A Gentle Feast: Cycle 4 Term 2

We've made it through the holidays, a bout of influenza and a pretty solid chunk of winter. It feels like a relief to be within reach of Spring. Maybe a month or two more of this frozen business to go! 

One of the best things we have done this year was state testing at the mid-point of the school year. Two of the boys were required to test this year and I wanted to have the process slightly more streamlined that the last. 

We did a couple testing things different:

1. Testing earlier in the school year so we aren't missing out on beautiful Spring days at the end of the school year.
2. We used the untimed online CAT instead of the paper form. This was easier to navigate with two testers and two younger kids running around. Plus, the results are instant rather than mailing in and waiting! We will definitely go that route again in the future.

 
Morning Time is a messy ordeal though I do like having all of the kids at the table, even if it's just for a short while. Artwork to compliment the artist study is always a hit and the toddler man loves to color, paint, bingo dobber... etc. Anything messy! Having something busy to keep preschool man and toddler dude busy makes the day go better altogether. Watercolors, play dough, counting cars, math pegs, bingo dobbers etc. 

Kandinsky Concentric Circles: Lazy mom asked them to use crayons :) 

In a continued attempt to streamline school and extracurriculars, I made a "morning time" board in the kitchen - where we will ALL see it and stay on task.  Covering Latin using Prima Latina this year has gone really well and the kids learn a few vocab words each week along with memorizing The Sanctus right now. We do work on our Spanish a little bit here and there as well. If something falls to the wayside in a week, it's generally Spanish! Woops.

Schooling the boys in "pairs" is working really well currently. While the older two work on independent studies, I have a window of time to do preschool with the younger two. For my oldest and second born who learned along side him, I used God's Little Explorer's for pre-k and My Father's World Kindergarten. Now for the younger two, timewise it isn't practical to use a totally separate curriculum for them. 

Instead, they listen in (or just play, eat or run) while we cover the older kid subjects and then 5-year-old works on his 100 Gentle Lessons in Letters & Sounds and Earlybird Kindergarten Math with me later. Toddler dude joins in for some of the 100 Gentle Lessons and he is working on a short nursery rhyme to recite while the other boys work on poetry recitation! It's something for him to do and he's proud to learn. 

We had really fun hands-on chemistry experiments in Term 2, enjoyed by all! The highlight was probably our "rubber egg" - here's a link to the video :) 

Okay, one more subject we have really enjoyed as a family: Geography! Halliburton's Book of Marvels has taken us on an amazing journey around the world. We read the chapter together and then watch a video linked in the A Gentle Feast curriculum. Mizielinskis' Maps book is a nice additional resource that we have also used for this subject.

That's a touch on our school subjects and then there's always the chickens & outdoor time. This is the highlight of being out in the country again! I have missed this. The kids are in charge of chicken chores every day and are learning the in's & out's of a small egg business.

We enjoy the nice winter days while we can and also the ice at the rink in town, while it's still frozen! Intramural hockey was a great time for all of us because it made me stay disciplined to take the kids skating at least once a week. Now we anxiously await the arrival of green grass and SPRING!

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.