A Week in Review

I broke down and bought a new History curriculum a few weeks ago.  Going into this school year, I tried to organize my own study of Early American History, as we are in year 3 of 4 in our history cycle. I have a plethora of books on that time period, and decided to add Time Travelers Lapbooks  for some hands-on. We are really enjoying the Time Travelers.  There is so much to choose from; making maps, timelines, games, cooking projects. I do modify it slightly by putting completed activities/pages in their History binders instead of a lapbook.
However, at this point in the year we should be closing in on the Revolutionary War and we are still reading about early American explorers.  How did that happen?!?
I purchased Easy Classical History because it is basically a schedule which coordinates many different books, most of which I already own.  I thought if I had a schedule with nice little boxes to check off, it would help keep me on track.  So far, so good. There are no 'extras' with EC, it gives you the schedule of reading along with questions to prompt your child's narration. 
The main spine is 'The Story of the World' by Susan Wise Bauer.  We LOVE anything by SWB.  I listen to her audio lectures often as I've never been fortunate enough to see her in person.  She is the author of 'The Well Trained Mind; A Guide to Classical Education at Home', which is definitely the backbone of our homeschool. 
Easy Classical History also uses 'A History of US' (a series of 11 books) by Joy Hakim.  I really like this series.  The two books work really well along side each other.
There is A LOT of reading with this curriculum.  If you don't have at least 2 hours a day to devote to all the reading it may not be the best choice for you.  To give you an example, this is from last week's schedule:
Read one chapter in 'Story of the World', 3 chapters in 'A History of US', 40 pages from 'Explorers who Got Lost', and all 20 chapters from the book 'Madeleine Takes Command'. Yep, all in one week. 
Luckily my guys tolerate it all really well.  I sit on the couch and read while they play quietly on the floor or at the table.  They usually choose Legos or dominoes, although our new love is Kapla blocks. 

J-Straco is my budding architect.  Here is a church he built, and a skyscraper below:

Here are a few more pics from the week:

J-Straco's Bananagram board-once a week we push the spelling curriculum aside and play Bananagrams. The boys LOVE this game.

The boys working on their duet, 'Step by Step' by Rich Mullins.  J-Straco's guitar teacher is helping the boys get ready to perform this at our church talent show in April. 

Farm Boy's Geometry.  He is learning about 3D shapes and how many edges, vertices, and faces each has. That kid is a math whiz! It takes me twice as long to check it as it does him to complete it.

J-Straco putting his greek letters in order.  Seriously, greek is HARD!

J-Straco's  Latin--The boys are memorizing The Sanctus and The Doxology in Latin this month.

Farm Boy's Geography- learning to draw the world map from memory.  We are starting with the main lines of lattitude and then will progress to the continents and countries.

Boys playing 'Set'. This is a crazy challenging- but fun game.

Quick Snuggle Break!

The Princess has been enjoying Cuisenaire Rods this week.  She likes the fun pre-math activites we found here, created and shared by a sweet homeschooling mama. 

Making a Sailboat

I think I'll start Miquon Math with her in another year.  It uses the Cuisenaire rods and is a very gentle, discovery based curriculum. 

We played around with the C-rods for quite a while.  She loved building bridges and houses for her little animals.  We also had fun playing a little game. I told her the biggest rod was named Mr. 10.  We compared all the  other rods to Mr. 10 and discovered he was the biggest.  Then, I showed her Mr. 8, and told her he was sad because he wasn't big like Mr. 10.  I explained we need to find a friend to help Mr. 8 get bigger like Mr. 10.  She tried putting different rods with the 8, until she discovered the 2 next to the eight was as big as 'Mr. 10'. I'm going to leave it at that for the moment, I don't think she's ready for the actual operation.
She has many years ahead of her, now is the time to have fun, explore and make discoveries.