placed in their classes!

Knowledge of Man

I'll start with history since it is one of my favorite subjects! We have many opportunities to make history come alive this semester. With our ancient history stream being Greek history and mythology we had opportunities to tour the Parthenon and it made so many connections to our reading of The Iliad, Odyssey, and Plutarch's life of Pericles. 

We spent time learning about the Native American tribe of Ojibwa and their customs and traditions throughout the month we studied Birchbark House, and also refreshed some of our Tennessee History knowledge with a trip to the Governor's Mansion and the State Capitol.

In music, we have enjoyed our weekly studies of Harmony Homeschool Choir and Overture Music Academy. The win for me is that Christian has been practicing his baritone on a consistent basis! Where I see weaknesses is my inconsistency of giving them piano lessons. I'm not sure if I should force it with my kids when they don't have an interest in traditionally learning piano repertoire. This is another area that I want to sit down with both of my children to find out what they would like to do.

I love having our term party about our composer study - we wrapped up Term 1 with Chopin at the end of October. We've been listening to Schumann's music and will be adding some more fun field trips in the spring - including the Nashville Symphony Young People's Concerts again! Yay!

I added a new geography element to our studies this semester with the Universal Yum box! In addition to our readings in Halliburton's Book of the Occident and Trick Geography we study the country from our snack box each month! I found that the kids love snacking more than learning so I try to keep it engaging with information and videos from YouTube! We also love our Madeline Brandeis series and studied Switzerland this past semester. It went well with the readings we did from the Book of Marvels! Next semester we will study Africa and I look forward to the books and mapwork we will complete!

Other subjects in Knowledge of Man are poetry, language arts, artist study, handicrafts, literature, and foreign language. Our book parties have been a huge part of our literature study this semester. You can read about all of them on our Kid Book Party page here! I really enjoyed discussing literary elements with the kids while reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. "Breaking the 4th Wall" has been an element that we have been noticing a lot in our readings and movies! Reading the Odyssey and Iliad was also fascinating to dive deeper into the literary styling of Homer - especially with the use of simile!

We haven't spent a lot of time on handicrafts - other than preparing for our fall handicraft fair. The kids had a blast!

Our artist study hasn't happened as often as I would like either - we do a great lesson with Shannon in our Feast of Riches co-op and I love looking through the art work each term. I have the art printed out and want to read this story on Raphael.

Our win this semester in foreign language is Latin - we've loved using Minimus Mouse! However, I have failed in getting the kids to continue with Chinese since we don't have accountability. This is another subject to address for the next semester.

Written narrations have been consistent and they have done a great job! I started the semester with a book about writing essays but we haven't been as consistent in the process of completing the handouts I printed off. I might need to do a focused class on this with a few friends to see how we can do.

Shakespeare is another that hasn't made a consistent occurrence. Instead of a play a term we might be doing a play a year! :) We are about halfway through our script but I look forward to adding some fun videos for the kids to watch like As You Like It and review some of the other Shakespeare plays we've learned through the years!

Poetry has been very sporadic and only visited when it is our time for our poetry recitation time at co-op! We have such a sweet time and I do love poetry - I think I am going to put some audio recordings of our Morning Time Menus on the CD in the car so we can practice reciting some poetry through each school week! Rudyard Kipling has been our poet for the term and we enjoyed the poems in The Jungle Book, recited If at our co-op and will be reading Kim this month for our book club. Shakespeare will be our next poet and I'll have the kids review some biography books we have about Shakespeare's life!

Knowledge of the Universe

Science has been so much fun this semester! We've met 4 times with our PLUS co-op (Plutarch, Latin, and Ultra fun Science!) We read and write narrations about the science of weather and the life of Marie Curie. The book Marie Curie for kids has experiments in the book and then we also have put some hands on weather experiments together for our co-op meetings!

Nature Adventure has had several amazing topics this semester. You can see all the topics we've studied through the years here! I think my favorite was learning more about stars. We went for a full moon hike with friends,

Visited the Dyer Observatory,

and spent our fall break visiting the Huntsville Space and Rocket Center along with a few other favorite science centers!

Our Herb Fairy class continues to get the kids into their nature journaling by learning more about the uses of medicinal herbs. We're going to have a really fun party at the end of the year with a bunch of yummy baked goods to celebrate the completion of the series! I think my favorite class so far of this year has been the marshmallow class. I loved growing marshmallow from seed to harvest! I'm still not the best at making homemade marshmallow from the root powder, but it still is a fun experiment!

Math has been hit or miss and I am bummed that I haven't been doing the geometry book I bought in the summer. That is going to be my Tuesday thing with the kids this semester. We are going to get hands on with our geometry lessons! Christian's doing great working through Saxon math and is able to do so much of it independently! I'm still working with Eva Mae where she is. She really likes making math like a traditional school room (I'm the teacher and grade her papers!) and has the best attitude about it when we sit down for a lesson! (Here's LB over on a day we babysit and Eva Mae has her math worksheets out!)

A few other fun things that have been a highlight to me this semester are our mom hikes each month, the Friendsgiving we had in November with our W+F group, and the folk dance event on the farm! I am so thankful for community and all the wonderful learning experiences we can be a part of! I'm looking forward to next semester!