Holly in Cameroon: Home schooling and other things...

We're into our third week of homeschool, and so far so good! I must admit I was a bit nervous about how to schedule all the boys in during the morning now that Jude is in Kindergarten. Seth has matured a lot over the summer and he is much more independent now (it's amazing the difference between 4th and 5th grade!). So the mornings have been going better than I expected.

Here is how a typical school morning goes chez Schilinskis: We start at 8am, Josh and Seth start on devotions and then Math and LA (which they can do by themselves). I begin devos with Jude and then get all his reading out of the way (science, history, read-alouds, poems). Then Jude starts on his workbooks and he is all done by break at 10:30. After a quick snack (and a cup of tea for me of course), I start reading with Josh (history and read-alouds) and then do the same with Seth. We are usually done right at 1pm and if the boys have any workbooks to finish, they do that after lunch. They are also doing Typing Instructor and the French Rosetta Stone on alternate days. Fridays are our fun days with art, music, and sports. I'm seriously going to try and get them to the pool (which is a at hotel in town) once a month so they can keep improving on that (especially Jude who still isn't swimming independently yet).

Here's the curriculum we use for those home schooling mums who are interested; Saxon for Math, Sonlight for history, Abeka for LA and spelling, and I've started using Apologia for Science this year with Josh, which I am loving (and Josh too!). Then they have some work books as well: Wordly Wise, Map skills, MP Phonics. I am absolutely ecstatic about being back into a schedule with the kids, it just makes the whole household run much smoother (I've even been running/exercising more consistently). I even got to spend a couple of hours in the garden this week. My poor garden has been severely neglected the last two month and for any of you that know me, it is one of my favorite pastimes. I feel like I am back to the garden I had when we first moved into the house (ok, maybe it's not that bad) but I have a lot of weeding and pruning to do.

As some of you may remember, we always kick of the home schooling year at Sonlight Christian Academy (the missionary co-op we're a part of). It is two weeks of devotions, classes, sports, art, etc. with about 10 other missionary families. The kids had an awesome fortnight and so did I as I got to hang out with good friends that I don't get to see too often. I had a lot of fun teaching the Kindgarten class Math and LA (only two students), as well as helping out with sports; Presidential fitness testing and american football (I was a big help with that one). The theme this session was Scotland. An American family who is very "into" Scotland taught the kids about the country. Their son played the bagpipes which was pretty impressive. All in all it was a blessed two weeks to start the school year off with.