Family School For All Forever!

I'm really excited to share this with you. Mark your calendar for this event on Facebook. They're tossing out hints now and have mentioned something about owning Family School rather than renting it.

Family School is the main curriculum we use. The one curriculum that we've never changed since we started homeschooling.. it's that good! If you follow my blog you've read a lot about Family School, especially if you read our Celebration posts.

Sign up to attend this Facebook Live event. You won't want to miss it! (I promise... I've got a little tiny bit of insider info I've promised not to spill!)

Year 5 Celebration of Learning

We made it through the school year! June has been SOOOO busy that we had to schedule our Celebration of Learning at the end of the month. We studied South America this year. Some of our family members are Brazilian and some have visited other South American countries, so we really enjoyed this school year and celebration. Our Brazilian family taught me a couple of recipes, and the children found other recipes they wanted to try. Here's what our celebration was like!

Mmmmm... a basket full of pao de queijo, Brazilian cheese bread. My sister-in-law taught me to always make extra!

How We Homeschool: Literature (Blogging Through the Alphabet)

I don't remember studying literature until Jr. High school. I don't know when most schools start now, but I like doing literature studies with all ages!

Our main literature curriculum is part of The Family School (affiliate link). The curriculum is geared toward grades K-8. They also have high school literature studies available. We study books together as a family, and have a literature lesson every Tuesday. Sometimes the kids do their reading assignments on their own, but each week we read them aloud together for anyone who wants to participate, and to make sure the youngest hears the story too.

Weekly Recap: With the garden and the trampoline

Last time I shared our recap, we had just returned from a long day that ended in an Ikea trip and a drive home. We weren't very hungry for dinner, so we crushed some ice in the blender and broke apart a couple Ikea chocolate bars and ate snow and chocolate for dinner. Healthy, I know. Sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches.

Weekly Recap: With the two long drives

I realized last weekend that I haven't made our usual vitamin C balls this winter. Perhaps I should not forget that again! My youngest ended up taking two naps on Saturday, so she was clearly not better yet.

How We Homeschool: Family School (Blogging Through the Alphabet)

This is probably our favorite post in this series. It's a new week, the letter F is up, and I'm blogging about Family School!

 

Weekly Recap: The Cold Edition.. With a Radio Show

Brrrr!! It's been in the teens and twenties a few days this week so the kids don't want to play outside for very long. Since my husband is going to bed early this month I've been taking the kids to their meetings in the evenings and I am freezing! I've pulled out warm socks and hoodies to wear all day.

Last Saturday we did some grocery shopping then went to M's piano recital. My kids use Hoffman Academy and thrive on his method. But M was near the end of the available units, and was in need of more personal attention from a piano teacher. She has a great opportunity to take lessons from a friend nearby. The recital was fun, all of the children played a Christmas song or two, and at the end they performed a group piece that they had learned only the day before! You can read about it and hear the piece here. There was quite an age range of children participating, from kindergarten to middle school, and it turned out so nice!

Week 39: 52 Weeks of Photos

Last week we learned about Albrecht Dürer in art and watched a video about his paintings that only come out for display once every 10 years.  It was fascinating, and not just to the children!

Timeline: End of Year 3, Start of Year 4

Every year we've had to adjust our timeline.  I really wish we had a gymnasium size wall that could be a permanent spot!  Our goal is to keep as many years worth of cards up as will fit (our curriculum is 6 years long).

This timeline has Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3 timeline cards for Latter-Day Learning's The Family School curriculum.  We're ready to start Year 4 next month!

NotebookingPages.com Review

I am so glad we were given a Lifetime Membership to review from NotebookingPages.com.  It has turned out to be the best homeschooling tool I didn't know I needed!

Year 3 Celebration of Learning

I think this was our favorite end of year celebration yet!  We studied Antarctica, Australia, and the Pacific Islands this year.  You can read more about our mini celebrations and presentations here.  The children prepared reports on a Pacific island so we chose to dress up and make food that went along with their choices.  We invited twice as many people this year so I was nervous about having enough food and getting everything ready, but I think it went alright.  There was even a surprise at the end!

End of Unit Celebrations 2016

Whenever we finish up a topic or unit, we have a small celebration for what we've studied.  Here are some of the celebrations we held this year. 

When we finished studying the explorers we had a dinner with many of the foods that they would have had on their ships, as well as the foods they would have found in the New World.  Some were honey, hard cheeses (we found cheese from Spain at the grocery store!), olives, lentils, and raisins.  We also had 100% cacao bars, potatoes, peppers, peanuts, avocado, winter squash, and papaya.  We folded newspaper sailor hats and made deviled eggs with sails and peppers with sails.  We drew the earth on transparent plastic to make sun catchers, and played some dice games.  Sadly, I can't find these pictures...

Week 21: 52 in 2016

Last week we finished up our study of botany and spent an afternoon at the local botanical gardens.  The kids drew many plants that interested them but I heard, "Mom! Take a picture of this!" frequently.

Dot Painting

 We've been studying Australia.  Recently we talked about religions there and touched on Aboriginal dot painting and how it relates to Dreaming stories.  My kids wanted to try dot painting, so here are their quick attempts.  It was fun!

 

 

Not to be left out, but too busy to do an entire paper.  :)

Botany: How Plants Drink

Last week for our science lesson, we did an experiment to learn how plants drink.  We learned the multiple jobs of stems, all about nodes, and what the xylem and phloem are.  The kids were surprised to see how quickly they noticed a color change in the leaves!  Within just a few hours of placing the celery in the colored water we could see a difference.

2016 Latter-day Learning Retreat

The past two years I have gone to the annual Latter-day Learning Conference.  It's a refreshing day where I've gotten plenty of ideas to use in our homeschool.  I come away feeling encouraged and ready to keep going.  It is not just for families who use The Family School, but there are some presentations geared towards this curriculum.

This year it is being called a retreat instead of a conference and it seems that the entire day has been revamped.  I'm so excited to go again!  Today it was announced that John Bytheway and Richard & Linda Eyre will be presenters.  How cool does that sound?!  Here is the schedule, which they will continue to update.  It will be held March 12, 2016. 

Would you please use my name (Deann Hadley) as a referral if you come?  Click the image below to learn more and reserve your spot!  But hurry, the early bird discount ends December 31st.

Cytology crafts

We finished our introduction to cytology last week.  Instead of a regular lesson on our science day, we had a cell-abration!  We have been learning about organelles and their functions as well as the differences between plant and animal cells.  Cell division was a difficult topic with big words for some of them, but I've been surprised at how much information they retained.  Learning about prokaryotic cells was exciting and has helped reinforce some good habits.  We also talked about many scientists who influenced our knowledge today, and how we are thankful for their work.

2015-2016 Curriculum

I am excited for school to start in a few weeks!  We're sticking with some familiar books and trying some new things.  Planning over the summer is so much fun.

Piano: Hoffman Academy.  I wanted to start my 2nd grader on this, but decided to let the older kids do it too.  They haven't taken lessons for a couple of years and have forgotten some things.  They LOVE lessons with Mr. Hoffman!  My oldest says remembering note names is much easier than it was when using just books.  I think the older two will advance faster than there are lessons available, but hopefully they'll be able to jump back into traditional lessons and books then.

History, Geography, Science, Literature, Art, Music:

The Family School Year 3

I don't have the books & cards yet.  They've been delayed, but at least I have access to the online version.  We are not using the workbooks/worksheets, after two years of what felt like planning double each week we will just print what we want.  We purchased our own binders and are waiting on the binder inserts and tabs from the school.  We still love the curriculum and are as excited as ever to get started. 

 

For Year 3 Literature we're studying 

Beatrix Potter

Heidi

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

As You Like It

Year 2 Celebration of Learning

Update:  I completely forgot to add our Geography celebration!  I didn't take any pictures because I was enthralled in the presentation.  My parents went to Europe on a Sound of Music tour about 8 years ago.  They went on a guided tour through many countries then spent extra time on their own.  They talked about the many things they saw, showed us pictures, maps, and books from their trip.  It was so neat!  

Recently we held our 2nd annual celebration of learning.  We turn our backyard into a museum and show all the projects we’ve worked on this past school year.  While the children act as tour guides, the grandparents, aunts, and uncles get to see all we’ve been learning about.  With 4 kids this turns out to be a lot of projects, but it’s so fun to see how they create each item in their own way.

 

Updated Timeline

We started The Family School year 2 recently.  I wanted to update our timeline for Foundation lesson 2 (the lesson is written to set up the timeline that day).  I was tired of seeing the labels curling edges (I printed them on paper before) and wanted to spread it out as much as I could... which was only another 10" I think.  Every little bit helps!  See here for last year's post about our timeline.

The new timeline labels are laminated and in a different font.  This gives me a little bit more room.  I currently have all year 1 timeline cards on the wall, plus one year 2 history card.  We want to leave them all up as long as they will fit.  About the time year 1 started for us they swapped the colors of history and music, but the cards had already been printed.  So don't get confused by purple and yellow not matching up with what you'd expect.