Wading Through...

View Original

Homeschool W7: Our Usual Routine for Fall

Tobe Buffenbarger

What We Studied

Today’s post actually includes a Flex Week and a normal week. We’re deep in Vala’s season, so our weeks are a bit shorter and bit busier than usual. Still, We accomplished a ton of school and moved all our skills forward. Overall, I’m really happy with our progress so far this fall.

Literature and Poetry

Arthur is primarily using Hearth and Story G5 for his language arts this year. We started reading one of our “spooky” reads for this fall. We haven’t finished it yet, but getting very close to the end. We also covered more grammar and extra language arts assignments.

  • The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street by Lindsay Currie

  • Poetry for Young People: Carl Sandburg

Quentin is primarily using Blossom & Root G1 for his language arts this year. We will pull some elements from Build Your Library Level 2 and random books that we have around the house. We started a new classic for us. Quentin saw a trailer for the new The Wild Robot movie and wanted to bump up the book to read before seeing the movie. I’m always up for that.

  • The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

  • Poetry: Firefly July

  • Poetry: Cricket in the Thicket by Carol Murray

  • Write Shop B

Math

Arthur is using Singapore’s Math in Focus Course 1. Effectively this is Singapore’s 6th grade math text. Arthur focused on a chapter reviewing multiplying and dividing decimals and fractions.

  • Math in Focus Court 1 Book A

  • EM Financial Literacy G5

Quentin is using Singapore’s Primary Mathematics Common Core edition 2B and 3A. He started with the lessons in 2B. I imagine that we will be slowing working through that this semester. Q continued covering the chapter about Multiplication and Division. We then moved on to the chapter on Money.

  • Primarily Logic

  • Singapore Primary Common Core 2B

  • EM Financial Literacy G1

Social Studies

Arthur is using Curiosity Chronicles Early Modern History Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 this year. We covered an entire section about the kingdoms of West Africa.

  • Curiosity Chronicles Early Modern History Vol. 1

  • DK History

  • DK Timelines of Everything

  • DK Timelines of Everyone

  • DK A Child Through Time

Quentin is using History Quest Middle Times with Build Your Library Level 2 supporting. We stayed in Western Europe and covered the British Isles. Our big story was the Norman invasion of 1066. We also covered the chapter about the Crusades. It wasn’t super detailed, but covered the basics. We also watched a documentary, NOVA’s Building the Great Cathedrals.

  • History Quest Middle Times

  • DK When on Earth?

  • DK History

  • DK Timelines of Everything

  • DK Timelines of Everyone

  • DK A Child Through Time

  • Kingfisher Atlas of the Medieval World

  • DK Eyewitness: Knight

  • DK Castles and Knights

  • The Hawk of the Castle: A Story of Medieval Falconry by Danna Smith

  • Castle by David Macaulay

  • A Year in the Castle by Rachel Coombs

  • Ms Frizzle's Adventures: Medieval Castle by Joanna Cole

  • Knights by Sally Lee

  • Craco: The Medieval Ghost Town by Lisa Owings

  • Find the Knights by David Long

Science

Arthur is using RSO Biology 1 this year has the main science text. Our coverage will be spotty until October. Our academic coop will also be using RSO Biology 1 as a basis for the fall semester course, so we will be just supplementing at home. We will also be doing some of Blossom & Root’s Book Seeds and various other small units in between. We did do a bit of introduction to biology to prep for this week’s Academic Co-op. We read three chapters in the Story of Science, learning about Einstein and his miracle year. We continued watching the documentary series One Strange Rock. We will continue watching sporadically throughout the fall. I’m counting this as science for kids.

  • RSO Biology 1

  • Story of Science Vol. 3 by Joy Hakim

Quentin is using RSO Earth & Environment and RSO Astronomy 1 as a base. Of course, we have a ton of extra science resources laying around the house. And I will be hosting some one-off science exploration days that align with the units. Q covered the geosphere and layers of the earth. We also watched a few episodes of One Strange Rock.

  • RSO Earth and Environment

  • Earth by the Numbers by Steve Jenkins

  • DK First Earth Encyclopedia

  • Planet Earth Inside Out by Gail Gibbons

  • The Magic School Buss Inside the Earth by Joanna Cole

Enrichment STEAM Co-op

We finished out the 2024 year for the STEAM co-op. I taught Arthur’s class two weeks about cryptography. Quentin’s class learned about watercolor and symmetry. The STEAM Co-op will be on break until early April 2025. This week we will be jumping right into the Academic Co-op for Arthur.

Art and Music

Art will be very sporadic this year, but we do have some fun excursions planned. And I will incorporate art projects into a lot of other subjects and unit studies. We continued our Harbor + Sprout Visual Arts modules with one about color theory and one about aspects of art techniques.

For music, we are using Music Lab: We Rock! as our spine. Each week we will be learning about a different rock musician and focus on a particular song. I have also created Spotify playlists so we can listen on the go. We enjoyed listening to The Supremes, James Brown, and Bob Dylan.

  • Music Lab: We Rock!

  • DK Music and How it Works

  • DK The Arts

Field Trip/Activities

No real field trips, but we did visit Vala’s twice and the zoo once. Our Vala’s visits are always a highlight of the fall. We hit all of our favorite attractions. At the zoo, we met some new friends. We went to the aquarium for the first time since spring. We are moving into our fall/winter plan of more buildings.

High

We wrapped up the 2024 mini summer session of the Enrichment STEAM Co-op. This was our fourth “year” and things have gotten easier as the sessions fly by. We will be taking a break over the winter (for academic co-op), but will start our 2025 session in April. Hopefully we will still see all our friends at events throughout the winter.

Low

We had a bit of a shake-up with Academic Co-op that required a member and myself to redo the entire plan for math. We managed to work up a plan fairly quickly, but teaching two classes was not on my plan this fall.

Next Week

  • Continuing our math lessons

  • Finishing our read alouds and started new ones

  • Learning about Art and Science in Europe (A) and the Magna Carta (Q)

  • Listening to Jefferson Airplane and The Byrds

  • Exploring rocks and minerals for science (Q)

  • Heading to Vala’s again

  • Starting the Academic Co-op!

Next up on the TBR pile: