Labor Day and Home School

We spent the first half of Labor Day weekend with my sister, Bethany, and her family in DC.  Thanks for watching our kids while we were at the temple, Beth!

Also, this view from the freeway never gets old:

We were back in time to spend Labor Day Monday with Matt's parents on Cheat Lake.  We  were so glad to have the chance to enjoy the boat and a little tubing!

 

Fun times! 

Of course, by Labor Day, we had already done a couple of weeks of school.  We are in our fourth week of school now and we love it!  Lots of people have asked me how school "works", so I decided to take some pictures and try to give you an idea of how our day-to-day goes.

First, I have a STRICT rule that we do nothing before school.  I don't check my email and I never answer the phone during school hours.  Any distraction can be disastrous for school.  We eat breakfast and start immediately.  That usually means sometime between 8 and 8:30am.

The first thing we do is sit down at the kitchen table with our History and Science books.  On Wednesdays Matt is around to help with Science.

On this particular day, Matt is teaching the kids about insects and they are looking at insects they have caught under the microscope.

History is a lot of people's favorite.  We read from the book and then get to write about what we've learned in a huge timeline book.  After that, we identify the area we are learning about on a map and do various activities and coloring pages.  Pretty fun.

History and Science are the only two subjects we do together as a family.  After we finish with those, we begin a sort of rotation.

One kid goes to the computer to do their math.

 

One kid goes to the table to do their independent workbooks. (these include, spelling, vocabulary, handwriting, math facts, journal and various writing projects)

And one kid comes into the living room to do reading, language arts and flash cards (vocab words, spelling words and math facts) with me.

After everyone has rotated through all of the stations, we're done.  We're done by lunchtime.

In addition to the regular subjects, the kids take piano lessons for music, do sports for gym (currently doing soccer), go to the library weekly, and have a fun art binder they make art projects from (I printed out pictures of art projects from pinterest and made it myself.

We are working on starting an LDS homeschool co-op, though we have been going to the other one here in Buckhannon.  And, of course, the kids have cub scouts and activity days.  We're really busy in the mornings and the evenings, but the kids pretty much have their afternoons (after chores) to do whatever they want.  That gives me a chance to get things done.

Oh, and if you're wondering how we do all this with Hazie, she is NOT very good for most of it. 

She cries and fusses most of the time. I stop and squeeze her and love on her when I can.  We give her snacks and piles of toys to try to keep her occupied.  At some point, I give up and put her in her bed.  I don't think she actually sleeps, but she's quiet in there. :)