Wow, it's been a whirlwind of activity around here. Driving two times a week to Eau Claire gets very tiring for us or at least me. I feel like the weeks of school have just blurred into each other. We've been spending the majority of our time focusing on World War I for history. The younger kids have been learning about trench warfare, weapons including the use of gas, how soldiers spent the Christmas holiday during the war and we will move on to specific battles next week. I'm trying to finish up our lapbook pieces so I can throw in some weeks of studying the holocaust before jumping right into World War II.
The older kids have a more indepth study of the people and events of World War I. I don't really supervise their work -they do pretty well getting it done on their own.
We've been enjoying using Institute for Excellence in Writing that helps to teach the skills of key word outlining, paragraph structure, story writing and will eventually deal with essays and research papers. So far that is going really well for us. It takes the burden off of me to remember everything. It's funny how sometimes you can write yourself but not be able to explain the process very well. At least as a young adult, I was told I could write well but now that I am having to teach the process I thought I better get some additional help.
The younger three are learning about Europe for a little bit of geography. We have covered Spain and Portugal with a few details to finish. Then we will move onto France. Today I gave them a blank outline map of Europe to see which countries they could label either from what we've studied before or just somehow they pick up information that I didn't even know they had. This went really well. I expected alot of complaining but we broke it down into small sections, had a few incorrect guesses but that's okay, but they named as many as they could. We will do this a few times a week starting each time with a blank map to label. I bet in know time at all they will know all the relative locations of the countries that make up the continent of Europe. I'm hoping we can incorporate a few projects and recipes as we go.
Our apple picking field trip was rained out. We have had nothing but rain, clouds and cold around here for a while. I'm hoping we find one warm day before the apples are all gone.
We've started planning Gabrielle's 16th birthday party. It's hard to believe she is 16 now. She is having an English garden theme -hopefully I can pull that off. I'll post some pictures if it comes out the way I envision it. I keep trying to find a few minutes to post pictures from our summer vacation but I keep forgetting.
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