It's a pirate life. . .

Having boys is like being on a pirate ship, there is always an adventure to be had, fighting, screaming, weird songs, and most of the time a buried treasure. So when homeschool became a chore and Captain Damian no beard would cry and fight and poke out his own eye to wear an eye patch I decided it was time for a break. Then I had a brilliant idea (sometimes I do that. it is rare but it happens.) Pirate Week which turned into two weeks of my kind of learning. Damian was excited to do his lessons every morning, he was more then happy to read all of those seafaring adventures that you find in Classic literature. For awhile the peace was kept among all of the crew. It all started with an email from http://www.currclick.com/ and it had pirate unit studies and as soon as I saw that email I knew what to do. I ordered two unit studies one for both boys.

This is what homeschooling looks like around my house.

Damian working on his unit study. Cutting out, coloring, and answering questions based on his book.

 This is James matching capital letter pirates to their lower case letter parrots.

 These two buccaneers know how to work together.

 My only complaint about the preschool unit study I have is that it focused on counting. Only one letter activity, and a million number activities.

 James filled in the blanks to complete the number line.

 With a little help from his brother.

 This is what Damian's finished lapbook looked like.

 As you can imagine he is very proud of it.

I only wish he had colored the pictures in but it was his decision.

Yesterday we started back with the old curriculum and it wasn't fun. It was work. More importantly Damian regular "school" work is an online curriculum. I missed seeing him being excited about doing his school work, and willing to read classic stories. Most of the time I feel very seperate from his online schooling, really I just check to see what he has done, and how he did. So I downloaded another unit study or two. We are starting Charlie and the Chocolate factory by Roald Dahl which is set up as notebooking. Twenty chapters, twenty lessons in twenty days. I will let you know how I like notebooking when we finish.  James is going back to learning a letter every week or two. This week he starts C. He is making a letter book one page at a time. I do love homeschooling! Now to get Damian to practise piano.

I hope your week is filled with happy learning, love and laughter!