School Notes & Spelling

Our new school year for our homeschool started July 1. According to the state, we are to have in 1000 per school year, with 600 of the hours in core subjects. As of today, Emily already has 550 and the twins have almost 500. However, everything is not in a core subject. Emily always has more than the twins as I count part of her church camp, and she goes in July where the twins go in June (although this year they went twice with the last time being in July). From church camp she gets some Bible time, and PE time, and depending on the topics of discussion, possible time in other subjects as well. One year we had a missionary from Asia, so we counted some geography and social studies in there as well, as each day he gave them a 30-45 minute lesson and slide show of his village.

I found a new site for spelling words for this year. Right now we are using http://www.zaner-bloser.com/spellingconnections/ from Zaner Bloser for the twins. It contains 34 units of spelling words, which will last us about 16 weeks. Each unit only has 10 words, so we will do 2 units a week. I like the lists as they are grouped by subject matter or by language and spelling rules. They also have a set of Spanish units, so if you are taking Spanish, you can add those right in. I like finding and using free resources when I can. Some resources I can find or make entirely for free, others I just use to supplement in here and there. We are using the "preview" section. If we like it well, we may decide to purchase later on-we do have a few of their texts in our library already.

One thing I have trouble finding is handwriting for middle school and high school. I find it for younger students, but not older.

Our garden is finally slowly growing. It was late getting in, and then the chickens and ducks thought it was their private banquet. But, the tide has turned. Our fence around the chicken coup is not complete yet (we still have the top row of fencing to put on, as well as a net over the top), but we have enough up that they can't get out unless we let them out--except for a black hen and a duck, and 2 bantams. The rest either don't realize they can fly or are too big to slip through the opening where we have a temporary gate. So, their days of eating the blooms off of the squash, peppers and tomatoes have come to an end. For some reason they liked to hide from the sun in the shade of my okra plants, and that has also come to an end. It may be too late for this years garden, but next year I hope to have a nice garden again, as I did in my "pre-chicken" free ranging days.