We’re finally back to school this week, after two weeks off for Christmas break! We followed the public school calendar because of Lindsey’s schedule, and since Kathryn would be gone some of that time to her dad’s house for the holidays, and her step-siblings are in public school as well. Starting back up is never easy, but I allowed Kathryn to sleep late this week, and we eased back into things.

Over our break, we finally finished reading King Arthur, and Kathryn was a little sad to see it end. However, we’re starting Oliver Twist as our next read-aloud, and I’m hopeful we’ll enjoy that as well. We Mad-Libbed some grammar-learning silliness, continued to enjoy Daily Paragraph Editing, and reviewed plural and singular nouns in First Language Lessons.

We had friends joining us for schoolwork this week. Sometimes they just observed, but sometimes they were distracting and I had a hard time getting Kathryn back to our regularly scheduled programming.

At some point, she even came up with a family tree, after deciding they must all be related. The general consensus on my facebook page is that this counted as a bit of social studies. If I feel like pushing it, I could probably convince Kathryn to do a bit of creative writing inspired by this paper doll family tree, too.

For those wondering, these paper dolls came from The Black Apple’s Paper Doll Primer. I bought it a few months ago, intending to give it to Kathryn as a birthday gift, but then couldn’t decide if it was too weird. After all, there’s a set of conjoined twins in there. But I came across it again in my closet clean-out project, and Kathryn saw it and loved it, despite — or maybe because of — it’s quirkiness.

In math this week, Kathryn has mostly been doing geometry, dealing with shapes and area and perimeter and such. She’s also working with borrowing in subtraction problems; this is review for her, but something she sometimes got sloppy on, so I’m glad for the review. I’m still very much liking Teaching Textbooks.

We learned about Cyrus McCormick and the invention of the reaper, and read more about events leading up to the Civil War. I’ve been learning a few things along the way. This way of learning history is just so much better with the dry, boring way I learned it all in school.

In bat mitzvah class, Kathryn had her midterm test last Saturday. It was her first ever midterm anything. We don’t do a whole lot of testing in our homeschooling, so it’s interesting to me to see how very well she has done with her tests thus far in these classes. Hurray for homeschooling!

I’ll be linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers’ Weekly Wrap-Up today; join in!

Jamie

Wife, mom, J-ma. Introvert who enjoys good books, sunshine, and authentic conversation. Often seen with a steaming mug of tea in hand – unless it’s lost yet again in the microwave. Read more »