Family Schooling Summary

I have been researching new curriculum materials/approaches for homeschooling this fall. Quinn has great ideas that she shares on her blog and website Reformation Acres. She uses the Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling. Another website, Simply Charlotte Mason, has 300 pages of free manuscript practice sheets.  They are all made from hymns and famous poems. Big sister A likes them a lot better than some of the others that we have tried because the lines/spaces for writing in are nice and wide. 

I am also testing out Simply Charlotte Mason's "Delightful Reading" method on brother M. He will start homeschool kindergarten in the fall. We will spend a lot of time playing games with the alphabet to learn the sounds. Our first game was to try to find letters in the rice bucket and sing the alphabet song. Brother M spelled out his name.

We are about to finish another unit of swim lessons. Big sister A has been working on her back stroke and floats.  Brother M is just getting started. His big success has been putting his head all the way under to get the rings. Their teacher corrects them on technique, but also uses games to help them practice new skills.

 This was also the last week of dance class for the summer. I think A and M are going to switch back to gymnastics in the fall. Big sister A complained that she did not want to go before almost every dance class.

My good friend was visiting from Utah this week for a wedding. We did some of our favorite activities together -- thrift shopping, sewing, and chatting a lot.  We hung out at the temple visitor's center while she was at the wedding.
We saw the new scale model of the inside of the temple:

We got our picture taken in the photo booth:

The kiddos tried out the new games in the kids exhibit:

 And we played outside on the grounds:

Then we went out to lunch, dropped her at the metro for the reception, and headed to the Zoo for a couple of hours.  I wanted to make sure the kiddos were really tired out... not to mention myself. We saw a lot of our usual favorites: elephants, lions, wolves. The "baby light blue climbing tree frog" house (Reptile House) was closed when we got there, so baby S was disappointed. But for the very first time, we saw the prairie dogs come out.  It was worth the whole trip just for that. Their exhibit is just a little concrete island filled with dirt. The kids were able to stand so close you could almost touch them.  Of course I forgot to bring my camera in with me. They were so fun to watch. Here is someone else's picture of them:

On Saturday our neighbor, who used to babysit the kiddos every Friday, got married. We went to her wedding at a local Presbyterian church.

My friend knows how much we love to listen to educational CDs in the car and brought some for us.  We are already listening to The Magician's Nephew by CS Lewis for the second time.