Weekly Wrap Up ~ Week #2

This has been the week for awesome nature studies! There are two precious women in our church who know our children love to do nature studies, and they are always on the look out for little critters to collect and share with us. This week we were given a baby Eastern Milk Snake one of them found hiding under her water hose, and the other lady gave us FOUR Yellowtail butterflies in the larva stage. We are feeding the caterpillars parsley, and one has begun to form his chrysalis! It is so exciting!

This is a caterpillar we found in our own backyard this week. If we have identified it correctly, it will one day be a Hickory Tussock Moth.

The changes I made to our schedule worked out very well, and I am so thankful! My 9-year-old son is gaining more confidence each day, and really needs words of praise and affirmation daily. He is so bright, and I am so proud of him! It is amazing what you can learn about your children's learning styles when you take the time to spend with them and work with them one-on-one. My 7-year-old is much more independent in her studies than her brother, but I still must make a special effort to spend time with her. She beat me in chess today. She just learned, and is teaching me to play. She thought it was pretty cool to beat an adult! My 5-year-old is progressing through the basics I'm doing with her and joins her older brother and sister during our read aloud times together when we study our Science and Social Studies lessons.

We are enjoying our Social Studies and Geography lessons. We are using Sonlight Core 3, which is an introduction to American History. We are reading about Native Americans and Christopher Columbus right now. In addition to all our nature studies, we studied about Spiders this week in our Considering God's Creation Curriculum and enjoyed learning many fascinating things about spider webs. We are progressing through our Math Mammoth curriculum as well. I can't believe that this year my two oldest children will begin learning multiplication. Can they seriously be old enough for this? Well, we're not there yet, but we will be after the first of the year probably.

I love how we are all gathering together at the breakfast table each morning. My husband leads us in a time of prayer each morning once we finish eating. We pray for each other, the day the Lord has given us, and a few other requests that the Lord brings to our minds. In year's past our mornings have been chaotic and this has brought such peace and purpose to our mornings.

Please check out other home educating families as they share their weekly wrap-ups over at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.