Our homeschool schedule for term 4 2019

Term four is already shaping up to be a busy one for me and the kids. I fear that my homeschool goals might not actually fit into the amount of time we have in a day, but we're going to give it a jolly good crack.

Activities outside of the home

This term the kids are all doing swimming lessons because I want them to hone their swimming skills before our summer holiday. We will be spending lots of time near water, so swimming skills are vital. 

In our Christian homeschool group, we are doing cricket for our sport and a Christmas nativity musical for our art. The kids are learning to read sheet music and are being instructed by one of our homeschool mums, who is a trained singing and piano teacher. 

In our other homeschool group, Miss L has signed up for polymer clay modeling, a dance class and a Lego creations club. Miss S is doing Minecraft computer coding, creative journaling and the same Lego class as Miss L. Master J is doing a class about epic voyages, a science class and a sports class. 

L and S are continuing with their music lessons this term. L has just moved up to a three-quarter size violin, and S is preparing for an end-of-year piano recital. 

This term J is doing club athletics, because he LOVES to run. 

We are also continuing the resilience course we started last term with three other homeschooling families. It happens once a fortnight. On the alternate fortnight, the kids go to an after-school club at our church. The theme of the club this term is 'The INCREDIBLE Word.'

Book work at home

All the children are doing The Good and the Beautiful for their Writing, Art and Geography curriculum. I can't say enough good things about it. The stories are inspiring and wholesome, the teaching is rigorous and the art is beautiful. L has just moved up a level, so I spent this long weekend printing, stapling and hole punching the curriculum to get it ready. I'm excited to start it with her. (I love learning alongside my kids.)

The kids are doing Math U See for mathematics and are all almost ready to move up to the next level. I'm waiting for our homeschool allowance to come through from the government before I purchase the next books for everyone. 

For science this term we are learning about animal biology. I purchased a Christian curriculum called The World of Animals, from a Facebook homeschool group, and have put together a looping basket of supplementary reading material. 

I've also made lap books for the kids, so they can add interesting information they learn about animals as we go along. The lap books are divided into 'Mammals,' 'Birds and Fish,' 'Amphibians and Reptiles,' and 'Arthropods,' to correspond with the different units in The World of Animals curriculum. I found animal lap book printables at Catholic Schoolhouse and at Homeschool Share.

We are just wrapping up The Story of the World book one, so I have ordered book two from Book Depository. I'm keen to make a large timeline with the kids, to recap everything we learnt about ancient times before we move onto the next book. 

I've put together memorisation books for the kids, because I want to make it really simple for them to memorise poems, Bible verses, geography facts and other useful information each week. 

My goal is for the kids to learn one Bible verse each week, so that they have a stack of them stored up in their hearts and minds for all the different moments in their lives when they need encouragement. I found bible verses online that people had created to look beautiful, so I printed them off and glued them into our Bible verses book. 

To help us memorise geography facts, I'm searching out catchy songs on YouTube. The best one I've found so far is this Rock the Capitals song about South America. If you know of any other good ones, please send them my way.

And that's it for term four. Wish us luck!