Journey to Excellence

This past Saturday our whole family spent some time together at the Blue Bell Creameries Taste of Summer Open House (with about 15,000 other people). We had all-you-can-eat ice cream, did some crafts, "milked" a "cow", and went on a self-guided tour of the ice cream factory. We had so much fun!! So I decided to carry this theme through our week. The temps have been in the 100's this week, so staying home and indoors was vital! The big news of the week was that Eli finished his Summer Reading Program with a bang by reading all of a 64 page book in one day. It was his decision to do it, and he was so proud of his accomplishment! So was our whole family! We are going this afternoon to pick up his prizes from the library. On Wednesday, Brynne and I went to her Co-op Summer Playgroup and we made barrettes . It was fun! This small group has been such a blessing to the moms and kids! Yesterday we tackled our ice cream unit . We made baggie ice cream, rea...

I love laid-back summer learning. We just take something we come upon that interests us and go with it! It's been so great! I've also enjoyed taking Eli along for the ride with us! At the same time I am working diligently on the U.S. History curriculum for both Dawson (9th grade) and Brynne (2nd grade) for next year. I feel like I am taking a super-fun trip through history right now and I am enjoying preparing for it more than they will probably enjoy learning about it! I am hoping my enthusiasm rubs off on them! So far I have completed three, 3-week units and am most of the way through the fourth. That has us at 12 weeks of lessons. I am feeling much-accomplished! I will be doing a post soon about exactly how I am creating this curriculum using America: The Story of Us from The History Channel. I received this dvd set for free last year and it is the cornerstone of our curriculum! It is awesome! I also just saw that it is available through our local library, so may...

Well, this one is late! We had such a beautiful weekend here this weekend that we spent it outdoors doing gardening and yard projects. I didn't have my usual day of sitting in my chair, catching up on DVR'd shows while planning lessons, inputting grades and posting my wrap-up. I am starting this week feeling behind! While Dawson is working on some vocabulary cards for our new read, Swiss Family Robinson , I thought I'd work on my wrap-up. Dawson ~ 8th Grade We finished up our unit on The Middle Ages last week, and that usually means watching some videos and doing some cooking. We watched King Arthur and Tristan and Isolde and Dawson cooked spaghetti with garlic and herbs and herb tomato crostini for our family for dinner on Thursday night. He took lots of tests to finish the unit, two language arts review tests and his Science test. I typically prepare a study guide for Dawson on his units and then a pretty difficult test. This science one was over plant scien...

We had a great week this week! I think we have finally hit our stride. Pretty good considering we are three quarters of the way through our school year, huh? We have tweaked and changed and come up with a schedule that works pretty good. I think we are all happy with it! Our schedule is working great for us. And it's not at all how I set out to do school when we started this journey. It's amazing how much I have changed in this process so far. Dawson ~ 8th Grade Things were seeming a little stale in Dawson's studies of The Middle Ages , so I made sure he had some other activities to do this week. He drew a Cartoon castle . He made garlic chive cream cheese spread and dill veggie dip, using fresh herbs . We studied the Black Plague , and I wanted to demonstrate it to him. I found a simulated game, but tweaked it a bit. I drew a map including five cities our character traveled in Adam of the Road . I then took 50 lima beans and put them in a lunch sack. On 15 ...

We only got in one day of school before the record-breaking snows hit Oklahoma. Our rule is that if there is no public school, we don't have school either (because we have two public school children.) There was a slight exception, however. Next week Dawson and Rick are going to Tahoe to go snowboarding and Dawson will miss four days of school. He had to make that up. So, on Monday we did four days worth of Bible, Language Arts and Pre-Algebra. It was a long day! And even though we had a "snow day" on Tuesday, we still had four days worth of Social Studies and Science to accomplish, and an essay to write. My student was reluctant, but put in the time to get it done. Now we only have one more day to make up, and we'll do that on our next day of school. Our A World of Adventure curriculum has us starting a new unit, The Middle Ages and Plant Science . As a reminder, with this curriculum all of our Bible, Language Arts and Literature will be related to these two to...