How Was Your Week?
How Was Our Week?
Heart of Dakota Preparing Unit 16
Our first three weeks of school went by in a flash! I can’t believe that we are already to our first week long break. For those of you who missed it, I wrote here about how to plan a year-round homeschool. The way we are choosing to go year-round this year is with a 3 week on – 1 week off rotation. We will get two weeks off at Christmas, one week off at Thanksgiving and a two weeks off at the end of the Spring Semester. So we begin our first “break.”
This week has worn me out. Between the temper-tantrums of Mrs. E., and the endless potty-training which I think has been officially put on “pause”, and trying to keep up with it all, I truly feel like I earned my much needed break. I say that to say this: life as a mom is hard. No matter how many kids you have, having a 3 year old is really hard work!
What did we do for school? During this week of school, we studied Unit 16 in Heart of Dakota, “Preparing Hearts for His Glory.” Unit 16 focuses on Alexander the Great and Ancient Greece. The kids and I had a lot of fun this week as we learned more about the ancient world. They made paintings of Greek pottery for the history craft. I really like how easy and fun this craft was. This craft also helped the kids to see some of the types of art which would have existed back in Ancient Greece. They drew on their “pottery” with brown crayon, although, I don’t think it was done dark enough … it was supposed to resist the black watercolor but that didn’t exactly turned out how we had hoped.
They also did a great job at the narrations. Narrations are times when the kids stop and think what we just read aloud … and then they tell back to me what they remember. Whatever stuck in their mind can be expressed in this way … they are each allowed time to do this. If they need help, I can prompt them, but we’ve been doing this for so long that I don’t usually have to ask the comprehension questions. It is something that is very important to the Charlotte Mason style of homeschool. So, we do this by literally “telling it back” after each reading, but once a week we work on a written narration, as well. This is a time when they get to think through what they want to say and write 3-5 sentences about the subject. HOD walks us through how to introduce our kids to this new idea.
On Wednesday, we attended a fun “Not Back to School Party” which we do every year at an indoor kids’ play-place, with a local homeschool group. It was a blast to see old friends, meet some new friends and take a short break in the afternoon from our schoolwork.
What were the Littles learning? The Littles (Mrs. E and Mr. D) had lots of fun this week playing with more playdough, building more forts, and having plenty of pretend “picnics” on their blankets. Mr. D especially loved playing his very first game of Candy Land with me and eventually his big brother, when he was done with his morning therapy. We had fun reading stories and keeping up with the laundry and clean ups, too. This just felt like a busy week!
What have I learned this week? I have learned that I will need to carry a clipboard to make sure the kids accomplish their tasks and I also accomplish mine. I plan on making a spread sheet with daily tasks for each child and myself that I will be able to check off when completed. I need this to keep myself on pace for the week. Too many times in the past week, I have realized I forgot to remind someone to do something. Forgetting these small things turns into big frustrations for me and for the child. So, I hope to have that ready by next week.
Curriculum:
5th Grade (dyslexia/dysgraphia)
Heart of Dakota Preparing Hearts for His Glory (Unit 16)
Veritas Press Self Paced History: 1815 – Present
CLE Math: 409
Phonetic Zoo Level A
Read Naturally: Level 4.0
Easy Grammar Grade 4
Art
Piano
3rd Grade
Heart of Dakota Preparing Hearts for His Glory (Unit 16)
Veritas Press Self Paced History: 1815 – Present
Daily Grams Language Review
CLE Math 207
Daily Reading
Daily Creative Writing
Special Needs 7th Grade (autism/developmental delay)
ABA Therapy
Intensive Life Skills
CLE Math 108
Reading Eggs
Daily Reading
How was your week? What curriculum do you use? I would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment below! Don’t forget to sign up for our e-mail newsletter & our Periscope channel: @suchatimeblog
I love your year round schedule. Ours is not quite as neat – we take breaks when we need to. And that is my thought for you, don’t be so set on the schedule that you can’t take a break when you need to.
Also, thank you for sharing a real week with Heart Of Dakota. That is a curriculum we have thought of doing.
Lastly, see my website link for what we do for our homeschool.
April – Thanks for stopping by! The reason we are doing a schedule this year is that I have trouble not taking enough breaks (unless we are all sick)! I don’t like taking all Summer off because it is too hot so we enjoy our Falls & Winters a little bit more. I think I need the schedule telling me it that it is ok to take some time off. It is something I’m working on. If I get to the point where I think we could do 6 weeks on and 1 week off (in order to save some weeks up) I will do that … or if we have a sick household I will take a day off here and there and make up for it another time. I’m learning to be a little more flexible. 🙂 I will check out your website! Thank you.
We are also using HOD, and this is our first year. I have thought about year-round schooling…we may try it!
Hi Megan, I’m so glad you are trying HOD. Which guide are you using?
I have ended up year-rounding it sort of accidentally for the last few years so this year I did it intentionally and it was so much better! We do a 6-week schedule and then a break if we haven’t had one for vacation or other reason (aka illness). We rarely make it a full 6 weeks though!
That’s awesome! I’m glad you are enjoying year-round schooling, too.