Homeschooling Through Middle and High School

There will be a meeting about "Homeschooling Through Middle and High School" on Monday, August 4 at 6:30pm. All are welcome!

Why Classical Conversations Works For Us

The other day the kids pulled out some blocks while waiting for breakfast. Kate said, "I'm building the Eiffel Tower!"

I remembered that I have a little fold out book about the Eiffel tower, as well as a small replica that was brought back for me from Paris.

On a whim, I decided to do a quick study with the kids on the Eiffel tower. We discussed some of it's history, location, materials used to make it, weight, size, etc.

 

At lunch time, we revisited the Eiffel Tower with some flashcards I have from the Target dollar spot. One set is on landmarks around the world & another contains flags of different countries.

As I was reading about the history of the Eiffel Tower again & telling the kids that it was built to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the French Revolution in 1789, Kate yelled out, "I KNOW THAT!!!"

She then quoted to me about the French Revolution beginning in 1789, storming the Bastille, the reign of terror & aristocrats. 

This past year we had a history sentence that we memorized about the very topic. I just loved seeing how it added depth to our studies! It also corresponded with geography that we had memorized as well as mathematical conversions.

 also really love the flexibility that the classical conversations program provides. First, it's mission "To know God & make Him known" is at the forefront of the program & next is that it makes it easy to follow a classical method of learning while also providing a community of support & accountability.

Something that is also REALLY important to me is that I can keep curriculum flexibility. Classical Conversations is an excellent skeleton on which to build your curriculum. Our Eiffel Tower study was a prime example! We were able to include history, geography, science & math just from a simple statement my five-year-old made in the morning, without stressing out because I deviated from set school lessons. How great that the kids can all learn this together & each go to greater depths with the material depending on their own capabilities?? I love that we're not bound by set grade curriculum so that each child is learning something completely different - rather, the same material is made more difficult as the child gets older.

We finished up our impromptu addition to our school day by each of the kids replicating the French flag.

 

 Even I had fun with this study!

 

Window Into Challenge - Homeschooling Through High School

Tuesday, April 15 at 7pm, Classical Conversations will be hosting a Window Into Challenge event. Central Florida Gulf Coast Area Manager, Laura Bennett, will be leading the event for us & this is the perfect time to be encouraged in your homeschooling journey! 

If you currently have a high school student or you're interested in seeing a vision for your younger child, we invite you to join us!

A mess of fun

This has been occupying my time since Saturday night:

Bin upon bin of kids clothing. The attic is filled with rubbermaid bins & the garage had begun filling up with more bags of clothes that I'd toss in there as I changed out the kids to bigger sizes. I believe we were at a count of around 15 rubber maids PLUS bags/boxes in the garage!

We wanted to get everything put away so we took the bins down Saturday night in order to add the bags of clothes in the garage to them.

Even though the bins are labeled, I hadn't done a very good job of keeping everything sorted properly. I also didn't realize just hoe jam-packed full the bins were & that nothing else would fit in them. Thus began the very long process of going through every bit of clothing & determining just what to keep.

People have been so generous passing on clothes & I kept most everything without weeding through what/how much we really needed. Especially the baby stuff. I ended up with SO much to get rid of, I was able to fit everything in the bins we have & even have an empty bin leftover! Because, really, babies grow so fast that you just don't need tons of 0-6 month clothing. I did have difficulty making the decision to get rid of certain items, though!

Anyway, this project has occupied all of my time this week. I've neglected all other household chores & have done minimal cooking in order to get this done.

I did keep up with school, though, I just couldn't let that slide.

Except for yesterday. I didn't get to go through any clothes yesterday, but, I did have a training webinar in the morning & then around lunch time we met up with Amy & her girls at the library for a play date.

We were enjoying ourselves so much that we then took the party to Sonic for a late lunch!

I started getting a monstrous headache while we were out. Our first ladies Bible study of the year was that night so I popped 4 ibuprofen and was just feeling well enough to make it. Addison started coming with me last year & I told Kate that she could start coming with me this year. Ray was really hoping they'd stay home to hang out with him because he hadn't seen them in a few days. The girls still decided to come with me. There aren't usually more than one or two other kids there but last night a bunch of the girls friends were there because they didn't have alternate childcare.

I had to make the call to stick to my guns & have the kids sit with me in the meeting rather than playing with their friends in another room. I wanted to let them play, but, since they said they wanted to come with me I'd told them that coming to the meeting is a privilege & if they didn't want to sit in the meeting than they didn't need to come at all. If I hadn't set that precedent already I probably would have let them play. I'll be interested to see what they decide to do next month.

Anyway, all of those clothes finally made it to their resting place at noon today. I was so happy! I love organization. I also finally got back to cleaning the rest of the house. We also started catching up on school since we skipped yesterday!

We actually have a pretty free weekend ahead of us, I'm looking forward to see what comes up.