School's in

Actually, school has been in session at SpIGoT for three weeks now. We started off slowly and I think we're still going fairly slow, but we're enjoying ourselves.

The kids are all crazy about an audio series called "Jonathan Park." The fifth edition was recently issued and so we have been listening to it. Each edition has twelve episodes of about 30 minutes each. Although the storylines are interesting and compelling, we do this as school work because of all the science that is discussed. Each edition comes with a study guide and that helps us to reinforce the information presented.

We are going to go back to the first edition soon, because we didn't utilize the study guide when we first listened to it. It's been a fun way to add in some science, my least favorite subject to teach!

Of course, the kids are working on math and grammar. I switched Song to the same math curriculum as Luke. That lit a fire under him, as he just realized she is about to catch up to the same book as he uses! I think he could finish his book in a month if he put his mind to it. It's obviously plenty easy for him. I am just making him finish it so we don't miss anything important.

Last week we started going through a new little curriculum I picked up at the homeschool bookfair. It's about Ancient China, so naturally we're all enjoying it, although Alex wants to know why we aren't doing Russia. Well....I do have a curriculum about Russia, too, but right now it is more chronologically consistent to study China. We'll get back to Russia, eventually.

Last week, the three big kids had to find and read about a different dynasty in the encyclopedias we got from my grandparents. They reported what they had learned the next day. We discussed what inventions went with the different dynasties. We had a great time.

On Friday the girls decorated our entry hall (which has the most empty floor space) with Chinese lanterns and we hung a quilt from China from the balcony. Song and Anna dressed up in their Chinese dresses. We moved the coffee table in, brought pillows to sit on, and ate our Chinese take-out! OK, not entirely authentic, but fun. We were going to do a study on Chinese family life, but were interrupted by friends. I'm sure they wondered what on earth they had stumbled upon!

I wish I had pictures, but alas, my camera is on the blink. I finally learn how to use it and it fritzes out on me. Why am I not surprised!