His Treasure Seekers

 This was one of those weeks when we’re thankful for the flexibility of homeschooling.  The older boys had the opportunity to take horseback riding lessons for two mornings, so we squeezed in a little extra work before and after so they could just enjoy some time with Grandma and the cousins joining them on those days.

I realize a homeschool supermom would have used such an opportunity to do a full-blown unit study on horses, or at the very least tie in a Five in a Row book to enhance the whole learning experience, but since I’m not trying to win any awards, we didn’t do a single horse-related thing outside of their lessons.  I didn’t even use the time while the boys were gone to do some extra special preschool time with my little ones.  We went grocery shopping with two less kids and got in some long naps.  How’s that for a good use of our time?

Here’s what we did manage to get done this week when the boys weren’t out grooming and riding Pixie the pony:

Science

We read lessons 7-9 in Our Weather & Water, covering the ice age, global warming, and the water cycle, but we didn’t do any of the activities.  The kids all enjoyed watching The Magic School Bus: Kicks Up a Storm about weather and The Magic School Bus: Wet All Over about the water cycle.

Literature

We read a few stories in D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths.  Most of these tales are new to me, though I’m realizing I’ve heard references to them often, so even though we’re no longer learning about the Vikings, I’m planning to keep reading a little each week until we finish the book.

Independent Learning

The boys finished most of the lessons on their weekly checklists in the first half of the week, so when they finished up their riding lessons they each only had one or two things to do on Friday.

Language Skills

In Reading Eggs,they both decided to take a break from the Skills Bank to do lessons in Storylands.  Elijah loves his Horizons 1st Grade Penmanship workbook and often wants to complete several lessons in one day.

Math

They’re continuing to improve with their math facts on xtramath.org.  Elijah’s working through addition, and Ian has pretty much mastered addition and subtraction.  I’m trying to decide whether to try to improve his speed on those facts or move on to multiplication.

The boys are becoming more independent in their lessons on CTCMath.com and Teaching Textbooks Math 3.  I didn’t realize how much I had walked through the lessons with them until I forced myself to stay away and do things in other parts of the house while they worked.  They’ve both stumbled a little without me carrying them, but they’ve managed to get through and I think it’s going to make for a much smoother year once the baby arrives, now that they’re learning not to rely on me so much.

History

Ian’s Veritas Press Self-Paced History Course on the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation covered St. Jerome and the Latin Vulgate this week.  I am learning so much from this course, and I hope Ian is too.  The memory song runs through my head day and night, and Ian and I have both learned most of it by heart.  All the younger children come running into the room when he gets to that part of the lesson, and it will be interesting to see what they absorb.

Because of the boys’ riding lessons, I decided to postpone the assigned reading until next week.

A few final thoughts

I’m so thankful that homeschooling gives us the freedom to do school in the summer (when I want to hide in my nice air conditioned house!), take a few days off for horseback riding lessons, work at the children’s individual ability levels, and learn about God’s hand in history rather than just sticking with the public school social studies curriculum.  So many parts of our week were only possible because of the homeschooling lifestyle.  It’s what I longed for as a child, and I’m so blessed that our family has this opportunity.

Upcoming Reviews

We’re enjoying several products right now, so watch for these reviews in the next few weeks:

• With Lee in Virginia (audio adventure from Heirloom Audio Productions)
• Science Unit Studies for Homeschoolers and Teachers by Susan Kilbride
• Horizons 1st Grade Penmanship set (from Alpha Omega Publications)
• The Conversation by Leigh A. Bortins (founder of Classical Conversations)