Brianna's Moving Out (well, for pretend)

I was reading through one of my Secular Homeschooler group's and was reminded of this great idea I wanted to try when Brianna was older. Real life finances, without the real life hardships.

The basic idea was fairly simple. Start with a part time job, find a place to live, pay bills, etc....

So Brianna and I sat for a few hours last month setting it up. Because of all the time involved in setting it up, I went ultra basic. As the time goes on, there will be more details.

Here's what we did for September:

I had Brianna do some guestimating. I had her guess what she would be spending per month. Her answers - rent ($560), heat ($100), electric ($100), food ($100), extras ($250). Apparently I need to take her to the grocery store more often...

Brianna got a part time job at the local dollar store. Minimum wage at $11.60 per hour, 20 hours per week (for Sept, to keep it simple). I also explained the available gov tax credits that she would be entitled to for being low income (here, Trillium monthly and GST 4 times a year). We went over Lee's pay stub to learn about deductions. I set it up so she started "working" in August so that her Sept bills (rent, in particular) were paid on Sept 1st.

We did an actual house hunt with the local rental companies so she could see what legit rentals offered. She decided on a 1 bdrm apt about 6 blocks from home (and about 1.5 miles from work) that included fridge and stove (not all that common here) and heat. It cost $515 + electric.

We set her other bills at - electric ($40, based on current rates and what I paid almost 20 yrs ago for a 1 bdrm), cell ($45, her existing, real life bill), internet ($57, a real package from our cable company), bus fare ($55, as she currently does not want to walk to work).

She decided to "sell" her bar fridge that she for real owns as her apt came with a fridge so would rather the extra money. She otherwise furnished her appt with the furniture she for real owns (bed, dresser, desk & chair, wall unit, end tables, tv and laptop)

After all her bills we paid, she was left with $128 This month (Oct), we will add "grocery shopping" in detail to the lessons.

Weekly Wrap Up/Tot School x2 - 11/4/16

Our neighbours had a family emergency last week, so Brianna had a short week of school while she took care of their kids so they could be at the hospital in the next city, an hour away. Add in yet ANOTHER round of snot in my house, it made for a fairly unproductive week.

I have my major show of the year this weekend, both days, so I've been spending 8-12 hours a day in my office making stock. Because I hand-make everything I sell, prepping for shows of any kind is very time consuming. I do love it, but I wish my house ran it's self while I was busy.

Because of me living in my office, school has mostly consisted of computer work (Time4Learning for Brianna, Reading Eggs/Math Seeds for Olivia) and unschooling. I haven't done set preschool with Joshua in a couple weeks, but we all know, learning continues even if there's no formal teaching! Joshua now counts to 20 and is working on dressing himself. Even my blog has suffered. I have like 13 draft posts with post ideas, but no time to write them!

While this huge show is exciting and I hope to gain loads of new contacts and customers, I can't wait for it to be over and life can slow down again!

Brianna has re-found our math help book and has been discovering how helpful it is to her schoolwork

One of the kids favorite shirts that I make is called a Candy Pocket. In our house though, it's a kitty pocket!

Cars are probably the most important thing to Joshua after food and snuggles

Sure, not the proper way to play with these monkeys, but still works on fine motor skills!

Brianna took a paint class last weekend and came home with this! I was super impressed. She is not good at drawing things or people, but is apparently quite good at landscapes!

Olivia's hand/eye coordination is amazing with this tape the tiles app. I'm amazed how fast she can go!

Halloween!

Joshua loves to watch Olivia do her schoolwork

Joshua is very determined in his independence

Brianna was was feeling particularly crappy so I told her to go take a nap. She refused and continued her schoolwork. Later, I looked over and found this. I guess I won... 

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers, Practical Mom, 1+1+1=1, Homeschool Creations and Hip Homeschool Mom

Weekly Wrap Up - 10/7/16

We had a very slow week due to illness floating through the house *again.* There was a lot of Minecraft playing and YouTube watching.

I got Olivia an abacus to help with her math. She's working on time right now and was disappointed that her abacus doesn't apply to time so she just played with it. I showed her how it works to add larger numbers (which is so much easier than her counting out a zillion math jewels).

We started doing Lego challenges. They help with fine motor skills, patience and creative thinking. And hell, they're just fun! The girls each got 100 random pieces and had to create something that used every piece. It's a lot harder than it sounds! Sadly, I didn't think to grab a pic of their completed projects, but Brianna made a giant human powered/ride on robot and Olivia made a YouTube video making lab.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Hip Homeschool Mom

Current Curriculum - September 2016

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Previous post from last July here.

This post coincides with iHomeschool Network's Annual Blog Hop. This week (which I'm late on!) is Curriculum Week. Check next week for School Room Week.

We school year round and don't really follow grades. Brianna started Nov 15, 2010 coming from 3rd grade in public school and will go until whenever of whatever year. Olivia started "Preschool" on Feb 6, 2012. Joshua started "Preschool" on Sept 6, 2016. We don't follow specific grades but Brianna is anywhere from Gr. 6-10, Olivia is anywhere from Gr. 1-3, Joshua is preschool/Kindy. 

So, since we don't have set grades or set school years, I figure every 6 mths-ish I'll post what we are currently working on. We use a mishmash of traditional homeschool curriculum, workbooks bought at teacher supply stores, stuff made up completely in my head and most subjects are supplemented by printed worksheets from various sites and of course, library books. In a nut shell, we're eclectic homeschoolers.

Joshua:

He's juuuust starting out so is mostly using left overs from Olivia as we see what he like/works well for him. Some of the more common printables that we're grabbing are from 1+1+1=1, Our Little Monkeys, Homeschool Creations, Confessions of a Homeschooler and Teachers Pay Teachers.

He's still working on speech with his speech therapist. At the time of this writing, he is approx 1 year "behind" in his speech for the typical 3 yr 3 mth old child. This is WAY better than his completely non verbal-ness from a few months ago, so we'll take it! We still make use of sign language. He still uses it for words he doesn't know and we'll use it when we are trying to figure out his gibberish.

Once he has a better grasp on constant language we'll start ABCMouse with him. Olivia really liked it and he loved watching her when she did her lessons so is already familiar with it.

Olivia:

English:

We're playing around in Brave Writer's "Jot it Down" program which focuses on dictation for Olivia's age group. We do dictations for Brave Writer's Friday Freewrite and to write her Brownie Journal (basically, what she did at Brownies on a given day).

We're almost done 1+1+1=1's You Can Read program. Olivia picked up a lot of the more "sight" words with that. We feel that phonetic learning is highly important over memorizing sight words so we're spending a lot of effort on letter sounds, blending sounds and sounding out short words. We have oodles of early readers that we share in reading and Olivia is reading more and more of the words in each book. 

In the spring started Reading Eggs, an online program like ABC Mouse, but instead of learning sounds, she's now using it to read. She loves it and asks to work on it even on the weekends.

Math:
Olivia is almost done Early Math on Khan Academy. Her main curriculum is Math Mammoth, in which she just started the Gr. 2 level. It worked well for her for Gr. 1, so I hope it continues to!

With our ReadingEggs subscription came a subscription to MathSeeds which is meant for 3-8 year olds. MathSeeds starts out really young (Olivia was being made to identify numbers), but she doesn't seem to care. I'm not sure (since she didn't care) if there is a test out area to start at a higher level.

Extra Curricular:
Olivia just finished her 2nd year of soccer. She has grown so much in it since last year. Last year she would pick grass and stare off into space. This year she actively took part in drills, actually went after the ball on the field and even scored 2 goals!

Olivia joined Brownies this year. I was a Brownie as a girl, so was super excited for her to start. For some reason, she's picking up on Brianna's "I can't sleep away" and is nervous about the possibility of camps. She's slept at a friend's house several times with no issue, so I don't think it'll be a problem, but she sure thinks it will be!

Brianna: 

Math: 
We really like Math Mammoth. It's almost self-teaching once a kid can read. It breaks the new concepts down into step by step instructions. However, she's been struggling so much with math that we're trying something new altogether. We've started Time4Learning. She responds really well to "computer school work" so I'm hoping this helps with her math. We're also slowly working our way through Khan Academy. Brianna really likes the videos explaining new concepts. 

Brianna struggles a lot with math so she's "behind", only doing Gr. 6. But that's the beauty of homeschooling. She can be working on Gr. 10/11 science while being years behind in math. Math is something that we spend a lot of time trying out different things for.

English: 
We're semi-using Brave Writer's "Writer's Jungle" (bits and pieces, at least) Brianna especially enjoys their Poetry Teatimes. For spelling, as always, we don't do a lot of focus on spelling because of Brianna's Dysgraphia. Her spelling HAS improved on it's own through the use of texting, social media and using spell check on her typed work. We'll be doing NaNoWriMo for the 3rd time. The first year, she struggled to hit 12,000 words. Last year she did an impressive 20,000 and wasn't even done her story! We use CNN's Student News for daily writing (we watch the clip and she picks one topic to write a summary about).

French: 
Brianna is almost done her first year of Rosetta Stone. My grandma bought the kids the full 5 year lesson set, so she'll be good through high school. Duolingo has an app for her phone for extra, on-the-go practice. One of our neighbours tests Brianna's French periodically.

Arts: 
Brianna wants to learn guitar and we have a child's guitar and a great book - The Complete Guitar Manual, hopefully we can get around to that. She also wants to get back into playing the flute (which is currently under repairs). Hopefully she can be encouraged to put in a stronger, more frequent effort this time.

She has expressed interest in learning about some Shakespeare, so we'll  learn about him and read/watch some plays. 

She wants to do some basic art lessons to improve her drawing, so I'm looking into some good lessons for that. She also wants to learn to sew. She took a crochet class in the winter and will hopefully look to improve further in that.

Phys Ed/Health: 
Brianna normally runs with the Cornwall MultiSport Club. This year I had back to back surgeries, one being major abdominal surgery, so her coach was out of commission for the summer. Brianna is very much not self-motivating, but we hope to get her back into basic training now that I'm almost 100%. She is still walking/running/biking 10k for Terry Fox this year. She does youth yoga classes a couple times a month and yoga videos at home. Because she is overly flexible, she loves it and it greatly improves her balance and fidgeting.

Civics:
We took part in our town's first Pride parade this year, so there will be a lot of diversity learning going on in the near future. 

Life Skills: 
Brianna babysits and does random jobs for neighbours. Because of the sudden influx of money, she's learning about comparing prices and smart spending. She's looking forward to being able to get a "real" job in a couple years. She's also becoming more responsible for getting her schoolwork and chores done with less interference from us. 

Extra Curriculars:
Like Olivia, Brianna is signed up for Girl Guides this year. For her age group, she will be in PathFinders. As she has anxieties about sleeping away from home, she is super nervous about camps, but we will be trying to get her to sleepover more in the coming months at various friends' so she can try to get used to it. She also joined a Teen Tuesday program through the library where she gets to hang out with kids her age and do various activities. 


Both Girls:

History/Geography: 
We're are going to start doing Country Studies again. The kids really enjoyed them. We read about the countries, find them on maps, watch videos about them and make a bunch of food from that country. I made both Brianna and Olivia's country reports on Microsoft Word because I couldn't find anything I liked that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg. If I can figure out how to share them here, I will. We'll be reading through History of the World and Geography of the World as our his/geo base outside of the Country Studies. 

Science:
We're currently finishing up on our Biology course. After that, we'll be taking a break from a set topic while I can put together a Weather unit. Since we live in Canada and winter is coming, it works lol Both girls went to science camp over the summer and had a blast. 

Arts:
I want to work on art some more. Brianna loves it but is fairly terrible lol So she wants to learn little ways to make her art better. Olivia on the other hand, has this idea that her drawings aren't good enough. No telling her otherwise changes her mind :( So for both girls, we'll be doing some basic art lessons, using a variety of mediums and styles.

Reading:
I made a post here about our reading plans for the year, with book titles and links.

Weekly Wrap Up - 9/9/16

We school year round but this was our first week back on full schedule. This was also Joshua's first week of school ever!

I started using a paper agenda for Brianna this summer. It's really benefited her. Olivia insisted on having a paper schedule too. There aren't agendas meant for lower elementary, so I just bought her a plain notebook and hand wrote her agenda.

We had a bit of a rough time with Olivia. A lot more writing work is expected of her this year and she is not a fan.

Brianna has started Time4Learning and she loves it! We are using it as her full math curriculum in place of Math Mammoth as she is struggling hard. I am hoping that something new will kick start her brain a bit. We're also using the English, Science and Social Studies parts of it, but more as a supplement to the stuff we already do.

Olivia started Brownies this week and absolutely loves it! She can't wait to get her uniform and go back every week.

Learning her Brownie Promise

Joshua had a good week. I'll have a full Tot School blog post in a couple days, but it's safe to say he's enjoying himself!

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Hip Homeschool Moms

 

Weekly Wrap Up - April 8th

Math: Brianna finished up the last of her tests to see what she's missing. Next week she'll kinda have a week off, only doing Khan Academy a couple times (while I mark everything and see what she needs extra work on). Olivia finished up learning about halves, quarters and thirds and is now into measuring (I love that Math Mammoth uses both Imperial and Metric!).

English: Olivia has been working hard at her reading and seems to be picking out new words every day. I'm quite impressed!

Science: Due to this course requiring a lot of me reading out loud and a sudden hacking cough hitting me mid week, we did very little of our biology classes.

History/Geography: Brianna is finding her new series for WWII very interesting. While watching Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution she is actually asking questions and wanting to show me stuff, unlike the last one (World War II: In Color), where she kinda just zoned.

French: Olivia loves to listen to Brianna do her Rosetta Stone and DuoLingo and try to copy what she's saying. Of course, Brianna's speaking sentences and Olivia's just picking out words, but learning is learning, right?!

Phys Ed.: Brianna did one general workout and ran twice.

Other: Joshua did his last speech therapy until August. Because we're in a small city, our Speech Pathologists are WAY over booked (that and way over used but that's a whole 'nother post!). So his therapy stops while another group of kids are seen. We'll reassess in Aug (and since we KNOW he'll need more therapy), then re-start seeing the therapists.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and The Practical Mom

Weekly Wrap Up - Mar 18th

Joshua is progressing in his speech therapy. He's now up to 36 signs and will use the ooooo and ppp sounds unprompted to "say" open. He has also learned bbbb, eeeee, hhhhaaa and tttt.

Making the eeee sound to ask for a toy key

Math: Brianna's continuing with her math assessment. I introduced fractions to Olivia today with Lego. She thought it was fantastic to include toys with schoolwork! Brianna made a city skyline of the Pi numbers for Pi Day.

English: I've started Olivia on Reading Eggs as ABC Mouse was getting waaaay too easy for her. She needs something that will help her read/spell words instead of with sounds letters make (something she's mastered). Joshua loves watching her work on her schoolwork and it's helping him too as he sometimes attempts to make the sounds to go with the words.

Science: I am working on planning a Human Body/Biology class right now, so formal science is on hiatus. The girls did some bird watching now that our yard is starting to fill with spring birds again. They spotted a Robin too, which is traditionally the first sign of spring around here.

Geography/History: This week was a busy week for Mystery Class. Because of being sick last week we had catch up, but also, we had to figure out roughly how many degrees longitude each Mystery Class location was from Greenwich, England, on the prime meridian.

French: Still continuing with Rosetta Stone and DuoLingo.

Health/Phys Ed.: After a sick week last week, we took it slow this week.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and The Practical Mom

Weekly Wrap Up - March 4th

Monday was a Leap Day!

Math: Brianna is working her way through her new math. This week she did 12 various "tests". Olivia finished another chapter in her math and is now on to telling time!

English: Olivia is enjoying her phonics book so much that outside of me reading the instructions, she is completing it independently. It's nice to be able to walk away for a minute to help Brianna or Joshua and her still work!

Science: We watched the water/ice move on our walkway and discussed erosion. The girls walked along the ice and watched the air bubbles and water underneath move and talked about displacement.

Geography/History: We read through more of the Our Canadian Girl: Rachel series. Even Olivia is getting excited for read alouds now (this was her first read aloud for school). Week 5 of Mystery Class is in the books. The graphs are looking more definitive now.

French: Brianna worked on some problem areas this week  (Grammar and Writing). She also started DuoLingo on her phone.

Health/Phys Ed.: We got a bit of snow on Tues/Wed so got shoveling exercise! Brianna rode the bike once and ran on the treadmill once for her running training. Olivia is signed up for another year of Soccer, unfortunately she has to wait until May to start playing.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Totally Flipping Brianna's Math

Brianna has several issues that are just part of her life. She has Sensory Processing Disorder, Central Auditory Processing Disorder and probable Dysgraphia. Such is life. We deal with it. Now, however, we are looking at the probability of Dyscalculia.

Brianna is a smart child. Regardless of her alphabet soup of letters between her diagnosed disorders and her probable ones, she still excels in many areas of life. Except math. Math has always been her sore spot. In a sea of straight As in everything else, the highest grade she's ever gotten in math is a C, but most often it's a D or (currently) an F.

While she seemingly has no issues with grades 1 through 4, grade 5 hit her like a lead balloon. It took her 3 tries to make it through Gr. 5 math. She is now on her 2nd try through Gr. 6 math. And yet, she's doing Gr. 8-10 in most other subjects.

Going into the high school years and the fact that she needs at least Gr. 11 math for the college course she wants to take, we obviously need to figure something out.

What we're going to do first is have her do almost all of the chapter tests (thankfully no test anxiety here) from grade 2 to 5. That will hopefully pin point the specific areas she's struggling with.

From there, we're going to spend extra time with Khan Academy, drills and randomized math questions in problem areas. Hopefully we will go back with Math Mammoth in a few months as both she and I enjoy it. We are also looking into Life of Fred and MobyMax.

Weekly Wrap Up - Feb 19th

We started the week with Family Day and a day of laziness. Then on Tuesday we got hit by a nice winter storm that had Brianna shovelling majority of the day. Freezing rain > snow > freezing rain > snow does not make for a pretty property.

My car ate my snow brush

Olivia's friends finally came back from their European trip. You'd think they were gone 4 years instead of 4 weeks!

We finally caught up on Mystery Class. I've lost 10lbs so far this year. Brianna started a new chapter in math. Olivia is doing a science unit about the senses.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Weekly Wrap Up - Feb 12th

That's how most of our weekend/week was spent. Piles upon piles of Kleenex. Several illnesses in a row have floated their way through my house since Christmas. We're normally healthy people so this has been quite annoying.

Brianna did manage to get some schoolwork done but I had no energy to sit with Olivia to do hers most of the week.

We continued reading Our Canadian Girl: Rachel and Brianna watched a few more episodes of World War II in Color. Olivia started back on Khan Academy which she did really well with.

We seem to be all on the mend now, so hopefully next week will be more normal!

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Weekly Wrap Up - Jan 29th

My first wrap up in over a year and I'm already late! My excuse, it was my mom's birthday yesterday so I was busy....

Brianna re-started working on Khan Academy after a few months. She had been getting frustrated at the topics she had been covering, so we dropped back to just her "paper math" (Math Mammoth). Over that break, I started allowing the use of a calculator for speed purposes. She knows how to do all basic math, on paper and often in her head. However, I noticed that when she was trying to rush, she might put a number one decimal point over and end up getting the question wrong. Since using the calculator her grades have improved along with her general attitude towards math.

Olivia finished up her Food Groups unit this week. It was a learning experience for both of us. Olivia is beyond an extreme picky eater. She has a very short list of acceptable foods and will honestly starve herself to illness if she doesn't want to eat something. Part of this unit was tracking servings across the food groups. While she is severely lacking in the vegetable dept (she won't eat ANY unless it's a fruit/veggie juice or rarely, spinach in a fruit smoothie), she does eat majority of her servings, most days. I found a cute little workbook that covered all the food groups. Olivia's favorite part of the unit was creating a real food food pyramid from our fridge and pantry.

Joshua had another speech assessment. He is improving in the sense of communication but he is still essentially considered mute. He has approx 30 signs and 4 kind-of words (num num, woah, uh uh and yuh (yuck)). Because he is still not speaking and will be 3 in June, he will be set up with weekly speech therapy. The speech lady that we're currently dealing with is going to try to push him into the sessions that start next month, as opposed to the ones his group of assessments is in (April/May).

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Current Curriculum July 2015

This post contains NO affiliate links

Previous post from last Sept here.

We school year round and don't really follow grades. Brianna started Nov 15, 2010 coming from 3rd grade in public school and will go until whenever of whatever year. Olivia started "Preschool" on Feb 6, 2012. We don't follow specific grades but Brianna is anywhere from Gr. 6-10 and Olivia is mostly Gr 1, a little Kindy and some Gr. 2. 

So, since we don't have set grades or set school years, I figure every 6 mths-ish I'll post what we are currently working on. We use a mishmash of traditional homeschool curriculum, workbooks bought at teacher supply stores, stuff made up completely in my head and most subjects are supplemented by printed worksheets from various sites and of course, library books. In a nut shell, we're eclectic homeschoolers.

Olivia:

We have a subscription to ABCMouse.com and Olivia really likes it! It has all the way from Toddlers to the end of Kindergarten. This program added on a couple more levels, but only lists levels not grades, so I don't know where the program ends after Kindergarten. Olivia is still learning to control the computer so she's a little slower going here than in her paper school work.

For printables we mostly use 1+1+1=1 (there's also great tot school and preschool printables here!). Confessions of a Homeschooler also has great printables. I love 1+1+1=1 as they have a lot of themed units. They cover a wide variety of skills but under one theme (Olivia has done cats, pizza, Octonauts and more). Even though most of them are below her skill levels, she really enjoys them so we keep doing them. 1+1+1=1 now has literature units as well.

English:

We'll start dabbling in Brave Writer's "Jot it Down" program which focuses on dictation for Olivia's age group. We'll start up 1+1+1=1's You Can Read program once Olivia is more comfortable in phonics. We feel that phonetic learning is highly important over memorizing sight words so we're spending a lot of effort on letter sounds, blending sounds and sounding out short words.


Math:
Olivia has started Early Math on Khan Academy. She is super proud to be doing Khan just like Brianna. Her computer skills are still lacking, so Khan is definitely something that we do together, though she is getting better at navigating. 

Olivia loves to help take care of Joshua, cooking and household chores. We, of course, encourage her as much as possible!

Phys Ed./Health:
Olivia has started running like Brianna. This year, like last, she ran in the fun run this month and will be taking part in the Cornwall Triathlon, doing a duathlon, next month. She's also in U7 Soccer this year. The kids play weekly and Olivia seems to really enjoy it.

Brianna: 

Math: 
We really like Math Mammoth. It's almost self-teaching once a kid can read. It breaks the new concepts down into step by step instructions in a way that really gets through to Brianna. Math Mammoth goes only to Gr. 7, so once she's done that, I'll be looking for a new curriculum for Algebra and the like. We're also slowly working our way through Khan Academy. Brianna really likes the videos explaining new concepts. 

English: 
We're using Brave Writer's "Writer's Jungle" again this year. Brianna's especially enjoys their Poetry Teatimes, which we'll be starting again in the fall. For spelling, I keep track of words she has spelled wrong in her general school work and base spelling practice off of that. We'll be doing NaNoWriMo again this year. She took part last year and wrote an impressive 12,000+ words. Amazing who someone who often struggles with writing a few pages. This year, we'll be starting early with NaNoWriMo's educator's lesson plans.

French: 
We will be doing Rosetta Stone now that Brianna has her own laptop to install it on. Brianna already knows more French than I do, so thankfully Rosetta Stone is a self-teaching course! We'll be using Living Languages for extra activities. Duolingo has an app for her phone for extra, on-the-go practice. One of our neighbours has offered to test Brianna's French periodically.

Arts: 
Brianna wants to learn guitar and we have a child's guitar and a great book - The Complete Guitar Manual, hopefully we can get around to that. She also wants to get back into playing the flute (which is currently under repairs). Hopefully she can be encouraged to put in a stronger, more frequent effort this time.

She has expressed interest in learning about some Shakespeare, so we'll  learn about him and read/watch some plays. 

Phys Ed/Health: 
Brianna runs with a local MultiSport club. Her last run of the year is her Terry Fox run on Sept 14th. She actually bikes the Terry Fox run, but as she chooses to do the biggest route (10km), it's certainly nothing to laugh at! Once that is done, she's done until May. She'll spend that time doing training at least twice a week (running, yoga, strength training, cardio) and of course, we live in Canada, so there's always snow to shovel! 

Computer: 
Brianna and Olivia both have Minecraft accounts. I'm currently looking for cool educational ideas for it as I know many are out there. But for now, both girls are just working on computer skills and building. Brianna is learning to use the MinecraftWiki to research how to do or use various aspects of the game.

Civics:
This fall we're doing a study on Canadian government and our Prime Ministers from Confederation to present. We have a federal election this fall and will be tracking the candidates and their platforms. We're using various books and sites like Canada Votes, Exploring Canada and a cool Prime Ministers of Canada set that I got from the Library and Archives of Canada

Life Skills: 
Brianna has taken on babysitting and dog poop scooping jobs from our neighbours. This is teaching her a great deal about responsibility and money. Because of the sudden influx of money, she's learning about comparing prices and smart spending. She's also becoming more responsible for getting her schoolwork and chores done with less interference from us. 


Both:

History/Geography: 
Lee and I are driving across country at the end of August and the girls will be tracking us and learning about various places as we go.

We're continuing to do Country Studies. The kids have really enjoyed them so far. We read about the countries, find them on maps, watch videos about them and make a bunch of food from that country. We'll be using History of the World and Geography of the World at home and whatever oodles of books we can snag from the library. World Atlas is fantastic for maps and National Geographic Kids has a bunch of videos and articles I made both Brianna and Olivia's country reports on Microsoft Word because I couldn't find anything I liked that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg. If I can figure out how to share them here, I will.

Science:
For the most part, science is done through day to day life with no set curriculum. We'll be doing a lot of interest based topics. Both girls want to do the human body. We'll have to do a refresher in a few years for Olivia, but with the random stuff she picks up on of Brianna's school work, I'm not worried about doing a joint class with them. Brianna got an ant farm for her birthday and the girls are fascinated with watching it.  

Arts:
I want to work on art some more. Brianna loves it but is fairly terrible lol So she wants to learn little ways to make her art better. Olivia on the other hand, has this idea that her drawings aren't good enough. No telling her otherwise changes her mind :( So for both girls, we'll be doing some basic art lessons, using a variety of mediums and styles.

Joshua:

He will to continue to be cute and get into stuff and steal school work *wink*


Linking up with the iHomeschool Network