A Peek at Our Progress

We're making homeschooling progress and that feels good.  Here's a peek at what we've been doing.

We got our first unit in Exploring Creation with Astronomy (Apologia) finished.  We made our balloon solar system project and finished the journaling on it today.  It is the second time we've done this project as a family.  Honestly, it is not my favorite, because expecting children to be able to tie balloons is one thing...tying balloons while keeping them at a certain circumference measurement is another.

Plus about 5 minutes after we took this picture, because my girls found the balloons impossible to keep from playing with, Venus got inextricably tangled on Earth's string causing their orbits to (God forbid) cross. 

So, we at least got practice putting the planets in order.  And we could definitely see which planets were large, which were small, and which were similarly sized.  We did not put rings on the balloons or color code them much.  Judge us if you must.

We've got a Styrofoam Solar System kit from WalMart waiting in the wings to be made.  We'll see if we like that better.  My preschooler is so enamored with this kit.  She keeps looking at the box and talking about the planets.  Love it!

We did a little studying about Maine this week.  Robert McCloskey is from Maine and wrote a children's book One Morning in Maine.  We read that and noted some different animals in the book.  We talked about which animals were vertebrates and which were invertebrates.  The kids did some computer research to learn about Maine facts and made a poster.  And we gave some Progresso clam chowder a try for lunch (because the family in the book has clam chowder).

We of course did our other subjects this week, too.

Except yesterday we went light on book work.  We had a little friend come to spend the day.  Since our reading the day before had talked about a bobcat and one of McCloskey's books is all about ducks, we went to check out some animals.  We fed the ducks, geese, and swan at the duck pond.  And we went to Grimes Farm and looked around in the nature center.  They have a lot of things to investigate.  We did especially take note of the taxidermied bobcat and moose.

I'm feeling good about what we've learned, how our days have gone, and looking forward to what's to come.