January School

  So we are back at it!  2020 has gotten off to a good start.   Over the break, I was evaluating our homeschool and curriculum, things that were working and things that were not.  I feel as if I am always searching for different ways and new ideas to try and I am uncertain if this is a good thing or bad thing.  I know it is good to change things when they aren't working, but at the same time, I feel like it shows a side of me that is never content with how things are.  And I am also uncertain if I have enough reasons to justify the changes that I felt were needed or if I was just getting bored and losing hope thinking that things may never change and homeschool will always feel this rigid.  

It is true that I felt it was rigid.  And I did feel like I couldn't continue this way and be happy with homeschooling if we did continue the way we were going.  I still do not know if I am happy with The Good and the Beautiful literacy and math.  I love a lot of what it teaches and I think it has been great. I just haven't seen the fruit in Sally's learning.  Sometimes I feel like the math is monotonous and I don't always love it.  If I am being honest, I am feeling guilty about it because there is literally nothing wrong with it, but sometimes I feel like they take too long and there are often things in the lessons that I don't see the point of or don't like the way they have chosen to approach the concept.  The games they include need lots of pieces and they really are not that fun in my or my daughter's opinion.  I don't know.  I am unsure as to what I should do.  Why fix something that isn't necessarily broken?

So this post was originally supposed to be about our first week back at homeschooling and my introduction ended up  being more long winded than I had thought it would be.  

So this first week back I was excited about the new parts that I was bringing in but also nervous if all the planning and money I spent over it would be well received.  So far so good.  :) 

Here are just a few pictures of our first week back...
SO these first couple pictures were during morning basket.  Morning basket consists of several books that we read. Some of the books we have read so far are The Snowbelly Books, Jan Brett's The Three Snowbears and The Hat, We are reading Mr. Popper's Penguins, The Boy of the Pyramids, Dinosaur Books, Stories about Ruth in the Bible, Bible Devotional Books, Everyone Your Child Should Know, Catechisms.  During the reading part of the morning basket, the girls will work on different quiet activities.  They used these templates pictured here to make snowflakes out of cutips,  they used templates to make dinosaur out of playdough, we used trivia cards from the internet to answer questions about the dinosaurs we are learning about, we counted syllables in the different dinosaurs names, we did a dinosaur puzzle,  and we played Top Trumps Dinosaurs video games.  Some other activities we have done is work on a Frozen Mad Libs and read A Frozen Storybook together.  This time in the morning has been enjoyable and I look forward to planning some every month.  

These next few pictures we made scones and put strawberry preserves and whipped cream on them and snacked on them while we watched Tangled.  We watching Tangled to see the differences between that story of Rapunzel and the one in the Blue Fairy Book.

 Here they are doing their play dough models.

 Here is Sally reading words and jumping to the next one.

 This is when we decided to get out the watercolors and work on some artwork.

 The girls are doing the January Reading Challenge from Read Aloud Revival.  It has been fun sitting with them and listening to them read.  Ava finished her first chapter book, Polar Bears Past Bedtime.