Homeschool Update

Homeschooling is going so well. I haven't updated until now, but all of 12 weeks so far have been so fruitful. I, also, am learning so much as their teacher. Isn't this how it always goes? There is so much out there that I either forgot or never had the opportunity to learn. So, here's to filling in the gaps of my childhood and school days! I hope to update at least a couple times a semester so that I can make a scrapbook of all that Taylor Joy learned this year and let it be a reminder to her in the future.

Science has been a fun subject and our "exploration days" generally fall on Fridays, so Dad is charge of most of the experiments that we do. We have learned much on the topics of:

• seasons
• the parts of a plant
• trees
• different types of seeds
• ants
• thunder and lightning
• rain
• rivers
• volcanoes
• oceans
• the sun and
• the planets!

Here is a picture of the water filter we made one week:

Allen put pieces of an old t-shirt on the bottom and gravel on the top. Beckett had the job of making the water all muddy (a job he was way too excited about!).

We punched holes in the bottom and then poured in the muddy water 

to see if our filter would actually work.

Waiting...

Yay! It worked. Slowly, but surely the clean (ish) water poured out of the bottom of the carton.

We have also been learning the books of the Old Testament and both Beckett and Taylor Joy know almost all of them. We have made a timeline starting at the beginning of creation and adding in each story from the Bible that we learn about. Taylor Joy has been illustrating her Bible Notebook, as displayed below:

We've learned the geography of the Bible lands map and
even copied the Greek alphabet (Allen was so proud!)

She is also learning how to draw animals. Here is a page from her Art Spiral:

As we talked about the days of creation, we had a Feast Day to represent our Sabbath Day, which included fine china, candles lit, a blessing from Dad on all the family members, authentic Challah, and grape juice all around. Such a fun family night.

One of the things I wrote on my thankful leaf last night was: 

that I get to be the one who teaches my kids.

Truly, what an awesome privilege. 

Lord, help me to see the blessing even when it's hard, even when my 2 year old is eating playdoh, even when its just one thing on my long list of things to get done.

( a video of our volcano experiment)

*yes, the kids are in their pajamas. don't judge ;)