Home and Schooling

I have always had the ambition to document our day to day homeschool happenings on a blog. I started a separate one a few years back but maintaining two proved too much for me. This is not so much to share with the world but more of a fun way for me to keep track, look back, and enjoy what we are doing. I was going to start in January as part of a New Year's resolution but I have since discovered that all resolutions should not start until February; especially if all your children get chicken pox. So without further ado......

This morning was the introduction of the alarm clock. With the addtion of Hannah into our lives our schedules have been slipping ever away and so that old school, buzzing, one button black alarm clock has been found a place amongst the dolls and pink tutus.

We then moved immediately (well, after breakfast and heartfelt goodbyes to Dad who will be away tonight) we curled up on mom's bed for history reading. (We may not stay in our PJ's but we do like comfort while reading). They are studying abolitionists today. (History of the World by Susan Wise Bauer). It is always interesting to me to see children's reactions to something they think is unfair. It was interesting to them to discover that in the United States although the North was against slavery they were still willing to make slaves only three-fifths of a white person due to worry that if they counted as a whole the south would gain more political power. They also learned about William Wilberforce who was a member of English Parliament and a strong advocate against slavery. When the Emancipation Act was signed in 1833 England stood to lose 20 million pounds due to the breakup of plantations. Eliora thought it was great that they could no longer afford coffee and tobacco until I explained that it was also sugar and cotton and the English could still buy it from America. They did decide however that they would have given up sugar in order to stop the slave trade and made anti-slavery posters with slogans like, 'they have families!' and 'have mercy!'

We then moved on to math (Saxon, I love the repitition) were they are continuing to learn their memorize addition, subtraction, and multiplication problems. We are working on patterns at the moment and getting them to see just how many patterns are in mathematics. Today they filled out a master sheet with all the addition problems in 0+0 through 9+9 in rows of ten. They then had to color in any patterns they saw. I think it helps a lot with their thinking to use a mindset of 10+9 is equal to 19 so 9+9 must be 18 instead of using fingers and toes. We are still working on speed with Audrey and accuracy with Eliora.

Right now they have an hour of reading time. Eliora gets to pick her own and Audrey is still in reader books. After this we will listen to a little Beethoven (he is our composer of the week), do some adjectives in Language Arts, and practice cursive and typing.