Large Family Homeschooling Week in Review is a glimpse into the day-to-day homeschooling of our larger-than-average family. It’s not fancy, but it will hopefully give you a taste of what it is like to be us. For more homeschooling tips and inspiration, visit the Homeschooling section of Raising Arrows. You can also see a list of our 2017 Homeschool Curriculum choices. And if you are needing even more advice on how to homeschool a crowd, check out my book – Large Family Homeschooling!
~Amy
Every week, since the new year, I’ve thought, “I need to do a week in review post.” And every week, I have not. So, today, I am finally sitting down and just lumping the past several weeks together. Honestly, we haven’t done a lot due to sickness and just needing to ease back into the routine since the holidays, so it will just seem like a really full week instead of several weeks smushed together.
My 2 younger school-aged boys are getting close to finishing up all of their workbooks, so I placed an order with CBD for their Handwriting and Math (they are going to be completely done with Phonics, so no need to order those!). They are neck and neck in their studies, and probably always will be. As I’ve mentioned before, they are about 20 months apart in age, but the younger is very academically inclined while the older one is very artistically inclined. So far, they have not made much of the fact that they are nearly in the same lessons. They are best friends, so they think it is neat (at least for now!).
In Tapestry of Grace, we just finished the Nixon Era. The kids have been reading about the Space Race, and right on time with all of that, they got to see live on YouTube the Space X Falcon Heavy launch. It was fascinating!
The kids had fun playing with the snow and ice of the Arctic after we learned about hibernation and blubber and migration. It was a quick lesson, followed by hours (and days!) of playing with the animals in their climate. The snow is Instant Snow (super easy to make) and the animals are from Safari LTD.
We also played Post Office (using this template), made “Stained Glass Windows” with tissue paper and the laminator, and made floral creations for a Valentine’s Day centerpiece. All of these activities were inspired by A Year of Playing Skillfully (which happens to be on sale right now! CLICK HERE!)
And remember to follow my Instagram for more photos of these projects!
My oldest daughter is doing Apologia Biology this year and has come to the dissection part of the book. EWWWW!!! (At least, that’s what she thinks!) Now here’s where I deviated from my original plan because things did not go as planed.
You see, I purchased a dissection kit (not from Apologia) at the beginning of the school year. When it arrived along with some other school materials, the entire box reeked of formaldehyde, and things were a bit damp too! ERGH!
So, I packed the box away in the homeschool closet until she needed it, but little did I know that ALL of the animals were packaged in one lump! And that meant that once opened, they all had to be used fairly quickly. Well, that’s not going to happen, so I let her watch on YouTube a dissection of a worm, and I’ll do the same for the crayfish, and then open the package for the fish and frog when it is time because they are in the same module. I’ll know better next time!
Valentine’s Day and the day before we spent talking about the holiday and making candy and doing other Valentine’s Day activities. It was a lot of fun and everyone got in on the action!
One of the activities we really enjoyed was Valentine’s Battleship from this site! We played many games and ate the spoils of battle!
We rounded out our week by making our annual Resurrection Garden. You can find more details in THIS POST, but here is a quick photo of the finished product. I really like how this year’s turned out!
OK, so now that I’m back in the swing of things with these WIR posts, hopefully, I’ll be able to get to them weekly and not have to cram everything into one post!
Sarah T. says
I love these posts, Amy. Thank you!
Amy says
It is a lot of fun putting them together!
Marion says
Thank You for family week in review.
Marion
Diana says
Love these! Thank you! I especially like that Resurrection garden – I might try that this year!
I once tried to do these kinds of posts but gave up after realizing how much work was involved, so I really appreciate the time you have to take to do these!!
Diana
Amy says
I take a lot of photos for Instagram anyway, so I just put them all together in the post. Most of the time, it’s a lot of fun to do!