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In 2012-13 we continued with suzuki violin.  Big Brother stayed positive all year but I felt burnt out by the end of the year.  With that and our move we’ve taken a month off of lessons and practicing lightly.  We are also taking the opportunity to brush up on note reading.  Our teacher is amazing and always keeps class fun even if it is hard work.  I do find that the assignment load can get quite heavy.  Daily we are to practice our newest song, special listening (listening to and memorizing the name of a classical violin piece), our study list (twinkles and a growing list as we advance that is presently at about 3 songs), poem memorization, by ear tune (where he practices a song he learned by ear that isn’t suzuki), listen to our Cd, and practice our note card memorization.  I find the playing is doable daily but we often struggle getting the other items in.  Luckily Big Brother is maturing and does pretty well practicing on his own but mom struggles to find the time to watch and make sure it goes well.  I’m hping this break will give me new energy to work hard for my generally enthusiastic player.

We took on various crafts and art projects this year.  Big Brother designed and wrote countless cards for friends and family.  I helped him make a waldorf doll for his brother.  We also did art projects in History group such as sugar cube Roman Arches.

We started last school year rotating Science and History every other week with our History group.  Our group found it was too disjointed and didn’t do either subject justice.  We were using Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding (BFSU).  It worked for some of our families and didn’t work for others.  Our family really enjoyed BFSU and made great progress on our own after we dropped science from our co-op.  I liked that I had BFSU as a jumping off board and Big Brother enjoyed the topics and experiments we did for each topic.  BFSU is a curriculum that integrates all the sciences and each topic builds on the one before.  There are 4 main categories and you can mix and match them as long as you have completed the prerequisite for each topic.  It is designed for k-2 but does have a follow on and it is recommended by the author that all students begin at BFSU regardless of age/grade to get the needed foundations for future scientific studies.   You also have the freedom of going the pace you want.  We made it almost half way through, I blame all the house hunting and moving on the fact that we didn’t make it further as planned.  BFSU is a keeper and we look forward to continuing with it this coming year.

For nature study, we attended Forest school and 4-H.  Our forest school allowed the kids to explore the creek and woods independently with parents earshot away to keep eye and answer inquires.  Our 4- h group went once a month to a new natural space each time.  We explored Mason Neck (my favorite), Hidden Oaks, the Botanical Center, the Arboretum and more.  We plan to combine these 2 activities this coming year.  They were both successes but to open up schedules, we’ve decided to combine.  Most people ae members of both.

Big Brother Also has an engineering side and has become very interested and apt at LEGO building.  For the winter and spring we participated monthly in a homeschool LEGO Club that brought a new level of creativity to Big Brothers LEGO building.  He’d get so inspired by everyone else’s creations.  Both science and art.

Here is what worked and didn’t work for History last year. More to follow soon on how the new school year is going.

We continued with our history group from last year and covered Medieval times.  The group decided we no longer wanted to follow Story of the World (SOTW) as a group but wanted to use the Usborne History Encyclopedia as the basis of our studies.  However,  Big Brother still wanted to listen to SOTW2 so he did at bedtime.  This year had less structure and it was difficult to engage the kids, they mostly just wanted to play although Big Brother did enjoy the reading and listening when it was just the two of us.  I think removing SOTW as the foundation was a contributor as well as us choosing to probably be too laid back for the kids to feel they needed to be structured enough to participate so as one strayed they all soon followed.  We tried a couple field trips with the group and also didn’t feel this worked very well for us.  Big Brother and I like to go through the museum slowly and read everything.  We quickly got left behind and then Big Brother soon gave up on focusing on the museum.  I think museum trips would be better for us alone.  For various reasons, history group just didn’t work well this year and all participants agreed so we are probably going to discontinue history group but continue with something different to get the kids together who have become very close.  Our family will probably continue with Story of the World on our own.  Even though I don’t always agree with the order or what the author chose to focus on, I find it to be a good starting point for us as my son just loves listening to Jim Weiss and the storybook like format.