At the end of last school year my 10 year old expressed continued interest in learning Japanese. Since Kindergarten he has been learning Mandarin. I didn’t want to add another language to his plate so I decided to let him have a go at Japanese and drop Mandarin for now.…
We are embarking on a study of the continent of Africa this year, focusing on Morocco, Ghana, Sudan, Tanzania, and South Africa. Our study basically consists of books, videos and activities. As a mission-focused family, missions are woven into the study using Window on the World, The Gospel According to…
As I started to prepare for this school year, I searched out available engineering resources for my 5th grader who loves creative science challenges. I found gold! These studies from Engineering is Elementary are free and most of them only require items you can easily find at a dollar store.…
We have now embarked on our 8th year of homeschooling. I take a wide and deep eclectic approach to education which works very well for my gifted learners. Our homeschool is globally-focused so we spend a chunk of time learning about the world, different cultures, and study some of…
We kicked off the first day of school today with a bit of fun. Our first day of school didn’t contain any formal work. Instead, we celebrated the beginning of a new school year. We are starting in July and plan to finish the school year next June with lots…
My 5th grader is a visual-spatial learner who shines when encountering creative problem solving. He has dreams of a future in a STEM field. As a result, I’ve incorporated lots of creative problem solving into his science studies and I’m using a strong math curriculum. Math: Art of Problem Solving Prealgebra, Zome…
This little plan is for my 5th grader. He has had exposure to French in the past, but I decided to wait until 5th grade for formal studies. My goals for his 5th grade year is to become proficient at pronouncing and reading French. I separated different skills into…
I put together this study for my 5th grader and 7th grader. It is a continuation of the documentary-focused Middle Ages study we did last school year. When my boys were younger we tended to do history studies with lots of hands-on activities. Now that they are getting older,…
In the process of teaching reading, I’ve stumbled around once my child completed a set of early phonics readers. I’ve tried several things and wasn’t happy with many phonics-based readers and other readers tended to rely mostly on sight words. So many phonics-based readers were incredibly boring and my…
This school year I splurged and purchased a Zome Tools kit. We are probably a bit heavy on STEM in our household, but that is because my kids have dreams of STEM careers unless you count my youngest child’s desire to be a lumberjack when she grows up. I suppose…
