Friday School

Each Friday morning we attend a prayer meeting at a friend's house. The kids play while moms fellowship and pray. The meeting wraps up at about 12:30 just in time for lunch.

Last year, I had good intentions for our Fridays. My good intentions included getting up early to work on school before we left and finishing school once we returned home. Unfortunately, getting up early is not a talent I possess. And after we returned home and ate a little lunch there just wasn't enough time left in the day for a full day of school.

This year, I developed a plan. M, T, W, and Th we do school as usual...you know,bible, math, English, spelling, history, science...the works. But on Friday we will go to our prayer meeting, go to the library, and complete two subjects at home: music and art.

This accomplishes many things for us...I've always wanted to take the kids to the library each week, but we could only manage to get there about once a month. Since we are all already dressed and out of the house, it's not such a big deal to swing by the library.

Also, adding art and music to the end of a full school day was always difficult and rushed. Since these are the only two subjects we do on Friday, we can spend more time enjoying them.

Last April I purchased Mr. Everybody's Musical Apartment 3-book set at the Midwest Homeschool Convention. It's a simple way to teach young elementary students to read and play music notes. We decided to use a xylophone with this book that we purchased through amazon.


The kids learned three notes last Friday and each played their first song. They've been continuing to practice it throughout the week.


We've chosen to study Mary Cassatt during the months of August and September. I plan to add a composer of the month as well, but haven't done so yet. We brought home books from the library last week and looked at all the beautiful pictures.

Finally, G9 and A8 both are required to read two books independently a month a complete a book report on those books. The reports must be completed by the 2nd and 4th Fridays of each month. Remember, how I told you about the new friend living in our home? Well, G9 and A8 both decided to read the above book for their first report.


I'm allowing them to choose different styles of book reports, and this time they both wanted to give an oral report and create a poster.


A8 got rather creative with her poster. She did this all on her own!

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