Nearly Autumn - homeschooling & having fun

This little boy is so delightful - such a joy to cuddle and talk to him. The other day I was sweeping the floor while he was sitting in his pram and every time I looked over to see if he was ok, I was greeted with the most lovely smile. Just looking at him makes him smile. :-)

We started back at lessons over a month ago (after summer holidays). It was nice to have a break but always fun to get back to the books again! I often have people ask what curriculum I use, so thought I'd mention a bit here. After all the years of homeschooling when I was growing up and helping my siblings, I've seen such a wide range of stuff. My opinions change over time too. One thing I do like is to have a mix of curriculum/publishers. It seems one company will be the best at science but not very good at history, etc. So I like to pick and mix and find what I like best for each subject. Benjamin is doing Math-u-See for maths and Abigail is doing Tee-Jay maths (Scottish schools curriculum). We are doing Abeka for science and some Italics books for handwriting. We have spelling books from Christian Liberty Press - they seem really good and the children are enjoying them - spelling tests too! :) And best of all, The Mystery of History, which we all love! We started it last year (vol 1 is a huge book!) and are still working through it, though are already around 520BC, so have covered quite a lot so far. I won't say everything is perfect, or that I like all the suggested activities, but it's the best history curriculum I've found and I love that it's in chronological order! It's a lot of fun to cross the world reading about what happened in different places at the same time, learning who lived at the same time, etc. The children especially enjoy making a time line as we go along. Here's a picture of it below:

Our history time line! Sometimes they draw their own figures/pictures for it, but other times I make use of the fantastic resources available on the internet and print pictures from there, which the children colour in. I've decided to use a ring binder to keep it in; the sheets are inside plastic sleeves so they stay clean & dry when they look at it.

This was taken in early August, on Benjamin's first day of homeschooling as a "school age" boy! :-) We were learning about the Ishtar Gate and Benjamin wanted a colouring picture to go along with the lesson. So after a bit of internet searching I found this image which turned out a great picture to colour.

Deborah was colouring her pictures when the above one was taken, and here she is trying to show me hers and that she wanted to be included too!

So here's all 4 of them - and Deborah is wondering why her brothers are making such silly face (and loud noises)! lol

This is what Benjamin does when he thinks it's a bit boring to learn how to tell time! :-P We were using the Math-u-See blocks to learn about the minutes on a clock and rather than think about that, he started creating a design in the middle of our circle. I have to say, teaching him is going a lot better than I thought it would. In the past I couldn't persuade him to write his name or other things like that. But so far, he's (mostly) working hard at his lessons - writing his spelling words everyday, doing a page of handwriting practice, some maths, history, science, and LOTS of time spent reading books in his "spare" time. But as the above picture illustrates, sometimes he just finds it boring (probably because he knows it already) and he has to find a more interesting way of doing it, or just something altogether different. For example, a sheet of math problems might be handed back to me with the word "no" written as an answer for every problem. Or he wants to write his numbers soooooo tiny that only he knows what they are! But hopefully I'll get the hang of it and work out a healthy balance of enough practice for him to learn something (master it) without being tedious. He picks things up very quickly, but also needs practice of course (esp when it comes to writing things), but since he only needs to look at something once and then remembers it, he finds "busy work" totally annoying! Which is unlike Abigail, who is happy to have busy work, as long as it's something she finds easy! So yeah, it's a bit of an adventure teaching a child with aspergers/high functioning autism (esp when he wants to verbalise/make noises/move/jump/etc the whole time!), but can be fun & exciting too.

Deborah & her 2 big brothers hanging out the window :)

Elijah in the Bumbo for the first time - sometime last month, as he already looks quite different!

Such a sweet little boy

Staring at something - and holding his favourite toy!

My dear husband and my smallest darling boy :-)

Peacefully sleeping! And yes, he still loves to sleep at night - I can't complain, he's perfect! :-)

His favourite toy again! It really is great - so many places for him to grab onto, very lightweight, and great for chewing! I'm sure I saw it mentioned in an email from Mumsnet recently - saying it was a best buy for baby (at around £10!). But I got this from a charity shop last year - only 10p, so really *was* a fab buy!

He's really strong and eager to learn how to sit up on his own.

Happily playing together in a fun pop-up tent - a great way to help contain the toys they've dumped out! ;-) And morning lessons with the oldest 2 are soooo much easier when they decided to play together in the next room!