Lately...

Well, we have been busy. We are going to start "really" notebooking. We've been doing it a little with our unit studies but I think I've been kind of controlling it too much and it hasn't been much fun for them.

I've been reading a little about it and listening to an audio by Cindy Rushton about it and I've been inspired. I've told the kids to just kind of go at it. To make it fun. They do have to write but they can draw, make collages, use photos from the Internet or make copies of pics from books. Anything goes and they have fallen in love.

Yesterday, we bought some cheap notebooks and some page protectors. Science is a subject we really neglect. I don't like it and DS doesn't either. DD does but she forgets it too. So, I told them that there is Science everywhere and that when they see it, either in nature or on TV, or in the kitchen wherever, they should do a page (however they want) and put it in a notebook. I told them it could be fun!

Well, yesterday they both did a couple of pages and then DD said she wanted to do Science first today. We did a little experiment and now they are both over working hard on their pages. DS is drawing (he loves to draw, or excuse me "sketch") and DD is painting. I just hope they learned something from it.

Last year, DS and I bought a book on doing Science through literature and so we are kind of using it to get ideas. Yesterday we read the book "Sarah Plain and Tall" and we have talked about farms and maps and now today we are doing weather. We made a cloud in glass. They got so excited to see it. It was fun. I hope we can keep it up.

We are still doing our Pioneer unit. We are enjoying it. They are retaining so much more information now that we are going so slow. It's supposed to be done in a month but we are going much slower. We are doing a lot of reading together. We've read "My Side of the Mountain", "On to Oregon", "Sarah Plain and Tall", DD and I read "Little House in the Big Woods", they read books on different Pioneers on their own and write about it in their Pioneer journals. We are going to read "Sign of the Beaver", and "Jimmy Spoon and the Pony Express" as well. They love read alouds.

We are going to be able to mix in science with our Pioneer unit now that I'm trying harder to do so. We can do weather and terrain.

Their math is going well. I bought them both a couple of workbooks to do a little review and move on. I'm waiting until the fall to get new books. They are doing well in both. They do a lot of writing that count as language arts and they get vocabulary in the unit too. They have some quotes with the unit for their copy work and they both have workbooks to do some fill in as well.

We are going strong! We are having to slow down a little our extra stuff because we just don't have time to get everything in but they are doing well and we are having fun.