Homeschool wrap up

We have been continuing along with our schooling and are wrapping up a few of our courses having completed and met the curriculum goals.  Each homeschool year we put a heavy push on the academic courses at the beginning of the school year with the goal of finishing some early so we can switch our focus throughout the year.  Language arts and math continue for the entire school year as they tend to be a challenge for some and my thought is if the kids can be stronger in these then learning in other subjects will be made easier.

We start the week with swimming lessons for some, we have 3 instructors and 1 assistant teaching 7 of the children and an added bonus they have the whole pool to themselves.  We are very fortunate to have this set up and we are seeing some nice progress.  With the more compromised children there is a heavy focus on safety which is really important as we live so close to the water.  2 of the girls have been making great progress and are now swimming lengths of the pool.

While we swim 2 of the others are focused on language arts and math with their education assistants.  The teens are also wrapping up science and car maintenance just studying for the final exams and will be so relieved when they are complete.  Car maintenance was a community class with their peers and is being replaced with interior design another community class which hopefully will be just as interesting.  The teens have also been taking a variety of one day community classes with their peers including food safe, WHMIS, science labs, snowboarding etc.

4 of the kids have been learning to sew and just finished making boxer shorts.

Tuesday is therapy day which amounts to an insane amount of therapy appointments, schooling in the vehicle, walks through the forest and playing on the playground at the park.  Each day at home we are also working on our therapy homework with the help of the kids education assistants.

We have been working on our baking skills and enjoying the added snacks we have created.

We are studying the life cycle of salmon again this year as we raise 100 salmon eggs to the fry stage.  Our salmon eggs have been hatching in the last few days and are now at the alevin stage.

For art the younger children have been working through the Home Art Studio program and thoroughly enjoying it.  They have been learning about prime colours and mixing them.  Also they have been learning how to handle a paintbrush and how to get different effects while painting - straight strokes and swirling strokes.  The art work they have been doing is also helping to reinforce some of the scissor skills that their occupational therapist has been working on with them.

All of the children have been learning sign language at varying levels dependent on their abilities.  Sign language is also very helpful for the children with speech challenges as it is another clue in trying to understand what they are saying.

The bulbs that we planted in the fall have sprouted and have encouraged us to plan our spring gardening program.  We recently bought some seeds to start inside and have ordered seed catalogs to plan our garden.  The teens will be working with Dad building more garden beds and designing a sprinkler system while the younger kids will be focusing on planting.