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Hi, my name is Melissa. Pour yourself a cup of tea and stay a while. I'm completely devoted to my Savior, madly in love with my husband, and joyously raising my daughters. I'm so glad you stopped by and I hope you enjoy your time here!

Monday, October 3, 2016

Week in Review: September 26-30



It has been quite a while since I completed a week in review! I've been trying to keep everything going around here after some health stuff with me surprised us. We are back at it and have been since late-August. I'm grateful to be feeling well and this has been an unexpectedly smooth start to the year. If you follow us on Instagram you have seen little glimpses of what we've been up to!


Here is the run down of grades:


Rose - 11-years-old in 6th grade


Beth - 9-years-old in 4th grade


Grace - 7-years-old (tomorrow!!!) in 1st grade-ish 

I know all the homeschool mamas out there understand the "ish" part! Grace has an October birthday so we keep her grade level  as it would be in traditional school for the purposes of outside activities, but in reality all of her work is 2nd grade or higher. What can I say? It's complicated! Really all of the girls should have an "ish" beside their grade levels. Homeschoolers...sigh...

We are still sold-out for Heart of Dakota! The girls still take a science class on Wednesdays. We have a new math curriculum for Rose and we all love it. Grace is way ahead in math so this year we are adding another curriculum to what we are continuing to use with Math Mammoth. 

We have a new writing program that has all of us excited! I reviewed the entire Writing Strands program from Master Books. Wow! I loved what I was seeing, but I know from experience that sometimes what we think will be great doesn't always work out that way. This has turned out to be the highlight of everyone's day. I can't say enough good things about Writing Strands! 

Here are some individual guide highlights...

Rose: Resurrection to Reformation Unit 11


Rose is really thriving this year in this guide. We are currently in the throws of medieval times and she is fully engaged in all she is learning. Her independence is growing almost as fast as her height and I love that she still loves learning. She often is found reading her history assignments here in the living room. 

Beth: Preparing Hearts for His Glory Unit 26

Beth is becoming more willing at being independent with her learning. I was trying to gently push her towards that direction last year, but she wasn't quite ready. This year she is completely on board with the level of independent learning I have her doing. When she moves in to Creation to Christ later this year she will be fully ready. She is also studying the medieval time period which is fun to see. 

Grace: Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory Unit 18




There is nothing this little girls doesn't love. Everything is an adventure to her and she jumps and down with a, "Yay!" at just about every subject we do. She is currently learning about life in early America, particularly what it was like for children. She adores her history activities above all else. In this one she was finding her way by sniffing cotton ball scented with essential oils just like a couple of dogs in her history story were able to find 2 lost young boys. You can see our sweet puppy was enjoying this activity too! 

As I said before, this year has been incredibly smooth to begin. We were all ready to get things going and the eagerness with which the girls began their work made me be able to really enjoy this start instead of feeling stressed. The girls are engaged in their studies and we have only had a few moments of, "Do you have to do that?" 

 One of the neat things about this year is how much they are engaging together. Yes, they are all in different guides, but they don't mind pausing their studies to see what one of their sisters is doing, sometimes learning alongside, sometimes adding information they remember from studying the same thing, and sometimes helping the learning process.


We are taking this week off from our traditional lessons. I'm following a 6-weeks-on and 1-week-off type of schedule this year. During the off week we will still do math and language arts, but include some of the other things we don't always have time for. We are looking forward to the break.






I'd love to hear from you and how your year has started! Has it been rocky or smooth? 
Remember: God's grace covers it all!


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