Journey to Excellence

The highlight of our week last week was definitely related to food ! On Tuesday night Dawson {finally} cooked us the Greek meal he had been planning. Oh. My. Gosh. It was delicious! This kid can cook! He made Greek salad, Feta stuffed chicken and Lemon custard cakes. And we had grapes and cheese for an appetizer. Dawson ~ 8th Grade We are finishing up our unit on Ancient Greece and the Human Body Systems for science. He spent a great deal of the week studying for a vocabulary test and for his upcoming tests on Ancient Greece and the body systems. We finished Classic Myths to Read Aloud by William F. Russell. It was an excellent study of the myths. Dawson took a vocabulary test over 61 words used throughout the book and made a 90%. That was a great grade! But I was more impressed when he came down Thursday afternoon with his book The Last Olympian from the Percy Jackson series and pointed out two of his vocabulary words that were in one sentence in the book. Isn't that...

We really have just gotten so busy , it seems, during the week that I feel like I am giving Dawson an hour or so of my time and then going over what he is to do on his own only to leave him for the day. Then Brynne and I have lots of activities to attend to, like: library, coop, grocery shopping. And this week we added additional errands, a physical therapy appointment for my older daughter, picking daddy up from the airport and going to my younger son's Veteran's Day program. I enjoyed all of the learning that went on at these various events, but I felt like Dawson was left behind and on his own more than I would like. Part of what I enjoy about homeschooling is the time I get to spend with my kids . So, not spending time with him really bugs me. Wish that was going to get better in the next few weeks, but with the holidays it's not likely. Here's what we did:  Brynne~ 1st Grade Math can be done anywhere at anytime. I walked by Brynne on Monday and she had our ...

We got out of a groove and back into one this week. I am certain that will happen many more times in our Journey! Being back on a Schedule is marvelous to this structure-freak teacher! That being said, I am still enjoying the unexpected moments of learning that I am allowing to occur through the day. Having my schedule just helps me to steer us back on track when we veer off. Brynne ~ 1st Grade For Brynne I have definitely settled into a solid teaching philosophy with her. Since I did not purchase any curriculum for her, I have been winging it! I am now very comfortable with our daily does of Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic, History lessons with the American Girls stories and Science lessons with our Nature study. It's just all so good! She is reading like a maniac, which I am loving! She amazes me every day with how she is putting "things" together. She is so excited about learning! She spells out loud all day. Yesterday afternoon I let her take a Spelling test with...

 If you have read my Weekly Wrap-ups for the past nine weeks, you have probably seen a trend of cramming a lot into one week! This week, however, I have noticed myself being much more laid back in the area of schoolwork. I am pretty certain it has had something to do with my newfound interest in the Charlotte Mason method. But, on top of that I have seen that with two children at home, learning two completely different sets of things (being 9 years apart in age), I am quickly overloading myself! This past Fall Break was a great one for me. It gave me some downtime and some time to reflect on the past quarter. I realized that I was beginning to pause much more frequently to notice the education that was occurring all day long, without the aid of any school books ... the aha moments ... the learning from doing things they had interest in ... the application of things learned in books to real life! I would stop myself from hurrying Brynne along to go upstairs to resume workbo...

Dawson is a terrible eater! Always has been! As part of his study on Ancient Greece, he is doing a science unit on healthy eating. Of course that includes use of the Food Pyramid. Have you ever gone to MyPyramid.org ? It's an amazing site that not only allows you to input your height/weight/age/exercise level for a customized food plan, but it also has a PyramidTracker link that allows you to input that information with your daily food intake so you can track how you are doing! That's a project I am having Dawson do, starting today. First he is using a food plan based on his information. It tells him how many ounces or cups of the certain foods he should be eating. Then he used his recommended food plan to come up with a list of foods he would eat in those categories. I told him to concentrate on breakfast, lunch and snacks. I'll be doing my two-week grocery shopping on Friday, so I'll be sure to buy the foods he said he would definitely eat. Then I am goi...

This week was a different one for us. Dawson's 14th birthday was on Monday. Although I let him sleep in, we still had school that day. We tried to keep it as fun as possible. Our public school's Fall Break was Thursday and Friday, and continues until school resumes Tuesday, so we took/are taking those days off, too. We still got lots accomplished this week! Brynne ~ 1st Grade The 3 R's ~ R eading, w R iting and a R ithmetic Brynne started her weekly journal pages by finishing the sentence, "I like to eat ..." She put "Mackrone and ces" (macaroni and cheese) and drew a picture of it. She did her workboxes full of daily phonics, mini readers, math pages and others. She continues to amaze me with how much she knows. Since we use my public school 1st Grader's homework for her lessons too, it has become very apparent to me that I am going to need to order a good Saxon Phonics instruction book. Sad that I don't know phonics rules well enough to t...