Homeschool Thursday

Despite the lack of homeschool posts, we've actually been doing more "school" around here than ever before.  This year I'm trying a friend's advice and working our schedule in 6 week blocks--cognizant all the time of our tendency to ebb and flow in a tide-like fashion (per Tidal Homeschooling).  The 6 week idea is supposed to help those of us (mainly me) who quickly get bored with a schedule.

We're doing it something like this:  choose 3-4 subject/topics to explore and work at them in a focused manner for 6 weeks.  At the end of the six weeks stop, wherever you are, and take a week off, completely. After the break, pick up again with a different set of subjects/topics and start again.

We're in the midst of our week off this week (technically 8 weeks into our routine, but since we had visitors for 2 weeks this felt right).  Since the beginning of September we've been working diligently on spelling, literature, and science. There was also some math, French, and history thrown in lightly when there was time and interest.  On Mondays we've been working as a family on a  focused project on Monarch butterflies (more on that soon).

Next week we'll start a 6 week session focusing on math, art, and creative writing, with a new project in the wings.  We're not far enough into this trial for me to see if this is something we'll stick with for the year, but so far I like the feel of it.  Six weeks is just enough time to really get into a groove, and then be just about done with it.  I like the idea of stopping before we're all exhausted by something, so that it begs to be explored further in the future.  Also, I can see how rotating through subjects naturally allows us to work with the strengths we've acquired in the past 6 weeks (ie. all that spelling work we've done should make creative writing a less daunting task, and all the novels and historical fiction we've been exploring these past two months should benefit our creative writing process).  

So, despite the lack of photos --how many pictures can I take of children perfecting handwriting (just one it seems), and few words on the subject, for the sake of documentation I felt the need to report that we are hard at work over here, learning and playing and all that good stuff.