Pumpkin Time

 

Peppa often licks Nadia's face - so sweet!

While we were on vacation I got Nadia a pumpkin at Aldi for her to carve. The kids are generally NOT fans of scooping the pulp and seeds out of the pumpkins, and so I thought maybe we'd just do one pumpkin this year. Nadia is supposed to bring a carved pumpkin to the cast party this Friday night. Amazon delivered the goodies I ordered last week for our Christmas shoe boxes - stuffed animals, calculators, glue sticks, soap, marbles, jump ropes, etc. As we started filling our five boxes, we realized we needed to buy some more things. We thankfully had finished our schoolwork before lunch today. Usually there is at least one child still doing schoolwork until about 2pm. So we headed to the Dollar Tree after lunch to buy more things for our shoe boxes. I also went across the street to the grocery store to buy a couple of things and saw they had all their pumpkins on sale for $2. I asked the boys if they wanted to carve a pumpkin this year. Ian wasn't interested, but Oliver wanted one. So after we finished packing our shoe boxes, we worked on carving two pumpkins. Since Oliver really, really likes

Paw Patrol, Ian suggested a Paw Patrol badge. Nadia made a scared face on her pumpkin. She carved the mouth. I carved her eyes and the paw print on Oliver's pumpkin. They both helped with scooping out the pulp and seeds. 

I don't create report cards for my kids. I will probably start keeping track of Nadia's grades next year, which is one year earlier than I am required to do so. If I was making report cards, I think we would have completed our first marking period because we started school a little over two months ago. Today was technically our 71st day out of the 180, but some of those were from this summer or field trips so we we're only about 1/4th of the way through the curriculum. I'm not going to record an analysis of each child in every subject but rather I thought I'd make a list of some of my favorite resources (in no particular order):

1. Audiobooks -We use either Audible, Hoopla, or Overdrive every day to listen to audiobooks. Right now we're listening to The Brooklyn Bridge by Karen Hesse and Daring to Hope by Katie

Davis Majors. 

2. World Watch News - We watch this about 10 minute news broadcast once a day M-F. I think it's great!

3. Seterra Geography - This is a website that the kids use to learn the countries of the world and the capitals of some of the countries. They have a wide assortment of map quizzes. So far Nadia and Ian have passed the ones for the provinces of Canada, all of the countries of North and South America, and the capitals of most of the countries in the western Hemisphere (didn't have them learn the capitals of the islands in the Caribbean) 

4. Life of Fred - We love this series of math books! Math is the subject we have been spending the most time on this year. Nadia has been doing two math lessons a day through Teaching Textbooks because she wants to work through both Math 7 and Pre-Algebra this year. We use Life of Fred as a supplement. We're in the Fractions book now, and I really like the extra problems they give in what

he calls the Bridge. After completing five lessons they have to pass a bridge to move on to the next lesson. The books are very humorous and include concepts from many other facets of life.

5. Beast Academy - Oliver is currently in 2A, and Ian recently started 5B. This is a challenging curriculum but really excellent at fostering creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving skills.

6. Creating a Masterpiece - I'm thankful I signed up for another subscription that gives us access to a wide array of art lessons. This week Nadia is taking two art classes by Zoom through the Berks Youth Chorus, but most weeks our art will be through Creating a Masterpiece. 

7. Sermon on the Mount - I'm glad the kids have been able to participate in AWANA in the past, but I have to say I prefer memorizing one bigger chunk of Scripture over memorizing a verse here and another verse there. So far we've memorized Matthew 5:1-18 together. We're planning to

memorize chapters 5-7 by the end of our school year. 

8. Talkbox.mom - This is a fun way to learn another language! For example, today we played a memory game about the sounds that animals make in Spanish. We are actually making progress with using Spanish throughout the day. When we were doing the service project last week, I was counting "uno, dos, tres" many times as we were putting the rice, beans, and vegetables into the meal bags, and then after the third one I'd say "bien hecho" (good job). All three kids definitely learned that phrase that day! Each day I try to add at least one phrase to my repertoire. Yesterday I worked on using "ven aqui" or "vengan aqui" (come here in both singular and plural).  

9. Public libraries - In addition to getting audiobooks for free, we also check out books from two different library systems - picture books, chapter books for the kids, and books for me as well. I'm really, really hoping that the libraries don't shut down again due to COVID-19. 

10. All About Spelling - Some of the resources on this list are ones we are using for the first time this year such as World Watch News, Talkbox.mom, and Seterra's website. Others on this list we've been using since I began homeschooling Nadia in 2013. AAS is one of the resources we've been using the entire time. Nadia finished the curriculum in the spring, but Ian is in Level 6, and Oliver is in Level 3.

11. Fix It Grammar - I think this is a quick and excellent way to cover a little grammar each day. Nadia and Ian are in the third book (Frog Prince). Today for example we talked about the difference between affect and effect.