New School Year! 2024-2025

 

Some glimpses of our summer!  Brian and I celebrated our 24th anniversary.  Lily traveled to Washington, DC.  Nathan got a giant icee for helping me one day.  Hunter had surgery.  We saw movies (Twisters with Sam and Deadpool with Lainey, Anden, Hunter and Nathan).  Brian had fun fishing on his camping trip.  Sam had senior pics taken and, finally, we had a fun family vacation (minus Lily).  Now we are gearing up for the start of another school year.

Our Homeschool Plans:

Sam is a senior (!!!) this year and Nathan is a freshman!!  2 highschoolers!  We will be getting a new supervising teacher so that's always interesting.  The boys are signed up for one class at MHSAP and we'll go on field trips, as well.  

For classes, here is our curriculum plan:

-World History

-Astronomy

-IEW for writing

-Language Lessons for a Living Education for grammar and spelling

-Various books for reading (both independent and read alouds) and the Reading Detective for comprehension

-Spanish 1 for Nathan

-Medical Terminology for Sam

-Culinary workbook for both

-Apologia Who Am I? for Bible

-Teaching Textbooks for both and a Practical Math book for Sam

-Art will be various projects

This is the 1st year I have zero Barton for the boys!!!  Of course, this is just the beginning so we'll see how we like the choices I've picked.  I'm excited to get started and help Sam adjust to the thought of being done with homeschool!!!!!

Last Week of School 2023-2024

 

We finished our last week of school!  We had our last science lab, which is the picture of Nathan pouring “crude oil” into our “ocean”.  We then used different sorbents to attempt to remove the oil.  Samuel had a big accomplishment—he finished level 10 Barton, which is the final level!!  Neither one of the boys will be doing Barton next year, even though Nathan was mid-level 9 at the end of this year.  It’s nice to finish up that program.  We were up early on the last day of school because of tornado sirens.  So, we finished up our read aloud and I gave them their cards and gifts. They got busy decorating their water bottles.  Later, we met up with the whole family plus grandparents to celebrate Nathan’s 8th grade graduation.  2 high schoolers next school year!  We’ll enjoy summer break until then.

Week 36

We are almost done with school!  We had our last visit with our supervising teacher and Samuel was given grades so really everything else we do now is bonus! For science, we made a mini water cycle. That worked well.  The boys have an end of the year grammar assignment to make a menu.  Samuel was all over that idea, looking up different items to put on his menu.  Nathan said he would rather wait until next week to work on it.  Haha!  4 more school days and then we have 8th grade graduation and the end of the year celebration!

 

Week 35

This week was a whirlwind! The boys did a science experiment with yeast so that’s always a hit. We also did a little activity to learn more about the Underground Railroad. We are entering into our last 2 weeks of school so we’ll be wrapping things up. The weekend was busy with my nephew’s wedding and Mother’s Day but we’re back at school with a supervising teacher meeting tomorrow.

 

Week 34

 

This is the only picture I got of our week!  This was Monday, Brian’s birthday, and we took the day off to celebrate! We also had a visit from our supervising teacher but filled the other days with regular schoolwork. Nathan is in his final assessment in math, which involves a new test each day.  We’ll circle back to the topics he needs extra work on to fill the rest of the school days.  We started our last science unit, which is on weather.  Everything is definitely winding down, which is exciting for everyone!!

Week 33

 

This week, Nathan’s math wrapped up with a lesson on the compass. He’ll start his post test on this level and be finished with it by the end of school. Exciting! For science lab, we made a wind turbine. It was a rainy day and Brian volunteered to be sprayed by the water. We are counting down these last days of school and working on wrapping up everything. 

Week 32

 

These pictures aren’t in order but our science lab was making a hovercraft after learning about wind power. It did work!  We also finished our read aloud and it was different but good. We couldn’t have guessed how that ended! I got out the books I had left and they picked our last read aloud. We’re winding down, hard to believe!