Ordinary Things

“The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children. “

I recently read this quote by G.K. Chesterton and thought how appropriately this applies to our ordinary, everyday, homeschooling lives. We don’t get to see flashy test scores or receive standing ovations or applause from a crowd for being faithful in little things but these little things do add up over time and I think we all need to be encouraged to be faithful.

So, here are some ordinary, everyday things that we have been faithful with in our home school. I want to keep a record for myself so we can look back and be encouraged.

1. We are really enjoying reading this selection of poetry from Ambleside Online (apart from Little Boy Black… ). I appreciate the compilation and the variety of poets rather than one single poet. It’s a nice change.
2.  Our weekly watercolor narrations are still getting done! I had a goal at the beginning of 2018 to have the girls watercolor one narration each week and it’s been happening, thanks to a regularly scheduled time. This is a great opportunity for them to practice water-coloring!I got the idea from Celeste at Joyful Lessons. We hang them up all together and it’s fun to see and look over.
3.  We are finally following a solid grammar program (Winston Grammar) and I really like it. The girls love the hands-on part of it and they are becoming very confident in their grammar skills. 
4.  Teaching Textbooks (math) has been such a blessing to me this year. I love that the girls can have a patient, knowledgeable teacher every day and that it doesn’t have to be me! Seriously, I think this is the best thing for our mother/daughter relationships while homeschooling. Math was becoming such a beast to contend with and a huge strain every day. Louisa actually enjoys math… who knew?
5.  Shakespeare continues to be a weekly favorite around here. The girls LOVE to read Shakespeare, even Julia insists on reading a part. My goal is to read two plays a year. We recently finished A Midsummer Night’s Dream and are now reading Much Ado About Nothing. They love the comedies, but we are planning to read through Julius Caesar next year which will be different for sure.
6.  Speaking of Julius Caesar, we are all three reading Plutarch’s Julius Caesar together, which is new for us. Usually Kailyn does her own Plutarch reading and Louisa had been reading an abbreviated version of his lives, but the group reading is going well so far. Louisa loves to keep track of the cast of characters and diligently writes them down. 🙂
7.  We finished memorizing Psalm 139 and are now working on John 1. Julia memorized Psalm 139 with us and knows it by heart. She doesn’t appreciate our new verses yet and wants to review Ps. 139 every day instead. 

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Moses and Pharaoh

Kailyn is studying Ancient Egypt and Greece this term and she recently read The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt (Landmark book) by Elizabeth Payne for free reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After she read it, we were discussing it together and did a little research on who the Pharaoh was during the Exodus.  We came across this very interesting article that claims it was Thutmoses III (not Ramesses) who was the Pharaoh during the Exodus. He also makes a good case that the Pharaoh did NOT die with his army in the Red Sea. Interesting, right? Do some reading and see if you agree… 🙂

Easy Art Projects

My girls had been asking to do more art since I majorly dropped the ball on doing anything hands-on for the past two terms {I am blaming it on pregnancy and shock of twins}. Anyways, the past few weeks we have succeeded in creating some fun and very easy art! I thought I would share them here in case any of you are in a rut and need some ideas. My idea of easy is: basic supplies that we already have on hand and no preparation on my part.

The first one was a Valentine’s Wycinanki and it turned out super cute; I got the idea from this blog post. Thanks to her helpful post, I showed the girls the videos she had posted and then googled Wycinanki so they could get a few more ideas of what they actually were. These are hanging on our windows and the sun shines a perfect amount of light through them!

**Supplies needed for this = paper, tissue paper (or you could use colored construction paper), scissors and tape.

Another  easy one was this peacock drawing… I wouldn’t really call this art but more practice in drawing and using watercolors. Here is the link to the blog page where I found the worksheet to print.

**Supplies needed for this are = a printer (or you could just show the picture from your laptop/iPad), paper, watercolors (or you could use markers/colored pencils), fine point marker for outlining.

We took this step by step and I encouraged the girls to use watercolors even though it is harder to mix the exact color you want. The last part was outlining everything with the fine point marker- I think this really helped to make the peacock stand out.

And the last easy art project was a 3D hand drawing. Here is the page I found (I know, it’s in Spanish but you can have Google translate it for you!).

** Supplies needed for this are = paper,pencil, your hand, and markers (we used Sharpies).

FYI- each of these projects probably took about an hour of concentrated time, but well worth it! 🙂