November Highlights

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This month we completed level 1 of our reading curriculum, worked on money, time, tens & ones, addition and graphing in math, learned about European exploration, monarchs, and the history of Russia in social studies, and had lots more fun with astronomy in science. I'm still trying to get better at the whole taking pictures thing, so not much to share visually for November, but I did get some pics of our moon-related activities...

This was a quick and easy experiment we did to illustrate why the moon goes through different phases. I taped a white circle onto the wall, pointed a flashlight (the sun) at it from across the room, and had L hold a ball (the Earth) in between the "sun" and the "moon" to cast a shadow. 

We also practiced drawing the various phases of the moon with chalk on black construction paper...

...and strategically munched on oreos... This was a crowd-pleaser!  :)


We also love all things Fall! We took a walk outside to collect leaves of different shapes, then painted over them and wrote things we are thankful for inside of their outlines.

One of the challenges/blessings (two sides of the coin here) we have experienced in homeschooling is having to separate the girls on occasion to work on age-appropriate activities and attend their own classes on co-op days. They love being together so much (HUGE answer to many prayers) that they both get upset at having to part (the only downside). For our last co-op day before our winter break I let the little one join us in class. She totally rose to the occasion. My usually very busy and distracted 2 year old was suddenly sharp as a tack, super focused, and an active participant. Big sister was, as always, super nurturing and sweet as she included the little one in everything and showed her what to do. #meltmyheart! 

One of the benefits of homeschooling is lots of time for practical life lessons. This is them doing laundry together...dressed up as princesses of course.

Over Thanksgiving break we got to visit our college...the place where Jake and I met and fell in love, and the place where I earned my elementary education degree. I NEVER in a million years thought I would have ended up using it to homeschool my own kids, but here's a pic of me standing in front of the education building with my two favorite students.


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