Week 1-Homeschooling Year 2010-2011

Doodles and Bug enjoy their victory dessert. Team 1 & Team 2 for Family Trivia Game



Family Trivia Host




Yummy...ice cream snack during school!


Favorite family dessert: fresh peach pie



Favorite family meal: breakfast casserole & biscuits





Daddy gets in on the learning fun!

Doodles' report

Bug's ice cream ant

Doodles' ice cream ant

Ingredients for ice cream ants

(Idea came from Galloping the Globe)

Bug & Doodles' science notebooks


Student Map

Locating continents & oceans

Pulling a continent/ocean out of the hat

Locating continents/oceans

Which continent/ocean did you get?

Baby Girl loves Blue's Clues!

This year's math

Some of this year's books

Doodles types her report.


Baby Girl's read-alouds for this week

Doodles' current read-aloud

Bug's current read-alouds

More of this year's books

More of this year's books

(from Children Around the World & guesthollow.com)

Bug & Doodle's Prayer & Personal Involvement Journals

Wall Map

Doodles locates the Indian Ocean

Bug locates the Atlantic Ocean

Baby Girl plays an African musical instrument

Bug's Nature Journal

Bug's science notebook

Bug's science notebook

Baby Girl learns how to color.

Doodles' science notebook

Doodles' Nature Journal

Doodles' science notebook

Doodles plays with a roly poly

Found: ant nest!

Doodles & Bug study ants.

First of all, we are having a BLAST in school so far! Everything is a great fit for our family, so that makes school lots of fun. I am teaching three of my kiddos this year: Doodles-age 9, Bug-age 7, and Baby Girl-age 2. We are learning a lot already, even "mom." :) Even Dad is getting in on the learning. After Doodles & Bug were enthusiastically sharing what we'd read in one of our books, Dad asked them to get the book so he could see it! Of course there's the usual reading, writing, arithmetic to study, but we've added in several new things this year. In the following paragraphs I'll give you a brief overview.

We're studying culture & geography of the world by using Winter Promise's "Children Around the World." This is really cool, since we are a multicultural family. I really like this curriculum. It brings together both the fun parts of studying foreign lands as well as serious issues, such as child labor, lack of clean water, poverty, disease, and lack of medicine & doctors. Beyond that, there is a journal full of fundraising ideas & projects that my kids can actually do in order to send donations to children in need around the world. Also, Doodles is required to write a weekly report, which I think is great...she didn't think so until I told her she could type it using my laptop. :) Each week ends with a cultural celebration, which we've chosen to hold on Friday nights. This Friday night was a celebration of our family culture. We had a favorite family meal: breakfast casserole & biscuits and a favorite family dessert: fresh peach pie. Then we played a Family Trivia Gameshow. I was the host & the teams were Daddy & Baby Girl vs. Doodles and Bug. Doodles & Bug won, so they got their dessert first. It was lots of fun!

Doodles is studying Latin. This is her first year, and she's really enjoying it. We're using Prima Latina. She can already speak several words and give their meaning. I'm really pleased with this program.

Our science this year is the study of animals around the world. This week we studied insects--mainly ants--since our culture/geography this week focused on "introducing" the world. The kiddos loved this study and even started looking online for videos of ants. I love to see their curiosity to learn coming to life! Of course their favorite part of science this week was making "ice cream ants," which was a really cute idea from one of our resources: Galloping the Galloping the Globe.

We're studying classical music & the orchestra this year. We are using "The Story of the Orchestra." The kiddos are enjoying this, too, as am I.

Baby Girl is learning right along with us, plus she has her own books & topics as well. I read a couple of books to her this week & we played some games. She also enjoyed watching a little "Preschool on TV."