Homeschool Week 4

I'm really enjoying homeschool this year.  

Part of the reason is because I don't have 2 kids fighting All Blessed Day Long any more because one of them is in school.

I'm also liking having us all learn and do TOGETHER.

This is our second (and final) week of learning about the United States.  

Did you know, that you can use 4 crayons/markers/colored pencils to color a US map and not have two touching states be the same color?  

It may take a couple of tries, but it can be done!

Eli is hiding his self inflicted black eye (it's really a cheekbone bruise).

Third time is the charm (with a little help from sis).

We also made Calder mobiles.  

And Greek bookmarks (we're reading the book of Matthew in the Bible, and it was originally written in Greek).

 

And today, we did Navajo inspired sand paintings.  

Which is awesome, because I bought all this craft sand YEARS ago, and we never use it. 

Their first pictures were things a Native American might draw.

Bri was a master at mixing colors.

Her "turquoise" looked like a globe before stirring.

My sand painting (excuse the goofy "are you going to take the picture??" look) 

Then they decided to start making whatever they wanted.  

With Eli, that always includes explosions of some sort.

Furby made a flag

 

Brianna's painting has hot colors on the left and cold colors on the right.  

I think one of the biggest reasons I'm enjoying this year is because I'm learning along with the children.  Having taught the SAME curriculum for 14 years, I was pretty sick of the same stories, the same projects, the same lessons.  

In a snit once, I remarked, "This is not about what I know, this is about what YOU know!  I've done first grade 6 times!  I know this material!"  It occurred to me that I didn't sound all that bright, if I had to do first grade half a dozen times!  

However, MFW is keeping me on my toes.  I'm learning to lay out all the books we'll be using the night before.  I'm learning what I can delegate to Brianna (like choosing two art projects from several options).  We're getting into a rhythm with our spelling curriculum (story and pretest Monday, 2 pages Tuesday and Wednesday, journal on Thursday, tests on Friday).  

If I could just read ahead a *bit* farther in the lesson plan book, so that I could have things on hand when we get to them, that would be great.  Once we pick up some yellow cake mix, Bri can make our "America" food:  New England Pumpkin Cake.