Wow. Has it been THREE weeks already?

Updating this blog is a little bit time consuming sometimes. Sorry about that.

Ok, week one (1A6):

The first day went great. Tuesday went fine until the evening hit and I came down with a really yucky sickness. I was frozen, curled up on the couch with a blanket and apple cider. I wasn't planning to have school Wednesday, but we pushed through and we really had a blast! Learning about Noah and how the flood affected the earth at the same time is really cool!

If you followed my old blogs (with MFW) you will know that projects always seem to get put off until the end of the week. Little Bear and I worked on Noah's ark all by ourselves Thursday night - all the boys were busy. We worked on cutting out and gluing all of the animals. She just about did the whole thing almost all by herself! It was a good hour she cut and glued. Over the weekend the kids finished the ark totally.

And...here are the fossils:

LOL! I'm just not good at these projects.

Last week (1A7):

Speaking of projects - we also got halfway through making our volcano this past weekend, but our little d got into it and broke our mountain. Everyone was really bummed. We'll probably try to patch it up just do a makeshift type just to show the "explosion."

Otherwise, I am beginning to see how SOW is supposed to work. (Please don't ask me why I didn't "get" it before, because I don't know.) But, I honestly believe that SOW is THE best curriculum out there.

I keep telling my husband that I feel like I've gone back to school, because I am learning so much! In my spare time I am reading books so that I know what I'm going to teach my kids. It's so fun!

Here's what the whiteboard that is hanging up in my dining room usually looks like:

I had a friend over for lunch the other day. She is a newer convert. While we were sitting in the dining room, she got quiet and asked me WHY exactly I had the word "Nimrod" written up there. LOL! She'd only heard it used as a bad word. (Not that it isn't - he was pretty wicked from what we do know about him.) It was just really funny!

I did switch the schedule around a little bit. I forgot to add "share work" on there and I wanted to add in a time for cleaning up & brushing teeth. Also, as expected, we now go for a walk AFTER we eat. I know, I should have just started that way...

Now, week 3 (1A8)

We are studying Abram and rocks. This last week was a little bit of a rough week, so we're extending it until next week. After this week I'm planning to take a light week. During this non-sow week we will catchup on some of the independent work and read few fun read alouds just for fun.

We're going on our walks, collecting rocks. We'll be doing a chart and growing crystals here soon. Hopefully we can also finish some of these other projects that we're in the middle of.

I really want to update weekly, but it just seems like if it's not one thing it's another! I'll just try to keep updating when I can.

After this week we'll be traveling into space & learning more about Abraham who was promised as many children as the stars!

3...2...1...BLAST OFF!!

Back to SOWing!!!

I know this is going to be our best school year ever! The foundation that has been laid is really perfect and having my daughter with us is so much fun.

We actually started on Friday when most of the books came. (still waiting on others, but it's ok.) Friday we did the reading and outline and read Noah's Ark fictional story (In The Days Of Noah - part 1). The kids could have gone on doing school all day long, but I had to get going! LOL! I find that it's taking us until about 1:30 stopping only to have lunch. (Well that includes breakfast, walk, cleanup, etc. too) I'd say a total of 2 - 3 full hours working together. Then they have their independent work in the afternoon. (Little Bear doesn't have any right now until she gets her reading books and math book). She's VERY VERY excited to begin, but in the meantime she's just happy to be involved SOWing.

Speaking of, she really liked doing the outline. Today we worked on the Vocab/Topic and I think I decided that I'm not going to do that page each week with her. It's just a little too much. I was glad we were able to talk about it today and we did the sheet together, but it was just over her head to do all the time. I might even skip it for Superkid, we'll see. Oh, then we learned about Polystrate Fossils and drew our own pictures of them.



















(This is my own drawing on the white board...yes, I know...and yes, they do get worse!)

That's about it so far. Tomorrow (or maybe tonight with Daddy!) we'll be doing either a model of Noah's ark and/or making our very own fossils!! The kids will really like that. We also have a few library books about geology to read.

We're working hard on 1A6 and I think maybe, just maybe...we'll be getting it totally done with in a WEEK! Oh, the joy of actually figuring out what it is I'm doing over here is beautiful!! Seriously.

Check in later with more pictures...