Homeschooling

Near the end of a rough year of constant bullying drama last school year in 4th grade year for Rhea, and 6th grade obnoxious middle school drama for Savannah, Savannah came to me and asked if I would homeschool her for 7th grade.  Rhea wanted in on the action too, and I told the girls to think about it for a few months and we'd talk again.  After a few months, they still wanted to, so I thought that maybe over the summer they would change their minds.  Still in mid-July they hadn't changed their minds, so I agreed to homeschool them.  After much work in researching curricula and getting ideas for how we would survive homeschooling in a foreign country without homeschooling groups or others to do things with, I moved forward and bought books and curricula that we needed.  I knew the girls were motivated to be taught at home and be free of school drama enough that they would work hard and not make it difficult for me to be their teacher, so I was excited.  And still am!  We are ALL learning a lot which I love!  And I love learning with my kids--asking questions and researching answers together is rewarding for me.  They look to me to guide and teach them through this year (no pressure!), but I'm looking forward to seeing the wonderful memories we look back on as part of our 2nd year in Latvia!

Words of Rhea:  In this picture, we were learning about the different phases of the moon. So while our mother was out, we were making marshmallow phases of the moon!! We cut the marshmallows to make it look like the phases of the moon, and then we ate some of it!! It was fun and delicious!

One morning, we decided to start our day doing math on the trampoline.  We love the trampoline so we went out with some blankets, 'cause it was cold! It was cold and fun, but when we got inside we felt numb.

In history and literature this year, we're studying the Eastern Hemisphere.  We started the year off by learning about China, and part of what we learned was the Terracotta Warriors, so we got some painting statues and we started painting them.  It was fun and messy.  Here is a picture of us starting our Terracotta warrior because my mom actually wanted to capture the moment of when the Terra Cotta warrior was clean and white and pure before it was all dirty and messy and you know what happens with paint. Here I am starting my Terracotta warrior, it was hard but I managed to do it! I don't know how, but it was really fun and we made some mistakes but it was cool.

I decided to look funny on this picture because I love raising my eyebrows!

My sister looks intent, and she loves the Terracotta warrior, so she wanted to look at the book for instructions to see what color paints she should use.

I also decided to not match the colors of the book, but my sister did!  Here we are standing next to each other and you can see the difference between the Terracotta Warriors .

 Another day, we had the chance to be archaeologists and actually "excavate" a Terracotta Warrior just like real archaeologists had to when they discovered the real ones in China!
We were very focused, and it took us a few hours.  It was fun and I'm glad I got to experience what an archaeologist does!

Here's my mom helping Savannah with her math.

On Fridays, we get to do art and stuff.  My mom got us Doodle crates, so every month we get a new project.  The first one was making a leather pouch to hold stuff, and the next one was making a Moroccan style lantern.  We have to read and follow the instructions to make everything.  We look forward to it every month!

One of our school days we spent at the embassy with my mom for the embassy garage sale.  We helped my mom put price tags on everything and get it all ready to sell.  My mom said that we could each keep 10% of what was sold if we helped.  We were there for hours, but it was fun because we bought some things too from other people.  That's pretty much where our 10% went. :)

We didn't buy these masks, but we had fun trying them on!

We love homeschooling and spending time with mom!