A school day in the summer

Most of the homeschool families around here do not school during the summer. But we do because we like to take days off all year long. This way we get all of our school hours in even if we take of a Tuesday in February. Or a week off because everyone in the house has the tummy flu. I do not schedule the way some people do I make a schedule but do not put dates on it. I just add the dates when we do the assignment then I keep a daily journal of our school days so I can see progresses. Well I thought that I would share with you what we have been doing.

First off I want to share with you that the curriculum that we were going to use was not working for us. We have been trying to do it but it is not fitting our family. Everyone was in tears daily including me some days. Homeschooling is about learning not doing it a certain way. So since I spent my school budget for 2012- 2013 I could not buy anything else. Well until I sell the stuff I bought. Please don’t get me wrong the curriculum that we got was a great program but it just was not working for us. The best advice I have gotten from another homeschool mom was that if it is not working for you or your children change it. So we are going back to our eclectic style of school that we were doing before that worked for us but I changed for some crazy reason. *sigh*

If you have been reading a for a couple of years you know that we were using the Robinson Curriculum. We are going back to that and adding a different math which is actually from 1900 called Ray Arithmetic. You can find these free on Google books. Will is using the primary lessons Vinny is using intellectual arithmetic. Croix is working on memorizing additions facts. We are still using our McGuffey readers. I do have to suggest if you want to make it a lot easier on you if you use the McGuffey's or the Rays books buys Sherry’s helps. They are wonderful helps and not too pricy *smile*. One thing I did find out with Ray’s math is that America used to be way more advanced in school then our schools are now. I thought that it would be the other way around. We are also learning about Ancient times this year for history. Agani we are using another free book called, Ancient history told to children, and for science we are using The story book of science . The boy are enjoying these living books. Here are some pictures of a day this summer.

Will doing copy work from his McGuffey reader

 

Vinny doing some copy work also

Croix doing his Kindergarten curriculum from Rod and staff

Vinny working on his language arts I bought from an antique store. This is an awesome book!

Vinny and Croix playing War helping Croix with math. Kids learn so much when they can have fun.

Here is our History. We have are doing Notebooking this year with our History and Science. If you have not ever though of using this method it is awesome. Kids remember so much more about what they learned if you have them write, tell back in pictures, or essays they can go look back at their own notebook and remember so much. 

We were learning about ants and all the different things each ant does. This book is so detailed.

So this was a day for us a week or so ago. I just can not wait to get in the full swing of school and be back at it every day. I love the rhythm of our days when we have school daily.

  God Bless,

    Jen