School: Theme of the Mummy

The boys playing in the snow at the kitchen table

We are FINALLY back to our "normal" selves, thank God!! (Our 2 month old baby has been in the hospital with RSV.  She is home and doing great now.) And even though this week has been a bit rusty around the edges, we still managed to get a lot accomplished and have some fun in the midst of it all!

I have made some changes with regards to our schooling and plan to make more in the upcoming weeks.  I have been longing to do more unit studies with the boys that both of them can participate in and also find other sources for Charlie's LA.

The boys playing LEGOs together

  First change was with Charlie's Language Arts curriculum. I am not pleased with some of the content/activities that the K12 provides so I am picking and choosing what lessons we complete from them.  Instead we are going to be using The Magic Tree House series books which we can also use to do unit studies of different topics.  

We will read The Magic Tree House book and if there is a study guide book to accompany it then we will use that to do further research.  If not, then we will use other books from the library.  We will plan on studying one subject for a few weeks or until we are finished doing the projects/readings.

Using blocks for math

I also am starting to work on another curriculum for Tommy.  He is eager to do "school" with Charlie...sometimes.   I won't enforce school time with him until next September, but need to have some stuff ready when he does want to participate.


I bought the first four books from The Magic Tree House series and asked Charlie which one he wanted to ready/study first.  He choose Mummies in the Morning.   We read the book in about 3 days, during lunch and before bed.  I was surprised that it held the attention of  both the boys. Charlie was REALLY into the book and begged to finish it. Tommy was obsessed looking at the picture of the Mummy. Gotta love it!!

Charlie wrote his name in Hieroglyphics

To go along with our study of all things Mummy we made hieroglyph writings just like the ones that were in the tombs of the great pyramids.  Charlie did his name and the word train, of course :)  We also made a bookmark with hieroglyph writings on it to use with our Magic Tree House books.

This week we started reading from our daily devotional book for kids.  There is a short reading for each day and then activities you can do to go along with what you are studying.  So far we are all enjoying it.

Charlie continues to work very hard on his phonics and math.  This week he reviewed his sight words, reviewed the alphabet and made a letter train, identified vowel and consonant letters, built nonsense words and blended word parts.  

He also started a dictation notebook.  Every day he will be writing a few words in the notebook and we will keep track of any words/letters that he may need additional review on.  We both really like the phonics program that K12 provides.

Tommy on Starfall.com doing math

Both boys enjoyed the new Starfall.com website.  We signed up for the members only portion which has math components as well.  This is such a great learning tool and Tom enjoyed the numbers section.

We had a  pretty great week considering that we were just getting off a 2 week holiday break and then 1 week of sister and mom being gone in the hospital.  I love being able to teach our boys at home and feel so blessed to be able to do so.  The time I am spending with them is priceless!!