A Gentle Feast: Cycle 2 Term 2 + 3 Review

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The school year ended along with the month of May and we made a mad dash straight into summer life! 

After a Memorial Day weekend camping trip, our older two boys did enjoy an entire week at Grandma & Grandpa's farm before baseball started. They loved that and I appreciated the time hanging out with our youngest two boys. 

I haven't taken the time yet to reflect on the last two terms of our school year - so now is that time! We followed along with A Gentle Feast's Cycle 2 (White Year): Wars, Whigs & Washington.

We loved the book selections and were introduced to so many new favorites. The 4th of July Story by Alice Dalghesh was one of my personal favorites - a great read for children and adults. 

A lesson I learned is that we need to have all books in-hand, if at all possible. America First and Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans are available free online and I went that direction at first because, well, they're free! But I soon found that attention spans and even keeping our place between lessons was difficult. I was able to find printed versions online (on Amazon, I believe) and wished I had done that from the very beginning. Now we really have learned so much from those stories and aren't as distracted by pulling them up on the computer. 

So note to self: Physical books in our hands are best.
Studying American history really has pumped the boys up and made them proud to be an American! Our preschooler's "copywork" proved to be quite patriotic:
Now for our extra readalouds... we have totally been doing our own thing. And that's okay! My husband and the boys have an affinity for adventure books and I'm just happy to have us all enjoy readalouds together. Over many winter evenings, we read Endurance by Alfred Lansing aloud. It is an amazing story and was enjoyed by ALL ages. Well, I'm not sure the baby cared. Everyone else loved it though! 


Dimensions Math was a great fit for us again this year. E finished up book 2A and will finish 2B either this summer or in his 3rd grade year. W finished the Earlybird Kindergarten books from Singapore Math also. 

E was also required to test in the state of Minnesota this year. We went with the CAT paper version and the testing process was painless :) With this being our first year, I wasn't sure what to expect! Thankfully, my mother-in-law was here to help with other kids during the testing. Testing has been helpful to make sure we are covering the materials we need to and he did great! 

(Disclaimer: This term review is just as scattered as my brain currently is! Thank you for bearing with me!)

Term 2/3 Challenges: 

  • Keeping a very active, busy 3-year-old on task and out of trouble
  • Nursing a baby while doing all things
  • Meal planning. #Goals.
  • Writing up Term reviews in a timely manner - I will be better at this next school year! 

Term 2/3 Victories: 

  • Having two readers that can read to younger siblings
  • Buying the Tuttle Twins book series. We love it! They are so fun to read and helpful! 
  • Activities and the library opening up again after Covid-19
  • Our homeschool co-ops. We are in a monthly Charlotte Mason co-op and then a field-trip based co-op in our town. The kids and I greatly appreciate the fellowship of both of these groups!
  • Our household needed more action so we got a puppy. Talk about a homeschool nature study ;) See random puppy picture below.

In the midst of summer fun and crazy schedules, I did order part of our curriculum for A Gentle Feast's Cycle 3! Julie has done a wonderful job on this curriculum and I'm looking forward to our third year using it... which will also be our last year of all the kids being in Form I, grades 1-3 (!!!). It's pretty nice having everyone in the same form! 


Explore the A Gentle Feast curriculum here and feel free to email me or comment here with any questions! Disclaimer: This post contains my A Gentle Feast affiliate link. If you click it, and make a purchase I will receive a commission.

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