Now What?

So, we're done with International Day. 

We missed it.

The original plan was to have fun with this break from our regular studies and then return, refreshed, to the grindstone.

But every part of me is rebelling against that! 

I don't want to go back to what we were doing!

It was good.  Our days flew by busy and productive.  But the very idea of it is horrifying right now.

I want to do another project that brings us all to life the way Antarctica and How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World did.

Christmas could do it!

What about a Christmas unit study?

As I sat at the table after my personal scripture study I came up with this list:

Scripture to memorize:  Luke 2
(And it would work for copywork, spelling, and dictation, too!)

Poem to memorize:  'Twas the Night Before Christmas

History:  Roman Empire, Jewish history/culture/religion

Literature: Max Lucado storybooks, Who Am I? by Katherine Paterson, The Not So Wise Man by Alan MacDonald, Elijah's Angel by Michael J Rosen,

Science:  biology--human gestation and birth, animal husbandry, astronomy (The Amazing Beginning of You by Mark and Lisa Jacobson, God Made You Nose to Toes by Leslie Parrott)

Service:  an act of kindness each day

PE:  we could finally use that 1 week free at the YMCA I've been promising to redeem for so long

Math:  Start back up with Life of Fred again

Electives:  The kids could pick up their individual studies again (E12--Latin, M10--ASL, S10--The Great Composers, J8--Horses)

I feel charged and alive as I imagine following these pursuits.

I feel burdened and tired as I imagined returning to our autumn schedule.

I'm going with charged and alive.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anne's Day in the Life: 17, 16, 12, 10, 9, 8, 8, 7, 5, & 5

Image
This is my crew last summer--the day we said goodbye to Pixie as she headed off to college. I actually have all 12 of my children home right now. Rose Red is nearly 20, graduated from our homeschool a year and a half ago, lives at home, and is working as a server at Applebee's as she tries to understand what it means to be an adult. Pixie is newly 18, graduated from our homeschool almost a year ago, is a dance major at BYUI, and is spending her off-track semester working full-time in the 1-year-old room at a daycare. These two still are part of our family days, and their schedules directly impact the rest of us, but I am no longer responsible for their day-to-day educational needs. The remaining 10 are still under my educational supervision.  Among these 10 children we are schooling while we cope with anxiety, depression, FASD, ADHD, DMDD, ODD, ASD, PTSD, and Intellectual Disability. Here is a February Wednesday in our lives. 5:04 am :  Sir Walter Scott's al
Read more

Review: Drive Thru History® – “The Gospels”

Image
We are total Drive Thru History® fans around here.  We discovered Dave Stotts and his awesome video series years ago, and we've watched them enthusiastically ever since.  The videos are informative, interesting, and funny, so we jumped quickly at the opportunity to review the newest series:   Drive Thru History® – “The Gospels." And it definitely makes the grade. Because this new series focuses on the gospels, we opted to make watching it the focus of our Family Home Evening on Sundays. The timing of our review period was such that we were enjoying the lessons in the weeks leading to Easter. How cool is that!?! The series has 18 episodes, beginning with background information about Judea before Christ's birth, exploring the annunciation, His birth, His childhood, all kinds of aspects of His ministry, through His trial, crucifixion, and resurrection, finally ending with a summary of the prophecies and power of His ministry and thought-provoking qu
Read more

The Second Week

Image
This week was a lot like last week. We didn't make any progress introducing new subjects, but we got better at what we are already doing. We got better at listening to music--3 times this week!  We don't much like Bach's St. Matthew Passion, but we are quite fond of the Brandenburg Concertos .  (This could be my influence, as I've always preferred a concerto to a cantata.) We got better at reviewing our bulletin boards. (Now I need to get new board information ready!) We finished How to Behave and Why on Monday, and we read this book several times during the week.  Along with our readings, we had discussions about the lessons taught and the values of the culture represented in the story.  I also began to pause in places and turn over the storytelling to the kids. For zoology, we watched a great video about elephants .   And we started this book. We're only 30-ish pages into it, but we're really curious about where it's going. I assigned the kids to researc
Read more