With wrapping up the holidays and family visits and our first snowstorm of the season, it seems January has been a busy, or at least eventful month!
But homeschooling goes on, even though the gloominess of winter sometimes makes the school days feel longer and a little more tedious. In January we passed the halfway point in our school year, which is something to be happy about, and I’m already finding myself looking ahead to spring! (Though I have to survive February first! And sometimes February feels like the longest month of all…)
But I thought I would share just some of what we’ve learned this month. Obviously I can’t cover it all, but you might be interested to know just a little of what we have studied in January.
This year the kids and I started participating in a local Community Bible Study class that meets once a week. I really can’t say enough good things about CBS! The kids and I work through the prepared study together throughout the week, then on class day I get a little “mom time” with other ladies while my kids have class with other homeschoolers. In January we finished up the book of Mark, which was a remarkable study for us all.
My kiddos range in age from 9 to 17, so right now our math covers everything from more basic multiplication and division to squaring binomials. I’m afraid math doesn’t excite me the way some of our other studies do, but we plug away at it just the same! But I trust you’ll forgive me if I don’t share as much about it.
For our read aloud we’ve been working our way through The Witch of Blackbird Pond, a book I loved as a kid and was anxious to share with them. It is set in early colonial America, among the Puritans of Connecticut specifically, and some of the daily tasks that are briefly mentioned in the book have led to lots of related study. My kids have learned about carding wool, spinning wheels, and making thread. We watched several videos about all of these things, but this video about candle making was one of my personal favorites:
In homeschooling, YouTube is one of my dearest friends. 🙂
We’re talking Botany this year and loving it! We dissected a flower and labeled plant parts earlier in the month, then have been studying roots and root growth and geophytes like bulbs, tubers, and rhizomes. We’ve also done the timeless celery stalk and food coloring experiment to learn about xylem.
And now we’re learning about trees! Ever stopped to notice how many things we see and use daily thanks to trees?
We have another science project in the works, too, but I may share that at another time.
And I’ve borrowed these from the library. It may only be January, but we’re already preparing for spring! We have some studying to do!
In our history studies we talked a lot about the establishment of slavery in early America, which led to discussions of William Wilberforce. This Brit’s campaign against slavery brought an end to the practice in England, and greatly influenced attitudes in the United States. Sadly, he is an often forgotten hero of history.
I found this teaching session about Wilberforce and I was fascinated. What a remarkable man of character and conviction!
We studied Ben Franklin and some of his inventions as well, including this one:
How bizarre is that? I’m not sure I actually like the sound of this thing, but it’s interesting nonetheless!
So there you go! Just a few of the things we’ve studied this month. Now to prep for that long February!
