Ok, well our school is not really out for summer, since we'll probably keep going through most of summer, but Co-op has officially ended for the year. So, in honor of that officailly being over, I thought I'd recap some of our school year.
This year we tried a new curriculum that I have recently given up on. The curriculum was neat in that it tried to tie in Scripture with all subjects- for example, when you are studying Noah and the Ark, you may also be studying rain, fisherman, or boat building. However, I felt that the curriculum was not complete and well written and I often resorted to doing unit style studies that I made up on my own. In particular we did unit studies on Volcanos and Caves.
We visited Cathedral Caverns back in January when leaving Huntsville. It's the second largest commercial cave in the US and it's not well-known by many local tourists. We were amazed at it's beauty and by the creativity that the lighting specialist used- you can see in two of the pictures that he used light to make it look like the cave went down forever when in fact it was a perfect reflection in a small pond. Visiting the cave was the perfect field trip to wrap up our cave unit, but also the perfect thing to do on a very cold day- the cave has a year round temperature of 63 degrees, making it the perfect way to forget how cold it was outside!
The kids and I attended a once a week homeschool cooperative this year at a local church. The co-op had about 80 families involved and allowed the kids to get together once per week with other homeschoolers. Harbin was in the Kindergarten class where they did unit studies and had PE. The girls were all in basic childcare although they often came home having learned about letters, shapes, etc. This semester Harbin studied the Human Body and they even put a cute skeleton together, adding different body systems each week. He learned about systems like the nervous, circulatory, and muscular system. It was so cute to listen to him talk about all he learned like he was a little pre-med student!
At the end of co-op they had an awards ceremony as well as a Georgraphy Fair. Families were given the opportunity to volunteer to do a presentation board on a state of their choosing. We ended up having about 35 states represented at the fair and our family chose to do Georgia (a good start for a Kindergardener I thought). Harbin really enjoyed planning out what would go on the board and where. He looked up and typed out all of the facts, but when it came to assembling the board, that was all Catherine. She spent lots of time carefully cutting out pictures from various brochures we'd gotten at the Visitor Center. She helped place them on the board and glue them down. All-in-all the board came out great and no one would have ever guessed a 4 and 6 year-old put it together, but they did and they loved it!
We started a new curriculum in April and it's going very well. It's much easier to stay on task since each subject's assignments are very well laid out and I am still able to add in my own fun as I wish! Harbin is really loving it because we read a lot of books and the girls are doing well integrating into it where appropriate. We will probably school through the summer just because the kiddos don't care and are still at an age where school is fun.
Enjoy the pics and stay tuned for bunch of posts coming your way. The last few months have been super busy, so I am hoping to have some catch up time here soon!
The mom.
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