Let Learning Happen

Marley is a sweet, caring, funny girl who loves animals, especially her dogs, Daisy and Roxy, and her hamster, Tiny. She's always creating, whether it's videos for her YouTube channel or handmade books with her original writings and drawings. She also loves dance. She is currently taking ballet, tap, and jazz lessons.

[letlearninghappen]

Meet Marley’s new boxer puppy, Daisy!

Marley has wanted a dog she could call her own for so long. She saved her money and even sold some of her American Girl dolls to help pay for her.

While Daisy has been a huge responsibility, Marley has certainly stepped up to the plate.

Daisy can be a handful, but she’s a sweet and spunky girl full of personality; and we’re so glad she’s joined our family.

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Creative Writing was something new in her curriculum this year, and Marley absolutely loved the fun, playful writing exercises in this book. 

She is very creative and is always writing stories on her own, so this was right up her alley.

[letlearninghappen]

[letlearninghappen]

History

This year’s curriculum focused on the New World. Starting first with historical and geographical facts about the different regions of North America and its people, and later delving into the history of the United States. The last several chapters will cover Mexico, Central America, West Indies, and South America.

[letlearninghappen]

[letlearninghappen]

Language

This year in Language, they started with a review of subject and predicates, fragments and run-ons, and capitalization and quotations.

Then, they dived right into working on writing good paragraphs, outlines, and bibliographies in preparation for their research report. Marley chose Apollo 11, which had peaked her interest last year during Space Camp.

Although not thrilled with the work, she was glad to get that major project completed earlier in the year, instead of waiting until the end like last year.

After that, they delved deeper into each grammar counterpart: verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs; with the added joy of diagramming along the way.

[letlearninghappen]

[letlearninghappen]

[letlearninghappen]

Math

While Science was her favorite, Math was her least favorite subject. 

She is just so down on the repetition part of the lessons, from the two page worksheet, to the speed drill, to the homework assignments every other day; she just wants to scream, “I’ve got it already!”

And yet she makes enough silly, careless mistakes that I insist she keeps with it, although I do relieve her of some of the homework assignments.

Whether her mistakes are from the overwhelming tediousness of it or not, the repetition will help solidify the concepts for her; or at least that’s what I keep telling her :)

She declares she hates fractions, decimals and percents (especially converting them), but she has recently enjoyed finding the percentages and angle degrees for creating a circle graph. The extra hands-on use of a compass and protractor is a plus for her.

[letlearninghappen]

[letlearninghappen]

Science

Science was easily Marley’s favorite subject this year. And although she’s looking forward to Health (which she will be studying the last quarter), she always hates to see Science go.

This year in her Abeka curriculum they covered: plants, invertebrates, earth, space, and chemistry.

[letlearninghappen]

[letlearninghappen]

Reading

Marley has done a lot of reading with her Abeka curriculum this year. Besides the required reading for the lessons themselves, she has completed both short and long form book reports, as well as, one oral report.

The books for her reports include:

Billy Sunday

Message of the Mountain

Who Was Leonardo da Vinci?

Home At Last

Abe Lincoln

We have also continued our read-alouds. Our titles this year have been:

Wonder ~ R. J. Palacio

*The Serafina Series ~ Robert Beatty (our favorite!)

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place ~ Maryrose Wood & Jon Klassen

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children ~ Ransom Riggs

The Penderwick Series ~ Jeanne Birdsall

Bridge to Terabithia ~ Catherine Paterson

Willa of the Wood ~ Robert Beatty

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library ~ Chris Grabenstein

Mr. Popper’s Penguins ~ Richard Atwater

[letlearninghappen]

[letlearninghappen]

[letlearninghappen]

We finally attended one of the Homeschool Christian Skate Days at Skate and Shake in Ormond. 

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We took a long weekend trip to Atlanta, GA.

So often we try to skip past or get through this city quickly on our way to other adventures; but we discovered this area had hosted several filming locations to one of our favorite shows, Stranger Things, and decided to make a tour of it.

We visited Hawkins Laboratory, which felt the most eerie in it’s huge abandonedness. We could see tarps hung and signs posted inside for cast members, which was also really cool.

Although our favorite was easily Hopper’s Cabin. Not only did it look so creepy cool from the outside, but it was turned into an escape room by the property owners. It was our first escape room experience and it was really fun! We were so grateful for the random group of teammates that joined us. We never would have been able to complete it on our own.

That property was also the location for the Merrills Farm pumpkin patch.

We stopped by several more Stranger Things locations, including the arcade, Hawkins Middle School, the boys’ neighborhood, the theater, the hardware store where Joyce worked, and the motel where Jonathan and Nancy stayed.

We also visited Stone Mountain Park. We stayed at Stone Mountain Inn, directly across from the theme park. We enjoyed their Snow Mountain event and trekked to the top of Stone Mountain. So beautiful!

I’d say we have a new appreciation for Atlanta now.