Long overdue update

Wow, it sure has been a long time since I posted anything.  We had many road bumps this fall and are finally back into our normal routine.  Hopefully we won't hit anymore bumps and we will all sail along to the end of May with a love for all things that we have come across on this journey of schooling.

In history we are moving right along learning about the Colonists and will soon be moving into the Revolutionary War.

In science we are continuing our study on the human body and moving through all the systems.  Hope and Charity will be making life size bodies and adding bones, muscles and Hope's will have all the systems labeled as well. 

Hope will be starting cursive this week and we will be using a new curriculum for this.  It is called Handwriting without tears.  Hopefully it will be true to it's name. 

We have wrapped up our study of Degas and Chopin using our new notebooking pages that I discovered on notebooking pages.com.  These have been wonderful for the girls.  It makes narration fun and gives a format to our notebooks.  They have something for every subject. 

I'll try to update each week on our daily adventures in the life of St. Therese Academy.

coming to an end and beginning anew

We are finishing up with formal lessons for the year and ordering curriculum for next year. It is an exciting time around here. Faith has finished several subjects and is now doubling up on what she has left so that she will finish within the next few weeks. Hope and Charity have also been trying to wrap up some formal subjects, but will continue some of them through the summer. We don't want to have to reinvent the wheel next fall, so we'll continue with math facts and our wonderful reading book. Writing Road to Reading. http://spalding.org/store/instructional.php

I am really looking forward to our new method of learning next year. After spending six months researching a new approach, I find that it is so very similar to what I learned in college. Why did I not think of this sooner? Who knows? All in His time...(I keep telling myself that). We will be changing our way of doing things and following a kind of Charlotte Mason/mom invented kind of approach. We will tweak it all to make it work for our family, so that we will learn as we live. I am a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of gal and so I will have to be diligent about sticking to a guide so that we cover everything, but that is what I like so much about this approach. There is always plenty of time for exploring in the afternoons. As long as we get Love on our time table, everything should work out just fine. HAH! He is ready to start learning right along with us and loves to color all that he can. Including his body!

I can't wait for the boxes to start arriving. It's one of my favorite things and makes me feel like Christmas morning. The girls and I tear into everything and devour it all right then and there. I love to see their faces and hear what they have to say about what the new school year will bring and what they would like to study.

This next year for history, we will be studying American History for all three girls. Faith will deepen what she learned in 5th grade and Hope and Charity will work on their own levels as well. We will use this for our vocab and spelling throughout the year. We are also switching our language to use Primary Language Lessons for Charity, Intermediate Language Lessons for Hope and Lingua Mater: Language Lessons from Literature for Faith. These books bring all of Charlotte Mason's methods together for daily language in a beautiful way. Through picture studies, narrations, dictations they are all pulled together in these books for each level. We are also beginning our own art studies and music appreciation. After researching prints from different artists, I decided calendars fit our budget best, so I hit calendars.com today and bought enough for free shipping! We will be studying Mary Cassatt, van Gogh, Monet, Renoir and da Vinci. We will also be studying nine different composers and learning about their lives as well. For science we will pick different subjects to work on together and separate. We will study life science, biology and some physical science as well. We will also throw in whatever unit studies we want to as we go along. For math we are sticking with Math U See as we really love the way he teaches the concept, not just the shortcut for learning the tricks.

Through all of this the most important message that we want to teach our children is our faith. The beauty of the Catholic Church and Jesus' gifts of the sacraments are such a blessing to all of us. A year from now, our Charity will celebrate her first communion and so this second grade year will be one filled with exploring and learning so many things as she prepares to receive her Lord and Savior for the first time. We are blessed to have the gift that Jesus left us the night he instituted the Eucharist. The love that He felt for us needs to be spread around to all that we meet. "All are to be welcomed as Christ" St. Benedict. So above all as we journey down this new year and new path, may we treat all as Jesus treats us, with Faith, Hope, Charity and Love!

Our first unit study!!!

I am so excited. A few weeks ago I realized that our ocean unit was winding down so I decided to take the plunge and develop an entire unit study for all subjects and go with it. We have had several birds visiting our backyard lately so I decided this would be the perfect study. I started researching online and making a book list. I started searching the used book stores and talked my husband into going with me to our local Wild Birds Unlimited store. We ended up coming home with lots of wonderful stuff! Our wonderful Daddy put it all together and we were all trying to figure out where everything should go. This was a wonderful family event. Right Daddy?!?

So today was to be our first "bird" day. It started out wonderful. Our painters came to fix our damage from Hurricane Ike and Daddy took the baby to run errands. We grabbed what we could out of the learning room before they covered it all with tarps. We gathered around the kitchen table and began to discuss all that we knew about birds and all that we wanted to learn. The whole time watching our new feeding center in hopes that someone would come and dine. There were at least 20 different species that we saw, but no one stopped to eat. We sketched some birds while we all talked and the girls came up with some amazing art work. Then daddy came home with the boy and he wanted to help the painters. So we called Grandma and off we went. We gathered what we could and took off to Grandma's house. I began to feel like this may not have been the perfect day to begin, but I prayerfully offered it up and tried to just go with it. Once we went to my parents, it was lunch so off the kids went upstairs to play some computer games while we fixed lunch and got settled in. After lunch I decided it would be the perfect time to go for a nature walk around their trails. So we started off and as we turned the corner we were greeted by a beautiful sight and sound. A cardinal was on a low branch singing and communicating with another cardinal far away.

What a treat for us. Part of our studies will be learning the different bird songs. We learned this one from a real life experience. This is the connection that I want for my children to experience. I don't want them to read about these things from a textbook. I want them to learn them from real experiences so that they develop a relationship and it will stay with them their whole life. We walked a little further along and I was amazed at all we saw. From spider webs to turtles to beetles to a very unusual flowering tree that we still have to look up to identify.

Once Daddy called with the all clear that the painters were gone and it was safe to return, we went home and began a poetry study outside while waiting for visitors to our feeding center. We learned a wonderful poem by Victor Hugo.

Be like the bird

That, pausing in her flight

Awhile on boughs too slight,

Feels them give way

Beneath her and yet sings,

Knowing that she hath wings.

This is the first time that Hope has not complained about having to copy something this long. She is loving this so much!!! After we studied the poem for a few minutes, we were visited by a mockingbird on our roof. We watched her for awhile and saw her catching bugs, then we were amazed as she flew to a small, bare tree in our neighbors yard. She went to her nest and fed her babies the insects. Immediately Daddy mockingbird showed up as well. The girls ran upstairs as fast as they could to grab the binoculars to look out their bedroom window, but they couldn't see inside the nest. They were disappointed, but we will be watching to see when the babies leave the nest.

This morning we woke up and finally had visitors. We watched as a male cardinal came over ever so slowly and checked out the feeders, then finally flew up and started to eat. He then delivered a meal to a female who waited patiently in the tree. Once he did this several times, she became brave enough to fly over and fill herself up. We then had some mourning doves who made themselves very comfortable and rested their for several minutes. Not eating, just resting. I am anxious to see where we go and what we learn on this amazing new study. So far in the last two days I have learned more than I ever realized I would learn. I am seeing things and hearing things that I never have heard before. What an amazing world God has created for us and how blessed are we to be able to connect to it on such a deep level.

Wonderful Week

Wow! We had so much fun and the learning was amazing...and the kids actually learned something too. lol While reading Little House on Plum Creek, my dd#2 asked what a dew drop was so I explained it to her and told her that if she went out early enough in the morning she might find dew on the grass, or plants. So during breakfast the next morning, she remembered and she and dd#3 went running out with their new backpacks full and ready to explore. I don't know if they ever found dew drops, but they found something even more rare for us down south...ICE! They had more fun exploring the ice and figuring out why it was on some items, but not on others. They also found out that if a piece is big enough it will shatter, but the small ones won't. They spent 20 minutes coming up with all kinds of ideas and loving every minute of it. After they came back in, they sketched in their books, and then gave me a narration about their exploration. This was definitely one of those special moments that can only happen when one is open to being flexible and not being too regimented on a "schedule." I am finding some of us are going to learn most by being flexible and following the rabbit trails when they are presented.

How blessed am I!!