Monday Musings... Going with the Flow...

 We are officially two days in, and it has been, by and large, a very smooth start to another year of homeschooling. I don't have lesson plans made, no official history and science plans, but all is going well!

We do have basics we hit every day, namely math and language arts for The Boy, and math and phonics for The Girl...

Both kids love their math so far - The Boy is doing Teaching Textbooks 5, and The Girl is using MCP's Math Level C. We backed up a bit -- I want them to have a really solid foundation in math.

The Boy is enjoying writing too - he does Soaring with Spelling & Vocabulary every day, and a page in Word Roots. Today he also used Unjournaling for a prompt--I set the timer for 10 minutes, and he wrote for 20. I'll try to share his silly little story later this week!

We'vce also enjoyed some picture books we had on hand (library tomorrow), among them The Ballad of the Pirate Queens, all about two legendary pirate queens and told in verse (very enjoyable!); and The People Could Fly, a somewhat sad story about the injustices of slavery. Both were beautifully illustrated, and I do recommend both.

We're learning about history through The Dangerous Book for Boys Yearbook, and continued reading in The Wright Brothers.

Science has been a huge hit this week! We watched The Incredible Human Machine (very good documentary), and broke out the new, and old, microscopes.Yesterday, we looked at premade slides, and today I taught the kids to prepare their own. The new microscope is good for this sort of thing, while the old one is great for looking at objects...

Let's see... what else? Oh, an art project inspired by Wassily Kandinsky, which we haven't quite finished. An excellent reading from The World in a Drop of Water. I am in love with this book! Well written, so it is engaging, and very informative. We read a chapter, then collected water samples from various outdoor sources to examine more closely. We located, and identified, a paramecium, which totally thrilled both kids! I'm going to try to get some scientific drawings out of them by the end of the week.

Now we're off to bed. Tomorrow is a necessarily light day. I have work, two libraries to visit, and I need to stop by the junior college for a stack of papers to grade! Then I head off to class myself, having actually done all this week's reading.

Hope you all have a good week!