I'm Back & Changes to Our Homeschool

After a long break from blogging I am back.  There have been a lot of changes in the last year and a half.  Samuel is now halfway through 3rd grade and we have moved to a new house.  Over Christmas break we made the decision to switch from Sonlight back to Heart of Dakota.  While we enjoyed the books in Sonlight, we felt that all we were doing was reading and Samuel needed more hands-on activities.  I was supplementing with various things but it was making our day super long and no fun for either one of us, so the best choice was just to switch to something that had all the extras I wanted already built in.

If we had stuck with Heart of Dakota, Samuel would be in Bigger Hearts for His Glory this year, but we are saving that for next year.  We decided to use Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory even though he is on the older side for it so that he could get used to some of the extra writing and things that Heart of Dakota requires.  We are going through it at double speed so we will be finished by the end of this school year and then will pick up with Bigger Hearts in the fall.  We started on January 7th and so far it's going great.  Now that we have art projects, science experiments, and more I will have plenty of fun things to post on my blog again.

So our curriculum we are using the rest of the year is:

• Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory
• Drawn into the Heart of Reading with Level 3 Books
• Saxon Math Intermediate 3 - just continuing on with this
• All About Spelling 2 - We are 3/4 of the way done with this book so want to finish it, but then we will begin following the spelling in the Heart of Dakota guides
• Apologia Astronomy - Samuel likes science so we are continuing with this in addition to Heart of Dakota's science.  When we finish Astronomy in 6 weeks we will be moving on to Apologia Zoology 1

I also have not been able to get to my scrapbooking as much as I would like so decided restarting my blog would be a good way to keep track of family fun as well.  Samuel is playing basketball for the first time this season so that should be interesting.

Hiking to Abrams Falls

One Saturday, we decided to drive up to Cades Cove and take Samuel hiking to Abram’s Falls.  The trail was 5 miles round trip and he walked the whole way.  He did great! 

The hike was uneventful till we rounded the last corner before the falls and discovered that we were not the only ones who wanted to visit the falls that day…

The crazy people at the falls were all trying to get close to the bears and take pictures with them.  These pictures look close up, but we were on a rock in the middle of the river.  We just have a really good zoom lens.  No way was I going anywhere close to a momma bear and her cub!

After the bears left, we got to enjoy the Falls.

Orange and White Game

Adam has wanted to take Samuel to a UT football game since he was born, but was waiting for him to be old enough to sit through one.  This year, he decided to take him to the Orange and White game as a test to see if he was ready for a real game.  Samuel said it was fun but got bored before the end of the game.  Guess he might have to wait another year or two before going to a game that requires us to spend money buying a ticket.

Happy Easter!

Samuel was excited to dig into his Easter basket after church.

Instead of candy, we stuffed his eggs with mini Star Wars guys

Samuel’s a Green Belt

Samuel tested for and received his green belt!  He is doing a great job at karate and is excited about getting to start learning how to use somalis (short fighting sticks)

Samuel’s 7th Birthday

After our day at Wonderworks, we came back home and let Samuel open gifts and eat his cake. 

A couple of his gifts came by mail so he opened them when they arrived

Fun at Wonderworks

Grandma, Gramps, Uncle Jon, Aunt Kristin, and Cora came to visit the weekend before Samuel’s birthday and we took them to Wonderworks.

Adam & Samuel climbing up the rock wall

Uncle Jon making it look easy

These bike things were cool!  You get in and pedal and if you go fast enough you can flip upside down.  Uncle Jon and I flipped several times.  Gramps was by himself, but I think he managed to flip a few times too.

Samuel going up to the ropes course

Gramps checking out the flight simulator and seeing if it’s the same as the real thing