Here are three more paper modeling tutorials for those taking their kids through Paper Modelling by M. Swannell. Enjoy! Do you do paper sloyd at home in your homeschool? We love it here-- though it is very hard and frustrating at times. Good luck!
Enjoy the Barn, Rabbit Hutch and Trough from year one.
I am about to finish my first year homeschooling two children with a toddler! We have three weeks left, but I am going to squish it into two. I deserve a reward. Like a large bar of dark chocolate! Hahah! And so do the kids! We really all have worked so hard.
Well, what a whirlwind. I was reading my blog about my thoughts when I did year 1 last time and wow do I feel (mostly) differently! My favorite book to read with Becky was the animal stories from James Herriot's Treasury for Children. My least favorite book this time around was the Burgess Bird Book. If I have to read about Peter Rabbit going lippity lippity around the woods and taking to birds one more time I might go insane.
Year one went smoothly. Becky is a natural narrator who can give very good narrations when she pays attention. Her attention is the key thing! She started school with gusto and was loving every day, until something switched and she lost interest. I started giving her Fridays off and doing her work just Monday-Thursday and that seemed to help. Her favorite subject is drawing and she's still doing piano. She's just amazing. She has a little bit of dysgraphia and a whole lot of gumption and one fiery attitude. She's perfect. And I hope after the summer break she will head into year two with a smile.
She's reading simple words. After hunting around for a good curriculum (the one I used with Reuben was not working with her dysgraphia) we are on lesson 38 of Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I told her we will have to do some of that through the summer so she doesn't forget everything. She understood but wasn't thrilled.
Unlike Reuben's first year where I gave up and we ended school with 5 or 6 weeks of Ambleside left (I had planned to do a few readings in the summer but never did) we finished the entire curriculum with Becky. It feels great to know what I am doing and what to expect going forward. Homeschooling has grown with me, and I've grown into it. First children are trial children, right? I'm laughing, are you laughing?
Reuben is doing January to January school term right now, so he just finished Terms 1 and 2 of Year 4 and will finish up year 4 in August and start year 5 right after. My favorite book hands down with him has been Abigail Adams. I think I will adore that book for the rest of my life. It's perfect and I never knew how amazing Abigail and John Adams really were, and how much a part of history. Reuben loved Robinson Crusoe--though the readings were long and at first it was quite a slog. He also loves Minn of the Mississippi. Really, all the year four books are so good, I've only heard him complain about Plutarch's Lives. And I complain about Plutarch too. What is he? Why is he? I don't know, but we are doing it. Perhaps it will make sense later.
We started written narrations in the second term of year 4 and he's doing great. He can do a bible reading here and there by himself and he's reading great, but not able to do his readings by himself yet which suits me just fine. I need this education just as much as him and it is nice to read it together. I love the new subjects too. We read A Midsummer's Night's Dream in the first term and he picked Romeo and Juliet for the second term. I enjoy latin immensely and grammar has been hard (because of my dyslexia) but fun. He enjoys it all.
Next year we are dropping Spanish for sign language. I also rarely make it to music study. It is what it is. Life is going and so is school and it's all intermixed and interesting.
How are you all? How was your year?
I'm already adding a year five book to my amazon orders here and there...getting excited about new books and new stories!
Esther hasn't been sleeping well so that means I haven't been sleeping well. Mother of a toddler. I miss sleep. The years of sleep deprivation have been more than the blessed years of sleep since I started having kids. I've been counting. And crying. It is pitiful.
We are crazy. We started trying for another baby? I don't know, the time feels right. Besides not sleeping, my health is better and it's not like we have a lot of time for, uhm, marital relations, so I wonder what will happen. Brian works a lot, and the weekends are full of dishes and house chores and someone always seems to be sick. Not much time for personal husband and wife time. Though I try to make time for it. ITs one of a million things I stress over--I'm behind on this, and dishes. Oh, and laundry. What should take precedent today?
Life is a lovely crazy and sometimes I try to fight it and sometimes I just embrace it. It's two sides of the same person, the calm mom and the one who doesn't know what's for dinner and hides in the closet to have a good cry. Which one are you today? I'm both.
We are trying to do less media this spring and summer. We do a lot of video games and movies here in the Markey household but I think it goes in cycles. And it is how I get a break. I am trying to send them outside and also to go outside myself, but the balance of nature verses my own personal mental health is on delicate scales and no one is perfect. That's what I tell myself when I feel guilty on our second hour of screen time.
I am buying the kids supplies to make clay earrings for Esther. I am perhaps more excited about this than they are. But that is what they asked for. It is a favorite hobby of ours to do together once a week and I need to take pictures sometime!
Becky wants to cut her hair. I am making her wait a week or two to make sure she really wants to. I'm not sure--she hates tangles and that is what is making her want to pull out the scissors, but she loves her long hair and has started wearing bows in her hair and it's just beautiful.
It has been years since I updated the pictures on this blog and I have plans to do that...soon. Very soon. Yay to a new blog look!
