New Semester routines

Second semester....I love it! We usually mellow out about this time of year. The Academy program for my oldest daughter went great. Meanwhile, I let Grace start the day inspired from her dream last night- she drew pictures of her invention and then wrote about it. Then we had read aloud time (Johnny Tremain and Then What Happened, Paul Revere?), read and practiced reciting Paul Revere's Ride by Longfellow. Grace worked on her Colonial cross-stitch sampler while I read. Then she made macaroni and cheese, worked on her sampler some more, practiced her spelling...worked on her sampler, helped me start some bread and cinnamon treats, worked on her sampler....After Elli got home we just talked and played S'math.

Today was a pretty easy going day. I will bring out the Singapore Math books tomorrow and try to downplay the sampler a little bit. But it is cool. Maybe we'll just have more read aloud time at night and let her work on the sampler only during read alouds. Only trouble with that has been baby is not cooperative during read aloud. It's pretty much an after he goes to bed kind of thing.

If we didn't homeschool I'd miss going through history with Grace, helping her find all those connections between different books, and projects. I'd miss knowing right where she is in spelling- I love seeing her struggle through a word, erase it, close her eyes and rewrite the word, smile and know she has it right. Or the funny "huh?? This does not look right. What's the answer??" Seeing the results immediately instead of getting a spelling test from school is so much more rewarding. I was a little surprised she memorized the first stanza so quickly today and is working on the second stanza of Paul Revere's Ride. I just don't want to send them to a school that does different stuff.....When she went to public school, it was just so much of the basics- I missed seeing her learn about history, geography and science in a connected way.

Which reminds me- tomorrow we study science instead of spending so much time on the colonial unit study. We're entering the Modern Era in Beautiful Feet's History of Science curriculum.