Together - Term Review continues

Together Time 

What we call our morning time. I've shorted it up a bit and I'm having a hard time finding a good time for this, mostly because the right after lunch time we had is now right before naptime for Jude and I feel like I'm always rushing it so I can put him down because he's falling apart or I'm rushing it because he's asleep and I don't want us singing and waking him up or him waking up right as we finish and big kids start quiet time which means I don't get any quiet time myself. So this was probably the weakest link in terms of consistency. But it has folk and hymns, catachism questions, recitation pieces (poetry,bible and some US history memorization work) and everything got memorized and/or learned fairly well so I won't panic yet. 

Feast Time

 In addition to our daily-ish family together time, we did a weekly mini-coop with other AO friends. This was Picture study and a artist biography, Swedish Drill, Handicrafts and Map Study and some extra quality picture books (Diana Stanley for the win!). We were as consistent with this as fall and germ season allowed. 

Tea Time

Since we moved a few of our regular tea time activites to our feast morning (picture study, composer), we had some space to fill. We do the AO Year 4 Mason/Long geography readings (Jonah's always followed along with Lucys' work in the AO schedule), bible videos (Phil Vischer bible study videos - they are great and allow me 10 minutes to actually make the tea), the MCT poetry book and whatever extra special studies I want to do (Good Pictures/Bad Pictures last term, I'm planning on doing Connoisseur Kids this upcoming term) and Keeping time (timelines and painted narration cards) We didn't get everything I had planned done but when I made those plans, I didn't know we'd be doing the Feast time so in the end, I'm really happy that we got a whole AO term done along with all the extra stuff.

Jonah's keeping cards. 

Piano

We were having consistently issues but I moved it to right after breakfast and it's getting done pretty regularly now. We've dropped Solfa for now but they kids love to sing so I'm sure it will get added back in again in the future.

Handicrafts

We had a good summer of handicrafts with out summer mini-coop of two other families. Paper cutting was a huge hit! This fall we have dabbled in a few things but mostly child led. I introduced them to sculpey and they took off with that, I've got a constant stream of little items next to my oven waiting to be baked. Lucy and Jonah both did a church workshop with all sorts of sewing and woodbuilding and fun projects all afternoon, Lucy did a sewing badge for AHG and then we worked on this present for our first cousin - due this April!

. This is one subject that I need to learn to be content with bursts. When I write it all down, what we did was quite sufficient but it doesn't fit into my neat tidy weekly checklists. I need to learnt to be okay with that instead of stressing out when we don't get to it weekly.

Art 

I outsourced! We hired a local artist to come to our house and teach Lucy and Jonah every other week for an hour and a half. They absolutely love it. She's a wonderful woman and its been such a great experiance. The kids do tons of drawing and as I said, sculpting,  on their own but she's been getting them into bigger, messier projects like print making and lino cuts and mosaics. And I no longer feel guilty for not being able to make bigger, messier projects happen with a preschooler and toddler underfoot. She comes at naptime so Norah and I try to have special time when its just the two of us, painting and reading and snuggling. I've noticed that Norah has started thinking she is bad at art but its just she's always tagging along with what the bigger two are doing. When its just her and me, she thinks she brilliant at art - and she is!

Lucy:

Jonah

Norah

Nature Study - Another fits and bursts subject. We read Burgess Sea Shore book this summer and did a bunch of nature study on our beach vacation and afterwards drawing the items we found. We didn't quite make our 25 stars on our hiking chart yet but we'll try to fit one or two more hikes before it's officially winter.  We also started phenology wheels after we picked a tree to study all year but I also forgot where I "safely stored" said phenology wheels so we're a little behind. Oops.

Changes to make

No matter how well the term has gone, I always panick when I'm writing exams because all I see is what we didn't do and what I wasn't consistent about. I've learned now to try and ignore those feelings because once they've actually taken their exams and I've put together their pieces and added them to their portfolios, I feel pretty good about what we accomplished and am not planning on changing too much.

 I'd like to try and be more consistent with our morning time but since this is the first time we've ever struggled with it, I think its definitely a life stage issue. I finally made a cd of all our folks songs to replace the ones I lost and add in the newer songs. I also plan to buy a hymn cd and work our way through. Having the cds means that we can at least get our songs in if its a field trip day. And we did more composer study this term than ever before, finishing a biography about Mozart and actually listening to some of his pieces at least 3 times a week. But next term I'd like to start trying to recognize specific pieces by our composer and learning their names. This next term will be a bit crazy so if we do as well next term as we did this term, I'll be pretty happy.