Four weeks of blissful homeschool

We've had an incredible start to homeschool this year. I should be entering things daily so I don't forget them.

Still, here's a run down on all we've accomplished and enjoyed.

Numerous teatimes which have led us to complete several books: Ella Enchanted, Holes, and The Master Puppeteer.

Currently, we're reading The House at Pooh Corner. I get such a kick out of Milne's writing. He has a great sense of humor and the kids are enjoying it.

We've done some reverse dictation, copywork, handwriting and letter writing. Liam and Caitrin sent two thank you notes a piece to grandparents and both of them addressed the envelopes and wrote the notes themselves.

Liam has a magazine subscription to ZooBooks that he reads cover to cover the day it arrives. So far, he's regaled me with detailed narrations of tigers and sea lions and elephants. In addition, he's a member of the Zoo's Juniro Zoologist program which began last night. He talked to me about what he learned from the moment he got in the car until we arrived at home.

Some of what he shared had to do with conservation and how to protect endangered animals like the Blue Macaw. Apparently in Trinidad, conservationistspaid the poachers to not poach macaws and as a result, they've rescued them from the endangered list.

We took Liam and Caitrin to see a play at Xavier which was a performace of Caribbean dance and poetry by Derek Walcott (Nobel Prize winner). Though it was over their heads, I was so pleased with the way both of them have found connections to what they watched in spite of not really loving it.

Liam spent the day at the zoo with my mom on Monday. He is also reading Jack London's "Call of the Wild" that Jon bought for him.

Liam is also studying fractions using the Key to series and is doing extremely well with it. We began the year with Jacob's Mathematics but decided it was too abstract and not useful. Ing-Wan pointed us in the direction of Key To again and I must say, I don't know why I depart from it. It's excellent. We'll just continue with decimals, percents and pre-algebra and geometry. Liam is a natural with math and I'm happy he's working on it.

Caitrin is studying Chinese on Rosetta Stone and is in Book Two of Biblical Greek. She whizzed through Greek level one which was all about learning the alphabet. She's starting to add vocabulary now which is so much fun.

She's got a subscription to American Girl magazine which she reads the day it arrives and is slowly working on Leyla from the Girls of Many Lands collection as well as Little House in the Big Woods. We've had some wonderful conversations about history because she is so curious about the placement of the characters in their right context.

Johannah is playing the role of Miep in The Diary of Anne Frank and that's led us into listening to and reading about Anne Frank. I watched the documentary with Johannah the other night and Liam and Jacob both watched part of it with us.

We've been to the zoo, we've taken a couple of nature hikes with the dog including making center pieces out of natural items.

Lots of games: Quiddler, Apples to Apples, Rummy 500, Spinergy.

Caitrin is sewing up a storm - taking a sewing course from Trish each week on Tuesdays. Liam is starting up with lacrosse again on Monday. Caitrin is in the middle of soccer season. Jacob is going to classes each day at LFS. He has a concert coming up. He is also still taking his weeky private sax lesson. And it looks like Caitrin will be playing violin again! We found a teacher who will come to the house.

We all still watch a lot of TV now that the reality season has returned as well as the NFL and college football. :)

We're doing some fun writing exercises too and I hope to add to them this next month. Jacob is working through my high school writing book. He's just completed the musical language exercise.

Phew. Enough for now.