(Not) Back to School Blog Hop: School Room Week

It is "classroom week" on the Heart of the Matter (Not) Back to School Blog Hop. The picture above is of the area in our bedroom where I store all our supplies.
The rolling cart houses all our "using at the moment" and weekly assignments.

And it gets rolled into the living room for school time each day. It actually stays in the living room or kitchen area most of the time, unless I am making room for company to visit or something like that. For instructional time, I sit in the middle, with a child on each side, or they can work on their individual work elsewhere (I let them choose their room, or another chair or at the table or floor) while I sit with the other one.

The rug is a popular spot for doing school work.
Katie is putting her spelling words in alphabetical order and writing them down.

And the kitchen table is a great spot for science and other things that require the space. Noah is writing with a quill pen we made a few weeks ago.

In both of the photos above they are wearing their school uniforms...pajamas.
We don't get dressed unless we're going somewhere. That's our contribution to cutting down on our waste. ha.

Can't wait to see all the lovely classrooms on the tour. And, just to share... THIS is a link to a post with pictures of the classroom we used our past few years homeschooling. :)
It was great and was needed at the time. I am so thankful to have had it, but it is now serving other purposes and come winter time we are grateful to stay upstairs out of the cold, ha ha.

Back to School Blog Hop: Curriculum Week

Heart of the Matter Online is hosting a "not Back to School Blog Hop" and this week's topic is curriculum. I know I have shared this on my blog before for this year, but there are a couple of add-ons, so here we go!



I am sticking with Abeka this year again for Reading and Language Arts. It has been very good to us so far...my kids read so very well and I like the language arts content.
We are using Handwriting without Tears for our penmanship practice instead of the traditional Abeka handwriting.
OH, and I will be using a great website for helping with our spelling practice and for vocabulary later in the year. It is Spelling City. If you create an account you can either search other people's spelling lists, or create your own saved lists, then play games online, print games and activities, or actually be tested on the word lists. Great fun spelling practice!

Math U See for math. We switched from Abeka Math last February and I think we have finally settled in for good on this program! Noah (6) is halfway through Alpha, and Katie (7) is in Beta. This program has enough worksheets for two kids in each student kit, so it is cost effective as well!


For science, we are going light this year one more time before we delve into something heavy. Three units to use throughout the year...magnets, birds, and astronomy. Fun and easy from Homeschool Science Adventures!

I have purchased this but it has not arrived yet, but I can't wait to get it and get started. I looked into Writing Strands at the Atlanta Expo this weekend and came home to immediately find a used copy to get. Abeka is great with grammar and sentence structure, but not so much with the creative writing aspects. This seems like a fun and easy guide to get us motivated!

We haven't started piano lessons yet, but as soon as we pick up our books we will get going on it! We plan to use Alfred's Piano Course.

Art will be rotated out with science, and this is the book we are using from Artistic Pursuits. It is another very easy but enriching and fun curriculum.

Well, that's it for us this year at PEACE Academy. Can't wait to hop around on the other blogs and see what everyone else is doing! Happy Homeschooling!