Its been a crazy school year and I’ve neglected to blog for months. Let’s see if I get back to it.
We’ve maintained a busy schedule both in and out of the house. In the fall we continued our schedule as planned. In Feburary we welcomed a new family member, mommy had a baby boy. Now we are a family of 4 with 2 boys. As we waited for the baby to arrive we integrated into our human body studies a weekly update on the babies development. We ended our development of a fetus studies with the homebirth of our baby boy which big brother witnessed. DS1 continues to watch DS2 grow and is learning the patience needed so mom can attend to both of them. DS1 has grown up so much and has been a great big brother.
We had a wonderful beginning to being a family of 4. Grandpa visited for 2 weeks to help entertain DS1, help take him to classes & cook dinner. Dad stayed home 5 weeks to help keep the household running and take charge of DS1’s studies. We found that DS2 was able to bond closely with Dad while he was home so long. DS1 benefitted from the extra exposure to Spanish. We learned that dad is a more strict educator.
Now that dad is back at work we have created a new routine in between caring for baby brother:
– Monday – Morning School, Violin practice, park day in the afternoons sometimes
– Tuesday – Morning School, Violin Class
– Wednesday – Morning School, History group
– Thursday – Morning School
– Friday – Morning School, violin group class 1x/month, 4H 2x/month
What we are working on in school:
– Math (daily) – Singapore 1B, “Life of Fred,” and/or math games.
– Reading (1 story/day) – “Bob Books” set 3 or “Now I Can Read” level 3
– Writing (1x/week) – “Draw Write Now,” as part of other studies, writing letters/cards, and/or practice practical writing like full name
– History – Play SOTW 1 CD chapters, mommy reads Usborne History Encyclopedia and other relavent books as applies to weeks topic. Attend history group to do related activities. We just have the rise and fall of Rome and beginning Christianity left for this school year.
– Science – present project is to study our collection of fossils to display at a non-competitive science fair in May.
– Buddhist studies (1x/week or biweekly) – following a curriculum by the “Buddhist Youth Initiative for Interconnectedness”
– Sports – Archery for the Spring and Tap for the summer plus lots of outdoor time.
This summers plan:
– continue year around school with a schedule of 3 weeks on and 1 week off (already started this)
– Suzuki Violin Camp for 1 week
– occasional violin classes
– 8 weeks of Tap dance lessons (1x/week)
– Rockhounders Camp, 1 week, 1/2 days
– MA vacation via Train, 1 week
– enjoy the outdoors