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Oh, what a year it has been! (I might say this every year). Navigating our homeschool with a busy and vocal one-year-old is not for the faint of heart. However, I wouldn’t change it for the world because, as I have said, The Best Job I Never Knew, I Always Wanted. We have already begun our Christmas School this year (see what we are doing and purchase it HERE).
We have traveled a bit more this year than last year, and we have shuffled some things around to accommodate life with a one-year-old as far as academics go in our schooling time.
Where We Have Been
As some of you know, we usually spend our year traveling with my husband and his job. In January, we visited my family in Indiana. Then we returned home to let our oldest Mouse participate with a Middle School Archery Team. She attended practice twice a week and then had 3-4 away tournaments in which she participated.
While we looked to purchase a 5th Wheel that would fit our family, the girls and I stayed at home; my husband left for his first job assignment of the year to North Carolina in April. We knew we didn’t want to be in an apartment again. So the girls and I waited at home and enrolled them in our local soccer league during the spring season. While Thumpers games were just in town for us, we traveled with Mouse’s team throughout Wisconsin and even into Minnesota for May and June.
Finally, at the end of June, the girls and I left Wisconsin once soccer was over and headed to meet up with Daddy-o in North Carolina. We purchased a 5th wheel and found a place to stay with it. We made a pit stop in Indiana to see my family along the way (as it’s a convenient halfway point for us). We have been in this general area of North Carolina before, but we were in a more rural surrounding this time. Being familiar with the region, though, was lovely. We met up with the girls’ former swimming instructor and with a cousin who lived about 2 hours away from where we were staying.
We finished up with one job in North Carolina, were supposed to have about a week off, and headed to another job in a different spot in North Carolina. We planned to visit with my cousin in the interim, but our plans changed while we were enroute to her house. The job my husband was scheduled to go to was canceled, but within the 2-hour drive to my cousins, my husband had a lead on another job. Then before we went to bed that night, he had plans to head to Louisiana for a job projected to last until September.
Louisiana had our girls’ seeing alligators in the wild, visiting New Orleans (to visit a cousin of husbands) and participating in a local festival for trick-or-treating. We also got to have a short visit with my mom as she and my aunt traveled through Louisiana on their way to Texas. We left Louisiana and then headed home for some rest between jobs and the new year right before Thanksgiving week. We had a few minor issues coming home, so we took Thanksgiving week off from school and took time to settle in, and let me prepare Christmas School for the following week (this week).
Academically What We’ve Done, Loved, and Dropped This Year
I try hard to stick to the rough “plan” I’ve created for the year, but life happens, honestly, and it just doesn’t always go according to plan.
We stayed on plan with our Sonlight levels. Mouse traveled through the Easter Hemisphere. Along the way, we tried some excellent food. We got to experience and learn about several different cultures we otherwise wouldn’t usually study. Thumper began exploring World History with early civilizations up to the fall of Rome. We got to revisit some of the books we had already read when Mouse had gone through this level. Still, with revisions, and updates done by Sonlight, we discovered some new favorites.
Mouse struggled with fractions. The concept, at times, just overwhelmed her. I had to ask my Hubby to help her rethink things differently eventually. With the struggle, we spent several weeks reviewing and mastering the concepts in several lessons. We did not finish MUS Epsilon (Fractions) this year and will continue with it next year. Thumper is progressing nicely through MUS Gamma (multiplication). We will tackle the second half by multiplying with multi-digit numbers starting in the new year.
In writing with Mouse, she had picked “How to Write a Story” from IEW, and we abandoned it. It was just confusing to explain and for her to grasp. We picked up their Student Structure and Style 1B this fall, and it is going well. We worked through their previous version of Fix It Grammar and finished it mid-summer. I plan to go back a level with their new version of Fix It for her next year.
Thumper is still working through All About Reading level 4 and will have a handful of lessons to finish at the beginning of the new year. She hasn’t picked up any formal writing or grammar curriculum yet (see why HERE). This fall, I began working on cursive with Thumper, and while she was initially reluctant, she now has embraced it and loves it.
The girls worked through Apologia’s Zoology 1: Flying Creates of the Fifth Day and are halfway through Zoology 2: Swimming creatures of the Fifth Day. We have loved this addition this year, and the girls like working on the simple Try These experiments together. I have enjoyed the addition of the MPS audio component, freeing me from more read-aloud with them, with Bird running around.
Our Supplemental Saturdays slipped (see what it is HERE). I had grand plans, but they became morning and underwhelming for the girls. We relied on some craft projects we picked up at Hobby Lobby and a few random how-to-draw things I found on the internet. The Bird was a factor in this switch; she tried to be in everything and everywhere during this time. So, to distract her, we watched a lot of Baby Signing time and didn’t focus on the intense lesson we had been doing in previous years. I am hoping to get a better plan together for this next year.
Now we are enjoying our wind-down time of the year in Christmas School and gearing up for the holiday season with our family and our Bird turning two right before Christmas. Yet even though we are winding down, I’m in the background creating and prepping for our 2023 school year, and I am excited what next year holds. Keep up with our Christmas School adventures on our Facebook Page or Instagram. If you want more in-depth conversations, check out our Facebook Parent Group.
