Learning Curve: Georgia on My Mind

Early in the week we had a visit from my teenage/early 20's nephews and some of their friends. The girls talked them all into playing Twister for a LONG time. I got a lot of FUNNY photos, but most of them have too much tummy or butt crack exposed for posting. However, I think this one is a fair representation of the evening.

We're making progress in our Cantering the Country program. I'm finding that we've been moving much slower than I'd planned. So I'm going to see if we can do a 2 week per state study. Let's face it, the kids are 6 and 4...we'll revisit this info again in a couple of years anyway. So I'm shooting for getting some "basic" info in their heads (and their State Notebooks) this go around.

This week we worked on our state report, map, flag, coin and state bird, flower and animal. I learned some interesting facts about the possum this week. For example, they do have a scent sack (similar to skunks but not as strong) that they'll spray when threatened. We also learned that they have 50 teeth in their wee little heads. The average life span of a possum is only two years...I guess that's the longest they can dodge cars on country roads?

Books we used:

Georgia: Facts and Symbols by Emily McAuliffe
Opossums, by Emilie U. Lepthien

I've added more mandatory reading time into Olivia's workload. Besides the required reading for her curriculum, she has to read at least one chapter a day from her chapter book as well as her Bible reading. She enjoys reading, but it doesn't dawn on her that she can do it without being told to. I find that when I do hand her a book or two, she'll read for 15 or 20 minutes (sometimes longer) .

We finished up reading about George Washington and Olivia wrote a brief story about his life. She created a mini-book to add to her collection. Sadly, we did not make it to Mt. Vernon as I'd hoped to do. (On a side note, 6 year olds shouldn't look this good in photos.)

We had our monthly homeschool activity day today. My class on Native American's is going well. This week we studied the Sioux. I was floored that not a single child in my class (9-12 year olds) had ever heard of Sitting Bull, George Custer, or the Battle of Little Big Horn! Lindsey's class worked on some snow related items. Olivia's class learned about the paper making process; and made some trees from paper as opposed to making paper from trees.

Awana, ballet and co-op all went as scheduled for a change. We did have more snow on Monday, but it was a fast moving storm that left no accumulation. I've officially resigned from co-op. We'll finish out the year (early May), but won't be returning in the fall.

Besides our regular core subjects, we spent time working on baking skills. The girls love working in the kitchen, and they love delivering cookies to random neighbors for no particular reason.

We broke out the paints this week as we prepared to review an art curriculum geared at the preschool crowd. I'll be posting that review at a later date, but here they are being creative.