Another homeschool year

Here we are at the 2016-2017 school year. We've just completed our first week of homeschool and co-op and already need to make some changes. Tristan is going to switch his co-op novel writing class for First Aid and CPR and then do the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum at home.  He will of course stick with drama class. They're doing a musical this year. I don't think much could compare to A Pirates Life for Me, which everyone at co-op still talked about 2 years later but they will tackle something quite different this time. The musical is Called Romeo and Harriet. We listed to the CD on the way home from co-op on Tuesday. It's....different! As for the class I'm teaching drama for the younger kids, we will do the play The Jungle Book. I have 20 very enthusiastic 8-11 year olds and our first class was a blast! This week was so hectic, I didn't even take a back to homeschool picture. Maybe we'll call next week the first week and try again! I have some curriculum pics anyway!

Geometry, mathusee

Novel Writing

Physics with some added fun.

What do you want to learn? Colin could use this for Dutch or Tristan for?

Romeo and Harriet?

KitKat and Kilgharrah want to write novels!

Today's visit to Mom (Grammy)

Visited Mom again today. The trip through NH and onto MA was full of all sorts of weather from sunny to cloudy to torrential rains, high winds, falling branches and a bit of hail!  The kids who went along this time were Trevor and Tristan. We had a pretty nice visit, mom was alert for an hour or so and later got tired. Mom was glad to see the boys and loved the fall crafts that Hayley made for her and had a little laugh when I told her the cats helped Hayley make them. One of the highlights was when one of mom's friends came into the room, saw my handbag on the floor and before I could get it from her she noticed and then grabbed out one of the dark chocolate bars I had brought for mom. I so wanted that little old lady to be able to keep the chocolate bar but the aide who came looking for her didn't think she should have it.  She had been so happy with her find, oh well maybe she has diabetes or something. Her husband wasn't there this time but if he is next time I'll ask if she's allowed to have chocolate. It gave us all a much needed laugh anyway sometimes these visits are hard and when mom is not so interactive they can be a little monotonous. We love her and will keep visiting but these little things that happen to give us a laugh are nice too.

We stayed from about 11:00-2:00. The weather had turned very nice by the time we left the nursing home and we were sure hungry. We decided to stop for food and also at the "brick house sticking out in the water" that we often pass en route to the nursing home. Turns out this brick house is a historic site called The Old Stone Church and it's in West Boylston, Massachusetts. We had a little wander through and enjoyed walking the grounds and a little sit on the beach. As it's on the Wachusett Reservoir no swimming is allowed. We thought this would be a nice spot to bring a picnic for a future trip. Further up the road we stopped at a quirky antique and consignment store that had everything from fancy old china to x-box games. We didn't buy anything but it was fun to look around and nice to stretch out legs before the rest of the 3 hour journey.

Move along January

We've gotten off rather lightly with both snow amounts and temperatures so far this winter. I am willing January and the rest of winter to pass quite quickly so we can get to spring and better weather. There is a very cooped up feeling in NH in the winter. Sure we can spend time outside with snow sports, nature walks and such, it's just not very pleasant time once you start to feel chilled! The recent snowstorm, a big one, stayed south of us and here we are towards the end of January with just a few inches of snow. It has been very cold for several days though and I have one frozen plumbing pipe(hot water to kitchen sink). Thankfully it's supposed to warm up some in the week to come and that should resolve.  So not much snow, not as many very cold days as usual and not as many frozen pipes as usual, I'll take it but I do want winter to move along because while it's still here anything could happen.

This week we had co-op, snowboarding, taekwondo and a trip to the nursing home to take mom out for her birthday. The wild turkeys paid us a few visits, Choco the old ferret considered doing evil towards Lily the hamster and the dogs and cats are in and out and in and out, wanting to enjoy the outdoors but quickly deciding that they are cold and coming back in the house again.

Colin

A nice, if cold day on the mountain. Colin coming down from a run.

Colin heading back to the lodge for a break.

Not much snow so far this winter.

View down the road and the lake is beyond the trees.

View up the road.

Ineffective sunshine.

Small sign of spring, well not really this is indoors!

Just another winter homeschool week

We still haven't had a lot of snow though a few inches arrived the end of the week. It is colder, still not a terribly cold winter, above average, that is good. Homeschooling and everyday life are plugging along. We had to miss a visit to my mom due to that one snowstorm, that messed up our currently tight schedule since mom counts on our visits and it's a week where it will be hard to fit it in another day. Hopefully we can figure out something.

Hayley and Colin had another snowboard day at Sunapee. I hit the trails myself on my skis and did pretty well.

There's Hayley zooming down the mountain.

Hayley with her lesson group, male teacher and three boys, Hayley is the only girl in her group.

Felix finds a different use than I had intended for my fabric bins. I guess they do make for cozy cat beds.

Mom's hamster Lily hanging out in her ball while In change her cage.

I gave Lily a "snowfall" look by sprinkling some white bedding on top of her blue bedding.

Lily hasn't worn out the second spinny wheel yet. She runs and runs while Tristan does some schoolwork on the same table.

The turkeys were out right after the Saturday snowfall, they seemed to enjoy pecking around in it.

Off into the woods go the turkeys

Wild Turkey heading into the woods.

Tristan is in the description part of his writing book. The birds fandex is because he had to describe certain birds.

Then Tristan had to describe ways people might enter a room, this sentence asked for ways girls might enter a room.

I'm glad to know that as a girl I can teleport into a room!

Homeschooling- mid year update

I'm only homeschooling 2 now and Colin, at 17 and in his final year of homeschooling, is very independent at this point, so this update is mainly just about Tristan.

Things are looking good in our homeschool, very optimistic that we'll hit summer break on the early side this year.

For history we planned on doing Ancient history for a start and we did complete that a little before Christmas break. Now we've moved on to the Middle ages, which will go a little quicker since Tristan recently had a whole year of Middle ages study in junior high. This year we're using a combination of Diana Waring materials and Story of the World. It's car schooling at it's best, listen and discuss during the otherwise wasted time getting back and forth to co-op, research further as needed when back home. Since we won't take as long with Middle Ages as we did with Ancients I think we'll get through Early Modern Times before summer break too.

                                              

For math Tristan continues on with Math U See. He is on track to finish algebra well before summer.

We use a combination of materials for language arts. Vocabulary cartoons are a fun and easy way to learn new words. Spelling You See has been a convenient spelling curriculum for us for the past couple years. Jump In is the writing curriculum we decided on for this year.

 Jump In may be for reluctant and eager writers but it's not a favorite for Tristan. I offered for him to try something else but he decided to press on since he was already about a quarter way through the curriculum. This is not his favorite subject at all.

Tristan's formal biology study is done for this year. We broke it up into human body, he did last year with older brothers,  Botany, which we focused on over the summer and Zoology which Tristan studied by taking my zoology class at co-op (and just living his life here in the wildhomeschool house!). In my co-op class we did lapbooking and also a novel study. We used Jr. High and High School level lapbooks. It went very well. Below are pictures of Tristan's completed lapbooks.

First we studied Veterinary science and completed a lapbook.

The last lapbook we did was a novel study on The Tarantula in my Purse and 172 Other Wild Pets.

Unable to find what I needed for sale I finally created the lapbook myself and was quite pleased with it.

                                           The middle lapbook we completed was on birds.

Through the semester Tristan and the other students also completed zoology coloring book pages, these are meant for high school and college level not young kids. They dissected owl pellets, did several labs including finding and comparing the true nutritional content of several dogs foods and also a lab on how the gizzard works in birds.

Finally we wrapped up the class with final animal projects. Tristan chose to do his project on tigers.

Tristan and his Tiger project.

It's nice that Tristan has completed his biology studies since he'll be busy this semester learning lines for and practicing two plays. He's doing both plays through his drama class at co-op. The high school play is based on A Midsummer Night's Dream and is called A Super Groovy Night's Dream. It's Shakespeare (sorta) in the 60's! Tristan is also taking a part in the Junior High play since the Junior high class is smaller and they needed a few extra actors. That play is called Becoming Shakespeare and is about the early life (young adult) of Will Shakespeare.

Things are looking good mid year here at our wild homeschool. Summer break will be here before we know it!