French school

We leave for France on Thursday! Boy, am I excited. :D
I'm working on my French and am fairly sure I'll be able to communicate our basic needs. Dh knows a family there and they have lots planned for us. We'll start in Paris and spend a week or so there. Then we'll head off to Normandy with some site seeing along the way.
This is a holiday, but we aren't totally dropping school.
We'll do math, grammar, spelling, handwriting, phonics and writing on the plane. I'm not assigning Chelsea writing, I just know she will. :D We'll read of course, and play educational games. I'm taking electricity, French-Canadian and Emily Carr themed books so we can still do a loose art appreciation, history and science studies. French will be on an all time high but we won't do Latin. No piano or yoga. We'll pray and read the Bible, but no real study. No country themed cooking, but we have an iPod loaded with classical music so maybe we'll do informal music appreciation.
I'm still trying to decide what books to take, I'd like to bring the library!
I'm excited! I know we'll be "behind" in our school work, but homeschooling is about FLEXABILITY. I'm going to put that word to use.

Weekly Report

Canada - We "went" to Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador. I've decided to study Quebec next month when we study French Canadians.
I designed another lapbook, this one for the maritime provinces. We had lots of fun with it and Megan thought it was the best ever! Yeah, maybe I'm bragging. :D
The _if for ____ books are favourite here so the kids cheered when they heard that A is for Algonquin, F is for Fiddlehead and P is for Puffin were on the book list. They have way more information than your average alphabet book which makes them a learning tool for all ages.
I was nervous about doing Anne of Green Gables as a read aloud but everyone is loving it, even Cassidy! She has an Anne colouring book and is really careful about staying in the lines. Chelsea read Emily of New Moon and loved it, even staying up till midnight to read!

Science - I'm feeling back on track here! We've started studying electricity and I was able to find books to read! The Magic School Bus and the Electric Field Trip was great for the little ones, where would we be without Ms. Frizzle? Chelsea gobbled up a Horrible Science book, Killer Energy and Shocking Electricity and loved Electricity almost as much.

Math - I've hit a jackpot with Megan! Miquon Orange and a homemade math fact CD, what could be better for a young, auditory, discovery loving learner? She's finished up the entire A section of the book which is on counting. She listened to the counting part of our CD and memorized One, Two Buckle My Shoe.

Okay, I'd write more but I need to back to go to France and sometime I have to sleep. :D

Knitting

Knitting is a hobby of mine, something I really love to do. Where I live it doesn't get super cold in the winter but I still loves those evenings by the fires, needles in hand.
Recently I've been on an extreme knitting frenzy:
Cassidy was desperately in need of a new toque so I made her a warm, fluffy, pink one that she wears everywhere, some slippers, mittens and a vest.
Megan has gotten three sweaters (she's the time of kids that wears t-shirts ALL year round so when we hand a cold snap there was a bit of a problem with clothes for Megan) which she loves and actually wears (!), slippers and am working on a scarf with Megan which I should have finished for her birthday (beginning of Jan.). I'm also teaching her how to knit and she's working on a doll scarf which is nice and easy.
Chelsea got a poncho, Santa hat (this was lots of fun to make), slippers and a pencil case. She knits or draws during read alouds and recently made a calculator holder (don't ask me why she did) and has started on a bag.
DH (am I aloud to call him that even though we don't get married for a week?) has a few new ties, slippers and a sweater.
I have gone a tad crazy on making dish towels and have also made myself a BIG maternity sweater :D and slippers.

I'm getting requests left right and center for more knitted things. Good thing I have a major addiction to it.

Have you heard?

Have you heard about the NEW Well-Trained Mind Forums!?!?
They are the BEST! No more spam on the accelerated forums is something I've been longing for. I was slightly sad to leave the old boards, I've been reading them for ages but I am very happy with the new ones.
God truly told me the write time to get e-mail. :D

Forums

Skating

We went skating today after finishing school and had lots of fun. Chelsea has sort of self taught herself with a bit of instruction (read that a few times if you need to :D) some simple figure skating moves and I'm a fairly decent skater. Cassidy and Megan were big bundles of clothes that spent most of the time on their bums!!
It was great, there were lots of homeschoolers there (well, it is a homeschooler skate) and us moms had a great time chatting, skating and helping kids stand up. I really love these sort of things, where kids can play and moms can chat. Normally we do it over lovely organic cofee and homemade cookies at bi-weekly Everything Homeschool meetings, but skating was an awesome change. It really is a wonderful community.

Weekly Report

Well, another week has flown by! Here's some of what we did at Morning Glory Academy:

Canada - We studied the Prairie Provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba) this week. I designed a lapbook to go with our studies and it was a HIT!! Megan and Cassidy absolutely adored See Saw Saskatchewan and Eenie Meenie Manitoba. They almost have the books memorized! We also did really well on our quizzes in the Canadian Sites and Symbols books. Chelsea added more cities and sites to our map.

Art - We love Emily Carr!!! Maybe we'll just study her for the rest of the year. :D I read Discovering Emily to Megan and Cassidy (but Cassidy only half listened) and The Book of Small to Chelsea. We'll keep reading this over the next few weeks. Next week we might try painting but I'm NOT making any promises. :D

Cooking- This was a lot of fun! The pavlova was delicious and we've invited our New Zealand friends around for dinner and pavlova sometime. We also learnt about our country for the week, Australia. We read Australia, Australia and Outback Adventure Megan read some of this (YAY!!).

Latin - Chelsea got everything right on her Latin quiz!!

Spelling - This must be a good week for Chelsea, she aced her spelling test too!

Math - Math is great for Chelsea. :D She did lessons 4, 5 and 6 this week. The first Miquon book came yesterday. Today Megan did the first page which she liked, I think. :D I'm working on making a math fact CD. I think using this with Miquon would work really well for Megan.

Science - We finished reading Chapter 5 of RS4K Physics . No projects (I'm feeling in an anti- project mood) or supplementary books (I had a lot of trouble finding ones). But I don NOT want to be doing our full school curriculum in France. I'm taking some workbooks for the plane and educational books to read but there is no way we're going to be doing science experiments.

Bought

I bought TOG Redesign Year 1!!! I'm so excited about it :D! If it's not something I want I know I'll have no trouble selling it to one of the local homeschoolers. There are always people buying and selling, it'll be okay. I just have to tell myself that.

Should I buy?

I'm trying to decided if I should buy TOG or not. It goes up on price on February 1st but I'm also not totally sure I want to use TOG this year.

Think, think, think says Pooh Bear.

Rest of the year

I only planned on changing history. We were struggling through modern history and Canadian history seemed a better choice. But, I've been thinking and realized that we've changed a lot more than just history.
History - Switched from modern history to Canadian history. The plan for the rest of the year is:
January - Introduction to Canada
February - French Canadians
March - First Nations and Inuit
April - Discovery of Canada - Confederation
May - Confederation - present day
June - two weeks of Canadian government, one week of scientists and one week of athletes

If you're going "What? Why are the First Nations and Inuit after the French Canadians?" I"ll explain. My original plan was to go chronological along with First Nations/Inuit in Feb. But we'll be in France part of the time so I think French Canadians is a better fit.

Math - I finally clued in to the fact that Saxon 6/5 was too simple for Chelsea. She's loving Saxon 7/6 so much that she did lesson 4 on the weekend! :D
I've decided to buy the first Miquon book for Megan. I'm really excited about it and think she'll like the discovery approach. No more Saxon for her!

Art and music app. - I've been really happy with Harmony Fine Arts but have decided to go with our Canadian history study we should study Canadian artists. I still haven't got that all planed out but we're starting Emily Carr tomorrow. She'll be a good artist for us to start of with, mainly because she's local so there are lots of resources around.
I'm also dropping music app. which is something I never thought I'd do. I really enjoy it and so do the kids but for the rest of the school year we're going to stop. Instead we're doing COOKING! Were going to choose a country per week and make to meals/snacks/baking/cook something from that country. We're going alphabetically.
This week is Australia and we'll make pavlova (I tend to think of this as a New Zealand food but the kids are always looking for an excuse to have it!) and zucchini and vegetable slice.
Next week will be Belgium and make Belgium waffles and Belgium creamed potatoes
Then there's Canada (!) and we'll have pancakes and homemade, vegetarian poutine (Canada doesn't have much traditional food and I was getting desperate!) which I'm going to improvise a recipe for (this might turn into a chemistry class!).
Geography - We finished of Galloping the Globe and are focusing on Canadian geography.
Phonics - Cassidy is flying along with Explode the Code. I thought we'd get through Book A of the Get Set for the Code series but she's happily going along with book B.

I'm amazed at how confident I feel with all this different stuff because normally I like to have tradition and ease into new situations. But everything is going well. :D

Moved

I decided that I'd rather blog here than Homeschool Blogger so I've moved!
For previous posts please visit: http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/morninggloryacademy

Arwen