Mohaus Schoolhouse Week 24

President's Day marked the beginning of this school week. It was a holiday for the local schools, so we took the day off as well.

However in light of the holiday, we started reading several books pertaining to the President's of the United States (this is addition to our weekly overview of president facts, we are currently on the 15th President: James Buchanan).

The books we are reading about presidents and our country, include Words That Built a Nation, The House that George Built, The Founding Fathers, and George Washington's Secret Six. We follow the ideas put forth by Charlotte Mason that living books provide a deeper understand and easier recollection. Reading these books is helping us really understand the beginnings of our country.

In addition to these books, we finished reading The Wild Robot (which we all loved and would highly recommend), and also read the funny picture book, The Bot That Scott Built. We are also playing Battleship as often as we can (I beat him by one peg this time, next time I think he might finally win!). And Legos continue to be an integral part of every day.

Our current book of fairy tales is Brave Red, Smart Frog. We are enjoying this version of these tales and how the author ties these stories together over the course of the book. We also try to read a couple of tall tales each week, and our current book of choice is The Jack Tales (Jack loves that there are so many stories about boys named Jack).

Other books on our current list of read alouds include finishing The Secret Chicken Society and starting The Mouse and the Motorcycle (these are books Jack reads aloud to me).

We were thankful for sunshine this week, and even had a chance to read outside some (our favorite place to be!). And Daniel was thrilled to introduce the boys to his favorite childhood television show, Air Wolf (they have been watching it before bedtime on YouTube).

At his weekly swimming lessons Jack did really well... I think he will pass his swim test soon.

Jack had another good week at basketball. He will be bummed when it is finished in a couple of weeks.

We finished the week with the Blue and Gold Banquet for Boy Scouts. His troop all got their Tiger Badges and Jack got the rest of belt loop pieces.

And finally on Sunday we went to check out the water being released from the Chickamauga Dam. Record rainfalls this year (and finally a sunny day!) meant we got to see an impressive site. The water was really churning.

A Look Back at February:
Week 21 (Jan. 28-Feb. 3)
Week 22 (Feb. 4-10)
Week 23 (Feb. 11-17)

A glimpse back at our school year: 
January
December  
November
October
September was our trip out West
August

Mohaus Schoolhouse Week 23

We started our week with donuts due to a #momfail. I had thought I placed an order for groceries, but the order never went through. Since we went out of our way to get the groceries, we decided donuts were in order.

Besides donuts, this week looked a little different from our previous weeks. The main difference being that Valentine's Day fell in the middle of the week and we invited homeschool and preschool friends over to celebrate the holiday with us.

This was our second year to host this type of Valentine's Party. I hope it's a tradition we keep up.

We were supposed to host a similar party at Christmas, but Daniel and I got really sick the night before and it kind of derailed our entire December month in terms of school.

Such is life, sometimes you have to roll with the unexpected.

Since we had spent Wednesday with our friends (20 kids plus six moms! in our house), we opted to meet Daniel to go to the Chattanooga RV show instead of trying to coordinate a Friend Friday. Again, we are flexible and Friend Friday can happen any day of the week, we just try to be purposeful in meeting with other families when we can.

So the kids and I met Daniel downtown and he led us through a series of passages over the street and through parking garages to get to the convention center. I think the kids thought that was a grand adventure in and of itself.

After taking the time to look inside almost every RV at the show, we were all exhausted but also excited and anxious to get our own camper out of storage and start our camping season!

We read through several great books this week, including the Jack Tales (our Jack is fascinated that there are so many stories about "Jack" and Isaac is probably annoyed for the same reason!).

We are learning a lot from reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, including a brief overview about submarines, Papua New Guinea, and the Great Barrier Reef. Jack asked if he and Isaac could go scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef when they were bigger. I love how the world of books is opening up the world to him!

In Math, he has been learning how to multiply and divide with 2s and 3s this week, and has got perfect scores on all his work. Math continues to be his favorite subject. Along with math, we are all loving the game of Battleship. We play as much as possible.

He finished reading aloud The Secret Chicken Society to me, and we learned some facts about raising chickens.

Extracurricular continue to be robotics class, basketball and swimming. He is loving all three and gets better at all every week.

A Look Back at February:
Week 21 (Jan. 28-Feb. 3)
Week 22 (Feb. 4-10)

A glimpse back at our school year: 
January
December  
November
October
September was our trip out West
August

Mohaus Schoolhouse Week 22

A successful school day for us includes starting each morning listening to The Same Page Podcast Core Memory Work. This is a three-to-five-minute episode that we listen to every day for a week. It introduces us to and helps us memorize a passage of scripture, a poem (or two), a passage from Shakespeare, and is leading us through the Presidents of the United States. It is my favorite way to start our day and sets the tone for everything else.

After the podcast, we read from the Bible or a devotional book and follow with prayer prompts from our prayer calendar or journal. Starting each day gets us all in the right frame of mind for learning.

After our time in the Word, we launch into our read alouds. We are in the middle of the books, The Wild Robot, and we are all loving it.

Jack has been reading The Secret Chicken Society aloud to me, and we are almost at the end. Other things were are reading aloud are Brave Red, Smart Frog which is a series of Fairy Tales, we are almost finished with The Playbook, a inspiring book of life lessons learned from sports, and Words That Built a Nation that introduces us to important documents like the Constitution and gives background on why these documents are important to our nation. It's a good overview of our country.

In the middle of the day, we typically break to go to the YMCA so I can work out and the kids can have some time with some of their friends. If the weather is nice (or not too bad) we will stay and play at the playground.

In the afternoon you will find us finishing up with Math (we are using Singapore Math 2) and also Language Arts (we use The Good and The Beautiful). Jack loves Math but it is more of a chore to get him to do Language Arts and it often ends up being our last thing of the day.

We have a stack of library books that we are working our way through. They range from fictional picture books to non-fiction books about nature and geography and history. They are always changing and we sometimes we focus on one topic that we are really interested in. We also listening to a handful of different podcasts that relate to Science, History, and Literature when we are riding in the car.

On Tuesday afternoons Jack goes to a robotics class at our local community center. He is really enjoying learning how to write basic code to program the Edison Robots they use. If the weather is nice, Isaac and I will run to play at a playground during Jack's class.

Right now Thursday nights have been our night for Jack's basketball league.

He has really been loving playing basketball every week and his team has been doing great hustling, listening to their coach, getting better and dribbling and shooting, and learning some basic plays.

One day this week, Jack got busy during one of this breaks. I thought he was riding his bike, so I was surprised when he came in and informed me he had moved a bunch of firewood that needed to be moved. He had tracked his time and did it all without telling me. I was really impressed by his initiative.

We try to play board games at least once a week. Sorry! was the pick this week. And it's never a surprise if I discover Jack has decided to take something apart so he can put it back together (like a kid's IKEA chair).

If the weather is nice (meaning not pouring down rain) we try to spend as much time as we can outsides. Sometimes this means the kids are exploring our back yard, digging in the dirt or creating their own games.

Sometimes I go with them to the park across the street. Jack is really improving with his mountain bike skills on the little trails in the woods at the park.

They also like adding to the fort they have been helping to build with the neighborhood kids.

They love the merry-go-round and swings, and sometimes we find something like a frisbee and practice throwing it.

This past Saturday I took the boys to a friends birthday party. They had a blast participating at a nerf war at a church gym. Complete with boxes that they could reconfigure to their hearts desire.

Our weeks seem to follow some version of this. It's been a cold and rainy winter, with no snow, but it really hasn't bothered us too much. As long as we can find some sunshine here and there, we are good to go. We haven't hit the February blues and our homeschool is ticking along like clockwork. I think that being flexible and open to changing things us makes us all happier in the day-to-day.

A Look Back at February:
Week 21 (Jan. 28- Feb. 3)

A glimpse back at our school year: 
January
December  
November
October
September was our trip out West
August