Back to School - Fifth Year of Homeschooling!

The end of August we headed back to school for our FIFTH year of homeschooling! I never in a million years thoughts I'd homeschool my kids. Let alone that we'd still be at it five years later. But, each year gets a bit better, a bit less stressful, a bit more magical. And I can see how far they've come. They're confident, fun, social, hard-working, and smart kids who LOVE to learn! I love being on this journey with them and seeing them grow. 

This year we have.... 

Conrad - Pre K

Conrad loves numbers and building things. This year he's working on learning all his letters and sounds. His favorite part of school is... playing - as it should be in preschool! 

Orson - 1st Grade

Orson continues to improve his reading! He LOVES math. His recent obsession has been flags of the world. He copied dozens of flags from the back on the dictionary and covered his entire room with them. Now we've taken them down and are working on sorting them by continent and finding each one on the map.

Lenora - 3rd Grade! 

Lenora recently caught the book worm bug and is regularly found cuddled up on the couch devouring a new chapter book. She was SO excited to be old enough to officially join the girls for book club this year! She's learning cursive and doing more and more writing assignments. 

Eliza - 6th Grade (First year of Middle School!)

Eliza will make sure you know she's in middle school now. She's excited about her new literature based language arts curriculum this year. She's also loving the online art lessons we found that she does with her friend Abe. Even though Abe's living in Jerusalem right now, they meet on Zoom and do a lesson together each week. Eliza's taking a "transition to scholar" class in our co-op this year and enjoying the harder work load. 

Cake Eliza made for Anne of Green Gables book club

Hazel - 8th Grade! 

Hazel has taken on much more intense workload this year in preparation for high school, and she's rocking it! She taking Algebra 1 from the amazing math teacher she had last year as well as a Shakespeare class and a Constitution/Revolutionary War class through our homeschool co-op. That's in addition to book club, a creative writing class with Rose, and chemistry which we're doing as a family. She's been so responsible managing her reading, assignments, and presentations!

Speaking of Shakespeare... I was asked to co-mentor the Shakespeare class for our homeschool group. Having a class of 18 teenagers and teaching them about acting and Shakespeare is a bit daunting!  First semester we study a play in depth while learning about Shakespeare, his writing, etc, and second semester we produce and perform an entire Shakespeare play. But, it's been a great learning experience for me. I've learned a lot about Shakespeare and even more about working with youth. Plus, it's fun to teach a class as "Queen Justine."

Overall, our year has been off to a smooth start. I feel like this year I think we've found a great balance between getting in the essential subjects (math and language arts) while still allowing time to nurture hearts and creativity with poetry, stories, art, and side projects. Not to mention plenty of time for read alouds! Our flow is sure to be thrown off by the arrival of our cute baby in March, but we'll soak it up while it lasts.