Mohaus Schoolhouse Week 17

Highlights of last week include building things from the Smithsonian Maker Lab book, including a weighted paper airplane, speakers for a phone, and a plane powered by an inflated balloon.

We read great stories from some great books. We started The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, are still working our way through The One and Only Ivan, and also enjoyed lots of Christmas short stories.

Jack decided to make green eggs for lunch one day, so of course we read Green Eggs & Ham.

We are continuing through our Slow + Sacred Advent study. Week one covered the seed of advent, while last week we focused on the star of advent. We made gingerbread cookies to hang on the tree, including stars (making homemade gingerbread ornaments for our live Christmas tree is a yearly tradition of ours).

On Wednesday, we had a library visit and a cold afternoon at the park with friends to burn off energy.

Thursday both boys had Christmas parties (Isaac at preschool and Jack at his Y program). I wasn't going to be able to make either program while also picking them up on time, so I skipped and went and bought stocking stuffers for them instead.

However, I found myself in a bit of a conundrum when a friend texted to say Jack's program finished early and he was the last kid there. Thank goodness she called and offered to meet me with him halfway! We agreed to meet at Hobby Lobby and I let the boys pick out their ornaments for this year (normally I pick them out and stick them in their stockings).

That night, we visited a local live Nativity as a family. We enjoyed singing the Christmas hyms and the kids were able to make star ornaments to add to our tree.

In juxtaposition to our Slow + Sacred Advent, there were a lot of dance parties happening last week. We are introducing the kids to a variety of music, from Neil Diamond to the Beastie Boys. We want them to be as well rounded as possible.

Jack had me cracking up with his "letter to an artist" as part of his Art Study with Narration. I don't think he quite gets the point yet (or doesn't care).

We ended the week with our first play of the year, A Charlie Brown Christmas at the Chattanooga Children's Theatre. It wasn't our favorite play, but it was sweet and we are always happy to spend time with friends.

To cap off our Friend Friday, we grabbed lunch at Good Dog and the kids had a chance to write letters to Santa. Jack's only wish was that it would snow this year.

Saturday was our Christmas Party with our small group. The boys helped me make bon bons for the party (another tradition I have had since I was a kid).

Then on Sunday we attempted to see Santa at Bass Pro (but made the mistake of showing up without getting passes ahead of time). We will try again this week.

I had originally planned to do some school this week (including our annual Homeschool Cookie Decorating party), but Daniel and I both came down with a stomach bug sometime Sunday (also our 16th Anniversary), and have spent the better part of the last two days in bed while the kids fended for themselves.

So, I think we are just done for this year. We will still work on our Slow + Sacred Advent material, but I that is it. I hope you have a blessed Christmas and holiday season!

Mohaus Schoolhouse Week 16

Last week we finished Pilgrims Progress and How to Be a Pirate. Jack wanted to know if there was a movie to watch. LOL

Every morning we have listened to The Same Page podcast share the birth of Christ from the gospel of Luke, and the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Clement Clarke Moore. Jack thinks the line "He had a broad face, and a little round belly, that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly" is hilarious.

We started our Slow + Sacred Advent by Jennifer Naraki. We did this study last year and I enjoyed how it takes us through the time leading up to the birth of Christ. Each week we read different scriptures, discuss different aspects of the birth of Christ, make a recipe, do copywork, listen to Christmas hymns, and make some type of handicraft.

Last week we talked about the seed of Christ, as in the genealogy and the promise of redemption. Then we planted a tree to help us remember what we had learned.

We also talked about the Fruit of the Spirit, and ways that we can spread kindness during this season. Our recipe was an Orange Cake. Instead of a cake, we decided to make two loaves of orange cake and share one with another family.

I created an Advent Calendar for the second year. Each envelope is filled with scripture and candy. We read and enjoy the candy as a family every night after supper.

We picked up our live Christmas tree as a family, and got it set up in our living room. We strung the lights and it is just waiting for us to make strings of popcorn, and homemade gingerbread cookies.
It's funny what kids remember... Isaac immediately told me that he didn't want to hang food on this tree. He wants to eat the food instead! I told him we could do both.

Another Christmassy thing we have going on, is that Jack set up my dad's electric train track next to the Christmas tree. He and Isaac spend hours playing with this toy from a couple of generations ago.

During the week, Jack got to help Daniel use the electric winch to pull one of our vehicles into the garage. He also used the winch with a pulley system to lift himself into the air (STEM!).

We did a little more painting at the end of the week. Jack painted his version of a Christmas tree and I worked on painting an ornament for an Ornament Swap party I attended at church.

A lot of afternoons end with Jack playing with one of his neighborhood friends. They like to make their way between the houses. If they are lucky, and it is cold, I let them have some hot chocolate.

While Jack was at his YMCA Enrichment program I used my free time to wrap up a couple of freelance design projects.

We had mid-week dentist appointments. Everyone in our family is cavity free (even with the hot chocolate habit).

On Sunday Jack's Boy Scout Troop did a service project together.

We haven't done our Friend Friday or weekly hikes lately. I am going to blame both on the weather. To be honest, I have had a hard time getting either of these activities off the ground this year. And both are really important to me. They just aren't happening like I hoped. That is just the ebb and flow of homeschooling. Sometimes things work out like you want them to, sometimes they don't. We will just keep trying to make it happen.

Mohaus Schoolhouse Week 15

I have been blogging for a long time (since 2003!), and would consider myself to be a pretty avid social media user, but I still struggle with where the best place is to share our homeschool adventures.

Videos on Facebook have been my go-to in an effort to stay accountable (mostly to myself), but I don't know if that is truly the right place.

So I am going back to my roots and will be once again writing on my blog and sharing links to FB and Instagram. If you are so inclined to follow along –whether you want inspiration for your own homeschool, are curious about what homeschool might look like, or you are just family/friends who want to keep up with we us– this will be the place.

Following is an overview of some of what we have going as part of our weekly home education.

Books we read:
Peter Pan is an audio book we are following along with. I don't remember reading this before (though I loved the various movies I have seen), so it is a treat to listen along with my kiddos.

We started listening to The Little Pilgrims Progress several weeks ago and are almost at the end. I wasn't sure how the boys would like it, but according to Jack, it is his favorite "podcast" (we are listening to it in the car and he thinks everything audio is a podcast!).

We are in the process of reading The One and Only Ivan aloud. I was actually trying to follow along with a Bravewriter group on this one to see how we liked it, but we never quite got aligned with the group promts. However, we are still enjoying the story. If you are considering Bravewriter, you could give this group a go to get a feel for the program. I really want to do a book club/party school surrounding a read-aloud. So if you are homeschool friends with us and are interested in something like that, give me a shout and maybe we can figure out something for January.

Last week, we wrapped up The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place and the Mysterious Howling, and I am hooked! There as a great cliff hanger at the end of this book, and I can't wait to read more to the boys. They loved all of the howling that took place throughout the story, and I loved that it had parts that reminded me of My Fair Lady and Jane Eyre (two of my favorite stories!).

Our bedtime book right now is How to Be a Pirate! The boys are both enjoying me reading a chapter to them each night. Jack has decided we need to read the entire How to Train Your Dragon series... I have a feeling this might be a good first series of books to get him to love reading on his own.

For history, we are reading passages from Words that Built a Nation, and Never too Young. These beautiful books are full of wonderful information. I'm sure I am learning just as much as Jack.

We just started The Story for Kids as a part of our Bible study. It has great questions at the end of each chapter.

Podcasts we listened to:
The Same Page podcast has become my favorite way to start our school day. Each week we listen to a different core episode every single day for the entire week. This 5-minute episode includes a passage of scripture (from James right now), a passage from Shakespeare (currently from Romeo & Juliet), a poem or two (If by Rudyard Kipling and Who Has Seen the Wind by Christina Rossetti), and finally a series of facts about the Presidents (last week was Andrew Jackson). By listening to this daily, we are all memorizing tidbits of great literature. It may be my favorite part of our day!

Learning Apps we used:
Math Tango and Prodigy have been great resources for killing time in the car and are good practice for Jack. We also use the Bible App for Kids. Jack likes listening to the stories and then playing the games related to the story. It starts in Genesis and paired really nicely with our reading of The Story for Kids.

Movies we watched:
Have you seen Peter Rabbit on Netflix? We watched it after reading the story by Beatrix Potter. Jack and Isaac thought it was hilarious. I have been trying to find a copy of the movie The Wizard of Oz at the library (we finished this book a couple of weeks ago), but haven't been able to, so we tried watching The Muppets in Oz. We were not fans of this version and I hope to rent the real one from Amazon soon.

Other Activities:
The boys have been really into building with K'nex lately. They can spend hours just building various things. I love seeing them be creative in this way.

It was really cold last week and we decided to skip our weekly hike. But we are continuing to notice all of the winter birds outside of our windows. As part of our study of birds, we looked at several nature books and took time to paint pictures of the bluebirds we saw.

On Wednesday we met friends at the park after they got home from school. It was frigid, but the kids didn't mind. They sipped hot cocoa and then ran around like crazy kids who obviously needed to burn off some energy.

Thursday I took the boys to meet friends for roller skating – a first for them. They had an absolute blast and Jack has been pestering me daily to go back.

Over the weekend we started to set up our house for Christmas. It was a joy to see our boys get so excited about their personal ornaments, and also the family ornaments from all of our travels.

 

Check back next week to see what we have been up to.

What Our Homeschool Looked Like in November:
Week 12 (Nov. 4-10)
Week 13 (Nov. 11-17)
Week 14 (Nov. 18-24)
Week 15 (Nov. 25-Dec. 1)