Sunday Evenings

I sit here in front of my computer--alone in a quiet house!--because it's Sunday evening. Matt has taken the girls to church for Awana and the baby is asleep. Our Sundays really mess up his daily routine so by the time evening comes, he's ready for a good long nap and I'm ready for some quiet time. During this quiet time I plan for our coming week.

Last week we read The Wild Horses of Sweetbriar by Kinsey-Warnock. My girls are absolute fascinated with horses and are holding out hope that one day we will buy them each one. We've bought us some time by telling them that they can't have a horse until they are teenagers; but that time's quickly coming and I'm sure they'll call our bluff before then. The other day I asked them what they would do with a horse and they said that they wanted one to ride to Granny's school (she teaches at a local highschool) everyday. Good thing we homeschool--can you imagine a horse galloping into the school's parking lot only to tied to an awning rail for a day? :)

With Sweetbriar we studied islands, since the story is set off the coast of Nantucket in 1903. Of course, just the timeframe alone brought up some interesting conversations about life in the last century. The lack of electricity shocked my children. And what? No cars? How could that ever be? :)

This story will bring us into this coming week for we need to finish it. We use a rich curriculum entitled Five In A Row and with each reading we add another dimension to our studies. We'll begin the week by discussing the flora and fauna of an area. We will also create an art piece using a spattering technique. I, of course, will post our pictures.

When we finish, we'll launch a study of explorers. I'll use a Christian Cottage unit for that study. We'll start by study the composition of the earth. The girls will find this fascinating! I'm not completely sure where our study will lead. We'll definitely touch on Columbus and other explorers, but I'll bet that we'll get a bit side-tracked as we cover navigation. The odds are that we'll end up taking a mini-study on astronomy and constellations. My kids love the night sky and before it gets terribly cold is a good time to spend some quality time outside in the dark exploring God's vast universe, don't you think? So I guess we'll be explorers on our own--just not in a ship but from the front porch. ;)