Before we leave...a homeschooling report

I enjoy reading other homeschooling blogs and their weekly reports, so I thought I would try sharing a little of what we do.
I keep track of what we do every day in a Lesson Plan Book. It is what works best for us. When we first started homeschooling in 2005, I used to write down what we were supposed to do, more like traditional lesson plans, but found after that first year that it was really not helpful to us. So I quickly switched to writing more of an overview of the year, broken down by subjects and child. We knew what our plans were, and how often each subject needed to be done to complete in that school year.

I had decided that since we were starting in August because our vacation in September, we would start with just the bare necessities to slowly ease into our routine. We did want to have most of our days free to enjoy the summer!

Here is a report of our last month of "school".


Math:


Adrienne = Pet Store Math, completed May, June, July, August, and September.
Andre = Singapore Math, completed lessons and corresponding exercises (28 to49)
Celeste = played a variety of counting games and started calendar work with me

Handwriting Practice:

Adrienne : practiced traditional cursive handwriting in Happy Scribe copybook (20 pages)
Andre : practiced italics cursive in Happy Scribe copybook (20 pages)
Celeste : completed all the handwriting readiness sheets from Donna Young website, and the tracing drawings from the same site (she loves those!), also practiced making letters of the alphabet with her Wikki Sticks

Grammar:

Adrienne: completed lessons 2.12 to 3.7 in Growing with Grammar

Writing:

Adrienne: completed 2 book reports on novels read (The Case of the Missing Marquess, The Robe of Skulls), also completed the Sweet Inspiration assignment for Roald Dahl Day
Andre: completed book report on Magician in a Trunk (Time Spies series) and the Sweet Inspiration assignment, wrote a letter to her pen pal.
Both also worked on writing all the mini books for our Ocean lapbook.
Celeste: wrote a letter to her pen pal (told me what she wanted to say, I wrote it and she copied it on her letter).

Reading:

Celeste: completed with me the first 19 lessons in The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, played on Starfall
Adrienne: read many novels, graphic novels and magazines on her own, and read aloud selections from the Elson Reader.
Andre: also read novels, graphic novels and non-fiction books on his own, along with selections read aloud to me from the Elson Reader. Andre also reads a lot of picture books to Celeste.

Science:

We learned about the Ocean, using books, dvds and the internet; completed an Ocean lapbook together.

Art:

Adrienne and Andre : Completed the Drawing Level Exercise in Drawing with Children, also completed the cactus pastel/glue project.
Andre completed a couple of drawings following instructions in how-to books (shark, Egyptian eye)

Nature Study:

We learned about five different animals near us by completing the challenge from Outdoor Hour challenge

There is our report. It seems like a lot maybe, but we had every afternoon free! What I have enjoyed the most over the past month, is seeing my children get back to reading again, for pleasure. They didn't read as much while they were attending public school, and it's just nice to see them enjoying that again. My oldest daughter is devouring books again. We have to keep going to the library for more every couple of days! My son is also back to picking up books on his own, and discovering new subjects that spark his interest (ocean at the moment!).

We will soon be leaving for our vacation, so this blog will be quiet for about two weeks.
See you soon!