September Recap + Changes in our Curriculum
This month has been so busy and all month long I have had this looming feeling that we haven’t been doing enough. However, when I sat down and reviewed our month - I was quickly reminded - that we have done a lot! I think we’re to the point in our homeschooling journey that we just fit what we are working on more naturally than I sometimes realize. It’s so much apart of our lifestyle that I forget that this is just what life looks like for us - always learning and exploring and discovering the world around us.
Color Study
During the first few days of September we finished up our color study, but we saw sprinkles of it all through September. It ended up being so amazing. If you remember from my last blog post, I talked about how we did a total 180 our first few weeks of school and in hindsight I can see the Lord’s hand navigating it all. I am constantly in awe of His awareness in our little home. Our favorites in this unit were:
Rainbow Color University from Amy Robison Design: We loved the play-doh and paint experiments in this kit. We also used it to guide our prism study.
Magic Sand Experiments: I can’t remember the YouTube video we used to go along with this but here is a similar one on hydrophobic elements.
Prisms + Light + 1 Corinthians 8-13 + IG Live with Eva Timothy: We had some beautiful crossovers with our scripture study and learning about light and prisms. In these scriptures Paul is talking about spiritual patterns we see and we were seeing diamonds and light and rainbows and prisms all month long. I had a wonderful opportunity to discuss a piece of artwork from Eva Timothy live on IG earlier this month and so much of what we were studying came together as a prepared for that live. You can watch it here.
India Gond Paintings with Gouache Paints: We used the Art Makes Me Smart India Tutorial and also used many of the linked resources in the curriculum to explore and learn more about India. (I have a story highlight on my IG titled “Art School” if you’d like to see more.
Interestingly, we had just finished The Secret Garden which talks about India and then later in the month we ended up seeing Around the World in 80 days at our local performing art centre. It was a fantastic performance! The girls especially loved the part that took place in India since we had just learned all about it!
Sensory Bin: I set up the cutest little sensory bin for my youngest, but all the kids had so much fun in it. I am too busy to dye a bunch of rice so I just bought ours here. We used our homeschool funding, but of course, it’ll be much cheaper if you can DIY :) You can find a similar alphabet puzzle linked here.
Picasso Self Portraits with Paint Markers: We watched a video on Picasso (sorry, can’t remember which one) and then just googled a bunch of Picasso paintings and talked about them. I showed the kids some google images of kid’s Picasso self portraits and then we dove in. They were so much fun and I even did one! We’re new to paint markers and we all love coloring with them so much! I’ve left them out in our school room and their used all the time now.
Our Favorite Books: Children’s picture books on art are SO creative and clever. They definitely have a different tone than other picture books which is something I didn’t realize until we read so many of these. I have all our favorite books linked here! If I had to pick JUST one I would have to say I LOVE Hailstones and Halibut Bones. I’ve had my copy since I was a child and so it’s also nostalgic for me.
To see more of our Color Study (including our full learning shelf) check out this post and my IG story highlight titled “Color Unit.”
Fall Learning Shelf + Nature Study
We started our study using Seasons Afield and it has been going beautifully! We study from this guide all week so 4 weeks into our study and we just finished up our study of pigments. If you have the curriculum and are following along - we’ll spend the first two weeks of October studying the Senescence and Explore sections. I had wanted to move through the sections a little quicker, but we’ve taken a few twists and turns so we’ve averaged one section a week. Our study has turned out to coordinate PERFECTLY with the seasons here in Utah so it’s been nice. This next week we’ll be learning all about the fall leaves and our mountains are starting to burst with the bright colors of red, orange, and yellow so it couldn’t have worked out any better. Mid-October we’ll be switching into our study of The Middle Ages and I am so so excited! My plan is, and this might change, is to head back in to Seasons Afield for The Secret Staircase study right after Thanksgiving to aid in a Christmas nature study.
Here are a few of the highlights from our study so far:
Fall Learning Shelf & Books: This is one of my favorite things to rotate out with the seasons and holidays.
Here is a list of some of our favorite autumn picture books. Last year I wrote a few summaries of some of the books if you’d like to know more about them. You can read it here: Favorite Fall Books blog post.
Natural History Museum: In early September we kicked off our nature study with a trip to BYU’s Bean Museum, but of course any natural history museum would be a fun way to start this study or extend the learning.
Nature Journals: We’ve been using these nature journals to log our studies and they’re working out well. We have been using packing tape to tape in some of our nature findings and glueing/taping our fieldwork and water color cards from our curriculum guide.
Nature Backpacks: The Camelbaks we gifted the kids for the first day or school have proved to be well used over here! We’ve used them on a few of our explorations and they’ve been perfect to take along our lunches and nature journals. The nets, bug catchers, and our binoculars also come on every trip with us. We’ve used the hydration packs twice and they’ve worked out perfectly. If you’re in the market for the hydration packs - we’ve loved the Camelbaks because the they’re stored in a different pouch than where we keep our food or journals and I will already say we’ve had a few leaks because I didn’t screw the lids on tightly enough so thank goodness our other gear have been in their own pockets.
Lily and Thistle Watercolor School & Nature Club: I’ve found the watercolor cards from Seasons Afield are great, but it definitely feels more like just coloring the cards considering none of us know much technique, ha! I am SO glad we’ve been adding in additional tutorials from Lily & Thistle to actually learn some new skills. We have used both the Watercolor School and Nature Club and they’re fantastic! I love how our cute squirrels and foxes turned out (pictured at the top of this post and right below).
The Trumpet of the Swan & The Magician’s Nephew: It’s funny - I didn’t plan either of these books to be our read aloud this month, but in hindsight, the Lord’s hand led the way yet again. They’re both fantastic read alouds to accompany nature studies. Magician’s Nephew parallels the creation and Trumpet of the Swan is obviously about swans and I love the tie in to Sam Beaver and his nature journaling. EB White’s writing is so fun to read aloud. We listened to the Magician’s Nephew since they were recently released as new Yoto cards.
Other Nature Happenings: We celebrated Johnny Appleseed and spent a week doing all things apples, we made peach raspberry jam with fresh peaches from our backyard, and have done lots of bike rides around our town to explore nature trails and parks. I feel like I had to stretch myself a bit with the Seasons Afield pigment study because I had no idea what I was doing, but fortunately they made it really easy for me, and I learned something new about dying fabrics and watercoloring with spices! We wrapped up the month with a day trip to Strawberry Reservoir with some friends to see the fall leaves beginning to change in the mountains and observe the salmon run. The kids were able to see the salmon swimming upstream and find lots of eggs and baby salmon. They spent the afternoon playing in the water and catching crawdads.
Changes In Our Curriculum
All of our curriculum choices for this year have been going really well except I felt like we needed to add a few things for each of my kids so here is a little update.
For my youngest son, he is four, and he has shown signs of being ready for book work. I think it’s because he sees the other three do it all morning and wants to be part of the party so I am not complaining! It’s been working really well for me to work with him at the same time I’m working with my first grader. If he isn’t interested, then I certainly don’t push. He has worked through his first Explode the Code book and I also started him on Math Level K from TGTB. I am adapting the lessons for him to make them more hands on, but so far he is doing really well with them. I’m continuing to pull a few random ideas from Playing Preschool, but I am not following it week by week which I suspected I probably wouldn’t. See all our 1st Grade and Preschool curriculum picks here.
For my first grader, he read over 300 little books over the summer and I’ve been so happy with his progress. TGTB LA L1 has been perfect for him. But, I also felt like he could benefit from more practice than just one page of independent work a day so I decided to add the Pathway to Fluency Level 1 Bundle from the Moffatt Girls. I used some of her materials to supplement my Kindergartner last year and really like her stuff - just to add more practice or mix up the tediousness that can sometimes come with bookwork. In this bundle I skipped right to unit 4 for him to give him more practice with r-controlled vowels. I am mostly using the pages from the center works as extra practice with him. As my younger son gets closer to reading - I’ll also be able to pull from the unit 1 files so that is why I bought the whole bundle.
And just a heads up - IMO sometimes TPT bundles are a little too big for homeschoolers because there are so many things to sort through since it’s used in a classroom, but I try to just pick and choose where I feel like we need a little extra work so I definitely don’t use it all.
Last of all, just a few weeks into the school year I could tell my twins were going to need more writing practice than what I had originally planned (see my 5th grade curriculum picks here). We started Fix It Grammar from IEW this year and it’s been a little easy for them, but I decided just to stick with it and add Fables, Myths, and Fairy Tales Writing Lessons. So far, it’s been a good fit for us and I am really glad we added it. We’re still planning to use Jot It Down for our creative writing, but it slipped away from us this month so we’re hoping to continue on with it next month.
We’ve also had some simple changes in our rhythm and routine around here which I am going to share in the coming weeks.
And that’s a wrap for September! I’ve got lots of story highlights on IG with more on all these things so be sure to check them out over @homecenteredlearning
October, here we come!