Even though we live in the suburbs, sometimes I feel like we’re in the country because we live very close to some rolling hills where the cows graze.  We can hear the cows moo in the mornings and by midday they often come down to drink water and sit under the shades.

When we learned about landscape for our art lesson today, I knew the exact landscape I want the kids to draw for their assignment.  We walked up the street with our art supplies and sat on the sidewalk to first observe and then draw what we see.

Here are the cows grazing by the hills.

I had the kids sit on the sidewalk and draw the hills and the cows directly in front of them.

Here are the two renditions of the landscape using oil pastel.

Two weeks ago when it was time to do school, the kids seemed not with it.  Even though they were physically there, their minds were elsewhere.  Nothing out of ordinary happened.  I knew then that we had to take a break from school.  I decided to look at my school record and check how long we’ve been doing school.  We’d been going at it for six straight weeks, and six weeks is just about the right time after which to take a break.

I decided to change our school plan.  That morning I read a chapter from a book they like and then we took off to run errands.  Even though running errands and getting things done seem mundane, my kids actually enjoy it, especially when it’s during a school day.  We took it easy that day and then went to a friend’s house in the evening to swim.  The next day we went on a horse ranch field trip and that was a blast.  Weekend rolled around, and we carved pumpkins and hung out with friends.  On Monday we went to see Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis present a talk on dinosaurs.  What fun and relaxing time we had.  The following day we resumed school and the children were more engaged mentally.

I’m glad that we were able to take a break from school when we needed it.  One of the beauties of homeschooling is that you are not under someone else’s schedule.  Too often homeschoolers see that they have to keep up with the public or private school that they impose a rigid schedule on themselves.  We should really strive to see the needs of our children and determine what is good or could potentially be destructive for them.  On that day when my children displayed a lackluster spirit at the start of school time, I knew I had two choices.  One, I could just move forward and press on with our school schedule.  If I did that, the children would be obedient and do their school work though I would have to bark at them (not a pretty sight) to get them motivated.  I’ve been through this road before and it’s counterproductive.  The end result is inevitable: one very unhappy family.  Imagine the stress that daddy has to walk into when he returns home.  Been there, done that, and we’re not going to repeat it.  So, we opted for the second option of simply taking a break.

I know for some homeschooling parents that taking breaks as needed is a scary concept.  You had planned out the curriculum for the year and in order to complete the course, you have to stay on schedule.  If you miss a week, then everything is thrown off.  In addition, there are music lessons and sports practice we need to keep up with.  When taking a break seems so foreign or that you feel you can’t allow that, think about your goals of education.  What’s the point of education?  What’s your goal?  Is your goal to produce educated individuals or go through all the books they’re suppose to study?  In grand scheme of things, does it really matter much that your children are supposedly few days or weeks behind the schedule you planned out for them?  What if you did complete everything you had planned, so what?  Does God give you brownie points for having done that?  Are you more spiritual?

The question is, are you sacrificing your children for the sake of adhering to a schedule?  I want my children to love learning and sometimes this means taking a break and enjoying things that are around us.  I don’t want my children to feel pressured nor stressed when it comes to school.  Next time when you’re tempted to press on, look at your children and their needs.  Would pressing on benefit them?  Will they end up hating school as a result?  We should strive to have our children’s well being in mind, not merely keeping a rigid schedule, when it comes to education.

I didn’t look forward to teaching taxonomy, classification of all living things, because it seemed so boring to me.  It’s pretty much about memorizing different lists and words that sound complicated.  The kids will probably be bored and lose interest.  But, I should teach it anyway because it’s important.  So. . . . I proceeded.

We began with how living things are categorized starting with kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.  To memorize this classification in order, the science book proposed a mnemonic of “King Philip Cried Out For Goodness Sake”  Obviously, the first letter of each word represents each classification.  After I presented this mnemonic, the kids seemed ok with this memory trick, but they weren’t enthralled.  Me neither.  It’s a good one, but not a great one.

I decided to teach them the one I learned in school.  I’m still impressed that I still remember it because it’s quite hilarious.  The mnemonic is “King Philip Chased Old Fat Girl Scout.”  I asked the kids if they prefer the book version or my version.  Honestly, there was no contest, my kids loved my version!  They couldn’t stop laughing.  They just kept on busting up.  They memorized the classification in no time.  From there, they were quite happy to learn the five kingdoms as well as the phyla for the animalia kingdom.  What a fun lesson!

In two weeks we’ll be going to Monterey Bay Aquarium for homeschool day, and we’ll use today’s taxonomy lesson to categorize marine creatures.  We’ll look forward to that fun and educational trip.

A friend who volunteers at a local horse ranch offered to give us a field trip so to allow us to learn about the horses as well as riding them.  I love the ranch there!  I love how beautiful and serene the hills looked.  Being out there made me appreciation the nature even more.

We toured the ranch to visit all the different horses there:

Kids brushing the horse before we saddle and ride this horse:

Giddyup!

Even this one wants to riding though she’s way too tiny!

We rewarded the horse with some yummy carrots:

It was such a fun field trip that the boys will start taking some horse riding lessons.

We are using Stories of the Great Composers for our music appreciation this year.  Two lessons in, the children are enjoying learning about the composers and their compositions.  It always warm my heart when they like what I like.  I’m really liking the book we’re using as it gives a mini biography of twelve different composers along with a famous composition they wrote (included in a CD).  In addition, each lesson includes an activity for the student to do.

Boys conducting and dancing.

Andrew really getting into the music.  He’s conducting as well as dancing to Haydn’s Surprise Symphony.  Who knew that classical music could be this fun?

Even our youngest got into the act of conducting.

The girls are playing the fiddle.

The kids have always loved doing science because to them science means doing experiments or an activity which translates into F.U.N.  Who wouldn’t like that?  Unfortunately this mama, who holds a degree in science, isn’t always consistent when it comes to teaching science.  However, today was different.  We had a lesson about cells which involved making a cell model.  We used styrofoam balls which were cut in halves to demonstrate the cross section of a cell.  We glued pieces of craft materials and candies on the ball to show different cell structures such as endoplasmic riticulum, mitochondria, ribosomes, nucleus, and lysosomes.

Kids constructing their cells:

Eating some of the “ribosomes” along the way:

Showing off their finished products:

Mandatory goofy shot:

We are using Artistic Pursuits Book 1 this year for our art curriculum.  I bought this curriculum over a year ago with the full intention of using it then, but never pulled the trigger because I was intimidated by it.  The reason isn’t because the curriculum is difficult to implement, in fact, it’s very easy to do and quite appealing as well.  I was simply intimidated by my lack of art background.  I didn’t grow up with art and had never experimented with any art mediums.  Art is such a foreign subject to me so I naturally block it out of my brain.

What I’m discovering is that my children are quite different from me.  They simply like to draw and make things.  I decided that I should really take my art curriculum out of the corner of the room and start teaching it.  I’m really enjoying it and so are the kids.  The boys did water colors for today’s lesson.

They liked it so much that they asked to do more.  Here are their creations: