H – 4th 6 Weeks

Amazingly, we’re pretty much staying on schedule with the Core A workload. Our foster son’s schedule messes us up a bit and each of the kids has a current class at Gilbert Rec, but I couldn’t get them on the same day, so we’re out and about for that three mornings a week. I’m able to grab at least one subject to do with whoever isn’t in class, so that’s kinda nice and a little bit of more one-on-one time.

So Hannah just completed week 24 of Core A. In Bible, we are up to Elisha and his recorded miracles. I ended up splitting the boys off and doing a younger bible for them and then doing Hannah’s bible at a different time. Ben just wasn’t tracking with this bible, but Hannah is eating it up. I like the language and it doesn’t try to baby down some of the more difficult situations.

In history/social studies, we got through World War II and pretty much up to present time for history. Social studies is focusing on different cultures in a generic way. How do different people get to work, use transportation, types of food, types of jobs, types of clothing, where do they live? So very broad, but giving Hannah a good basis of ‘the world is big and people have different ways of doing things and living and here are some examples’.

For Read Alouds, we completed the 7 book original Curious George collection, completed In Grandma’s Attic (which Hannah really enjoyed), and are starting Wizard of Oz (which I’m really excited about).

Reading / LA – Still cruising along. Hannah finishes the required reading usually on the first day of the week. But she still needs the LA/grammar and writing part, so we just add extra reading each week and continue to work on the sentences.

Science is still so much fun! This year is so broad, we’re zooming through topics, just to give her exposure to them. We’ve finished up our overview of plants, flowers, trees and moved into the human body. Brain, senses, health, medicine. Then into atoms and molecules, states of matter, and now doing energy. She doesn’t always retain the specific term for something, but is usually able to relay the general idea of what we studied to Nate when he reviews her worksheets. We’ve had a few fun experiments too!

Math! Wow. Hannah is completing Horizons K this week. I need to make her a little certificate. We’re just going to go ahead and work straight into Horizons 1. Since she’s doing first grade reading, I don’t mind leveling up math too. I previewed the material, and I don’t foresee us having very much difficulty with this next set. I’m borrowing a little digital flash card game called the “Flash Master” from a friend. Sonlight carries it and I was interested if Hannah would like it. She will do a couple rounds and seems to enjoy it, so might be something I need to purchase for when we really get into the ‘memorizing’ of the tables phase (still a ways away) and trying to get a little bit faster.

Hannah’s extracurricular right now is an art class through Gilbert. She is enjoying it, and the pictures of her projects are here.
We also try to do one field trip or activity a week with a homeschool group to add a little bit of variety to our schedule.