Home schooling the older children

I rarely write about what my older children are doing in our home school.  So I wanted to give them a little blog time today.

I hesitate to say this because some people might not understand…but this has been a tough year for us in our home school.  We have had many, many changes in our lives and that brings stress.  It seems that we have finally fallen into a routine – like it’s all finally coming together.  Things are finally starting to work like a well oiled machine and that does my heart good.

The Princess is doing very well with learning to read.  Today, she brought to me a note that her older brother had written.  She was so happy that she could read the entire thing to me without help – even the cursive part.  I have to say that I am loving using Abeka’s reading program.  It is very thorough and I wish I had discovered it earlier. 

She is also learning her math facts and had a fun time playing a game against me using number cubes (ie. dice – during my school teacher days we weren’t supposed to say dice hence the number cubes). 

Since we are learning about the early beginnings of America in History, we are spending our Fridays learning about various Native American tribes.  This past Friday, we learned about the Inuit people.  For our creative writing lesson, we wrote a story as a group.  Each person would roll the number cube die and then write only the number of words that the die told them they could write.  It was a lot of fun. 

Sometimes the older children teach the younger ones.  In this picture, The Hunter has been explaining to Sunshine Girl about more and less. 

All of my children love to draw - something that they have inherited from their daddy.  This week, The Princess drew this penguin for Sunshine girl who has been studying animals of the Arctic and the Antarctic this week. 

But I think one of my favorite things about home schooling older children is lunch time.  We get to talk with each other and be together.  I have found out that older children are really a joy to talk with.  It seems like when they are little you are always talking to them but when they get older you get to talk with them. 

What precious and fun times these are!