Homeschool Week 5/18-5/21

 Bible

• Action Bible Anytime Devotions
• The Action Bible - Saul's death, the Temple and Israel splitting

English

• Grammar Island - verbs
• Spelling Workout F
• Writing with Ease 3

Reading

• Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (read-aloud)
• The Wild Robot

Math

• Saxon Math 6/5

History

• Story of the World 2 - the vikings
• Castle by MacCauley
• Famous Figures of the Middle Ages and Renaissance

Science

• Apologia Astronomy - Saturn

Art and Music

• Michelangelo

German

• DuoLingo and working through a picture dictionary with me

Field Trip to Texas Ballet Theater's Swan Lake

https://texasballettheater.org/#

An amazing field trip.  

If you get a chance to see a professional ballet performance, it's incredible.  

My college kids have been to Texas Ballet Theater about fifteen times (can't remember the exact number).  They have even seen the Bolshoi Ballet.  The 5th grader has been twice to Texas Ballet Theater.  He described his first trip to see a professional ballet at Texas Ballet Theater as "the best day of his life."

All three of my younger kids have spent years taking ballet classes and all three have performed in the same ballet company, which focuses on bringing ballet to people who otherwise are unable to see ballet - like a nursing home/memory care facility or community festivals.  I count this as volunteer work for them as well.

Two of our girls have taken ballet and other dance classes at the college level also.

I highly recommend a professional ballet performance, opera or even a symphony performance as an excellent homeschool field trip.  

Here is a link explaining what to expect when you attend a professional ballet: https://texasballettheater.org/the-ballet-experience/

Nuclear Meltdown and Change of Plans for English/Language Arts

Week One and I'm changing our English curriculum after The Meltdown Heard Around the World. 

I switched our line-up to Michael Clay Thompson's Language Arts along with Writing with Ease 3 and Spelling Workout F.  

Here's the link to Michael Clay Thompson's Language Arts at Royal Fireworks Press.

This is literally the world's most expensive language arts curriculum, but I already own several levels, so I was able to dig it out of the bookcase and show him the books.  He apparently liked the idea of fish and pelicans teaching him the parts of speech, because hey, filling out a grammar workbook page is too simple.  We tried the program out this week and he really likes it.  I had to shelf Daily Grams 6 and Wordly Wise 3000.  Apparently, traditional workbooks are not for him, so for everyone's safety and mental health, the workbooks have magically vanished.

 I also had to buy a higher level of Spelling Workout to match his spelling level.  So, we are going to start Spelling Workout F, which is 6th grade spelling.  

We have completed the first week of Writing with Ease 3 and he seems to tolerate it.  He is having a hard time summarizing and condensing his narrations into 2-3 sentences, so I'm glad WWE3 is covering that skill.  He basically retells the entire story when he does a narration.  I will probably continue with Writing with Skill 1 next year.

All of our other subjects are going well.  Saxon Math is shockingly going well (I never would've guessed that one).

Field Trip: Fort Worth Zoo

Link to the Fort Worth Zoo's Website

Tickets are about $22 adult, $18 for children.  There's a half-price Wednesday, but it was extremely crowded.  Since most of the public schools are finishing their STAAR testing and taking field trips, half of the parking lot was actually school buses.  This was not a good time to visit the zoo.  We bought membership, because we are studying Life Science next January and I plan to take the 6th grader several times over the winter to see the animals.  A zoo membership would compliment our biology year.

A large section of the zoo is currently under construction.  The best parts of the zoo, in our opinion, was the Predators/Cats and the African Savannah.  

Here's some pictures:

Summer/Fall 2026 Curriculum Choices (6th Grade)

 We are almost finished with our big break - we always take April off from school.  We're getting ready to start back up again with our 6th grade curriculum.  Most of these things we have already started, since he was working on a 6th grade level in January.

We are continuing with the curriculum plan outlined in The Well-Trained Mind.  

Bible

• The Action Bible

English

• Spelling Workout F
• Michael Clay Thompson's Language Arts (Royal Fireworks Press)
• Writing with Ease 3

Math

• Saxon 6/5

History

• Story of the World 2
• Story of the World 2 Activity Guide
• Famous Figure of the Middle Ages
• Selections from The Well-Trained Mind history reading list, including:
• The Usborne Illustrated Tales of King Arthur
• The Adventures of Robin Hood
• St. George and the Dragon
• The Whipping Boy
• The Great and Terrible Quest
• Cathedral
• Castle 

Science

• Apologia Astronomy
• Apologia Earth Science with Notebooking Journal

Reading

• Continue reading literature that he chooses
• Read-Alouds including
• Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
• The Incredible Journey
• In the Moonlight Mist, A Korean Tale
• The Ghost of the Tokaido Inn

Artist and Composer Study

• Artist Studies
• Michelangelo
• Titian
• Raphael
• Giorgio Vasari
• Tintoretto
• Peter Brueghel
• Peter Paul Rubens
• Composer Studies
• Thomas Tallis
• de Palestrina
• Michael Praetorius
• Henry Purcell
• Antonio Vivaldi

Foreign Language

• He's been working on DuoLingo German

Field Trip to Founders' Plaza and Grapevine Botanical Garden

 We did two outdoor field trips in Grapevine, Texas, this week.  We went to Founders' Plaza Observation Area and we walked the Grapevine Botanical Gardens at Heritage Park.

Founders' Plaza at DFW Airport is a free parking lot with observation area overlooking the airport runways:  https://www.dfwairport.com/explore/plan/foundersplaza/.  You can watch the aircraft fly overhead and land on the runways.  You can also watch the aircraft take off from the runways.  Founder's Plaza sits at a higher elevation than the airport and you can see for miles.  You're able to hear the airport control tower through speakers at the observation area.  There are a few built-in telescopes around the plaza for spotting the planes.

This was more fun that I thought it would be.  We spent about an hour here watching the planes land and take off.  We combined the plane-watching with the app Flightradar24, which is a live flight tracker.  We could see where the aircraft were coming from and what type of aircraft it was in real time.

Grapevine Botanical Gardens at Heritage Park is also free.  Parking is free.  A large playground shares a fence-line with the botanical gardens with a gate leading from the gardens to the playground.  Paved trails wind through the gardens.  Here's some pictures:

Review of My First Hymnal by Concordia Publishing House

https://www.cph.org/my-first-hymnal?srsltid=AfmBOor44fxfZkJqerfT4bX0oEB4Wx4jZexgaiJCz6_zoNqgeoTWsiyx

It looks like it's $21.99 from CPH's website.  It's also $21.99 on Amazon (at the time of this post).

This book was amazing.  I think this is one of our favorite books ever.  It took about ten months for us to go through all of the hymns in the book.  I was worried that it would be babyish for a 10-11 year-old, but it absolutely was not.  He loved this hymnal.

The hymnal is very colorful with large print (a big thanks from the dyslexics in this house).  It has sections that cover the church calendar, different morning and evening prayers, confession and absolution, The Apostle's Creed, the Lord's Prayer and obviously a big collection of hymns.  The hymns are arranged around the church calendar.  When we began the hymnal, we started in the middle of the hymnal based on what time of year it was when we started.  I think we started at the beginning of Pentecost.  

There is a also a YouTube page with all of the hymns either sung by a choir or played acoustically without a choir.  We always listened to the hymns on YouTube as we went through them.

We loved this hymnal so much that even though we finished the entire thing, I don't want to put it back in the bookcase.  I would like to keep it out in the school room.

Concordia sells another kid's hymnal, so I may take a look at buying that hymnal also.