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8am - The 1 year old eating breakfast, lots of kids
working on school. Another is behind the table
laying on the floor doing math, one is on
the couch in the living room working.
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Monday
The first day of our new school year went well. I reminded the kids that it would be a bit unorganized this week as we all get used to our new materials and figure out what to do for each subject. My husband is home on Mondays, so I really was able to focus on helping kids do school while he kept Tobias (age 3) and Rebekah (age 1) happily playing.
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Daniel reading to me from The Good and the
Beautiful Language Arts
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This year I set a block schedule for each day. There are no specific times - instead the kids have certain subjects assigned to each day. Then there are things kids don't have assigned, because they simply do them every day, like reading great books, handicrafts, personal scripture study, and piano practice. Today's blocks were as follows:
- Joseph - Math, Language Arts, Art. Our language arts curriculum encompasses many different subjects including: grammar, writing, literature/reading, poetry memorization, spelling, geography, art appreciation, art expression. I just list it as language arts for simplicity.
- Emma - Math, Language Arts, Art.
Daniel - Math, Language Arts, Science. This science is a group of Daniel, Oliver, Caleb, Mason, Samuel. Today we studied sight and did a lot of fun experiments/activities.- Oliver - Math, Language Arts, Science.
- Caleb - Math, Reading, Handwriting, Science. Caleb is not finished with All About Reading, being partway through level 3 of 4, so he does not yet use The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts. Perk of homeschooling - we go at his pace!
- Mason - Math, Language Arts, Handwriting, Science. Mason has finished all levels of All About Reading so he is doing TGTB LA. Again, perk of homeschooling - we go at his pace!
- Samuel - Math, Reading, Handwriting, Science.
Monday is the most challenging day for me as teacher, because I have six new math lessons to teach. The rest of the week kids are doing practice pages, but Monday takes a lot more direct instruction.
A Peek at Monday Topics
Joseph and Emma reviewed the commutative and associative property today. The chalk pastel work from language arts made Emma batty - because chalk pastels are square, not round like a colored pencil. In Artistic Pursuits the three of us started the unit on space - the area filled or left empty in a piece of art, studied an Indian miniature painting of an elephant chasing his handler, then reproduced a rough sketch of it on 9x12 paper and then on a half sheet, paying attention to the proportion of elephant (4/5ths of the page) to man (1/5th of the page).
Daniel reviewed negative numbers with addition/subtraction/multiplication/division/exponents. In language arts he happily remembered the grammar concepts and started reading a biography of Evaleen Stein. He loved science. His favorite part was exploring the affect of covering one eye and trying to throw or catch small objects - it really messed with his depth perception.
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Oliver doing The Good and the Beautiful
Language Arts 3
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Caleb did reading with Daddy, reading aloud the word sheet that prepares him for his next story. This year he will begin transitioning to learning cursive with Handwriting Without Tears, so today was reviewing writing the print alphabet. Math was easy, according to Caleb. He is starting multiplication. Today was hands on, with rectangular arrays of blocks. He liked science best today.
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| Mason working on Math U See |
Mason is still in the throes of all things addition and subtraction this year. He is finishing the last few lessons from Math U See Alpha and moving into MUS Beta. He started TGTB LA 3 today too. I am waiting to see how he does with this. His reading ability is easily on this level, but the amount of writing may prove challenging with the fine motor challenges he has. His favorite science activity today was when we tested peripheral vision to see who can see best to their sides while still looking forward.
Samuel is not sure he wants to be in 1st grade this year because it means learning time infringes on all this play time. I just make sure he has breaks between each subject and offer praise when he is working on his learning activities. He is reading pretty well, semi-fluent in his current level of All About Reading, level 2. His pencil grip is the craziest I have seen in my kids yet, so we are trying a few things to remind him how to hold his pencil when doing handwriting. He liked science well enough, anything that feels more like play than sit down learning is going to be a hit with him. Math was his least favorite because he wasn't thrilled with writing numbers - again, coming back to pencil grip issues.
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| Rebekah enjoying a puzzle |
Tuesday
Day 2 of the homeschool year was day 1 without daddy home and everything went smoothly. Rebekah and Tobias mostly gravitated to whatever room I was in, pulling along toys or climbing up to the table with a bin of activities like slime, thinking putty, magnetic dolls from Melissa and Doug, puzzles, wooden lacing animals, and counting bears.
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| Caleb doing Handwriting Without Tears |
It was day 1 of biology for Joseph and Emma, so I got them oriented in the student notebook and they jumped right in to the textbook. The younger boys science group focused on fooling our eyes today. We experimented with optical illusions.
Our nature study right now is watching the spider who has taken up residence outside our window, building a web and trapping bugs for its dinner.
Emma decided a treat was in order and made a double batch of no bake cookies, about 70 cookies.
Wednesday
No meltdowns yet is cause for celebration. Samuel did tell me he didn't want to be a big kid and do school work any more when it was time for handwriting. Ha!
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Joseph working on The Good and the Beautiful
Language Arts
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We started our day with our very first lesson from The Good and the Beautiful History 2. I passed out books about Ancient Greece and Greek mythology to the kids and challenged them to flip through and just look at pictures, to get a mental image of ancient Greece started. They each chose a favorite picture from their book, or one they had a question about, to share. Then we started reading the lesson, which begins with a discussion of our belief in one God (monotheism) and the Greek belief in many gods (polytheism). Most of my kids are familiar with Greek mythology so we compared the characteristics of the true God to the characteristics of the Greek gods and goddesses. We looked at maps of Greece - political, topographical, historical - and discussed how the land and water could impact the people groups in ancient times. We learned about the Minoans and Mycenaeans and started individual timelines with entries related to each. We also read some Greek myths.
I am tweaking the amount of writing in TGTB Language Arts 3 as I go for Mason. He has fine motor challenges and is on the young side for this level. He cannot do all the writing by hand in this on top of handwriting lessons. Some days seem especially heavy on writing in the language arts. Today, for example, included the following writing in the lesson:
- Writing 20 words, many of which follow a particular spelling rule, as orally dictated by me. This is not the normal spelling words, this is a lesson on a particular spelling rule.
- Write 4 adjectives that describe a painting in the lesson.
- Use a thesaurus to write a list of synonyms for those 4 adjectives.
- Write a list of 7 nouns from the painting.
- Rewrite the list of nouns in alphabetical order.
- Write 2-3 sentences that use those nouns in a series with commas.
- Practice the 5-7 spelling words the child is on in the Course companion. TO do this the child is to come up with a sentence for each word and write the sentence.
Add to that all his writing in other subjects and it's overwhelming him. So we tweak. We do some things orally. I write the nouns he lists. We take turns writing the list in alphabetical order. We make the curriculum fit the child, not the child fit the curriculum. It's a perk of homeschooling!
Today we finished our Homeschool Book Club read aloud: The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Catling. Everyone enjoyed it. We have simply listened to it at lunch time each day. The sweetest thing happened at dinner time. Tobias ran into the other room and grabbed our CD player because he wanted to listen to another story. He was quite put out when I didn't have one ready.
Thursday
A rhythm is starting that feels solid and comfortable. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts! Everyone is doing their assignments. I'm trying to get my routine back in place for checking papers/grading. I used to do it during Rebekah's long afternoon nap, but we have discovered that if she naps too long in the afternoons now she will be up to midnight or later. As I am not a night owl, and I wake before the sun most days, that nap is now kept to 2 hours or less before I wake her up. And during 1 1/2 of that 2 hours I'm doing medical care with Mason.
One subject that is outside my comfort zone this year is art with Joseph and Emma. They decided I need to participate in Artistic Pursuits with them. Drawing is not an area I enjoy. I just keep reminding myself that they feel that way about some of their other subjects, so surely I can cheerfully do art. Today's task was exploring the different art pencils and doing a rough sketch of something interesting to us. We headed outside to draw.
Friday
We made it through the entire first week of the school year without tears. It is probably a record. So far I think the block schedule is going to be a great fit. The moments of me being pulled in too many directions/subjects at once were few this week because everyone had the same general subjects each day.
In history group (Emma down through Samuel) we sat around the living room listening to the first audio story for this year's history curriculum. We learned more about the ancient Greeks. We pulled out our timeline and used it to answer some questions relating people and events we learned about last year to this year. Then we did our first day with this history level's game. It is a card game that is set up to be used like a memory match. On light blue cards are descriptions of people. On dark blue cards are a picture and name of a corresponding person. These are all people we will learn about this year.
For today, I passed out people cards to the kids, including Tobias, and kept the description cards. I read a description card aloud and they could guess who the match was. If they didn't have any idea I would tell them. When you had the match you brought it to me. The kids loved this sneak peek at the people we will learn about this year. As we go through the rest of the year we will play the game as a memory match. Sometimes I will give description cards to each family member and have them pretend to be that person and give us clues about who they are. We will do Pictionary with the cards and take turns drawing the clues. There are lots of different ways we can play with these cards.
While we were doing this Joseph was reading about Einstein's teen years and writing about him for history. He's decided to begin his history study with Einstein.
Over lunch today I read aloud a chapter of Archimedes and the Door of Science. This is the first read aloud we'll do with The Good and the Beautiful History 2.
Well, that's all my notes from the week, so I'm hitting publish. Hooray for another year learning together at home!
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| Handwriting Without Tears for Samuel |
Today we finished our Homeschool Book Club read aloud: The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Catling. Everyone enjoyed it. We have simply listened to it at lunch time each day. The sweetest thing happened at dinner time. Tobias ran into the other room and grabbed our CD player because he wanted to listen to another story. He was quite put out when I didn't have one ready.
Thursday
A rhythm is starting that feels solid and comfortable. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts! Everyone is doing their assignments. I'm trying to get my routine back in place for checking papers/grading. I used to do it during Rebekah's long afternoon nap, but we have discovered that if she naps too long in the afternoons now she will be up to midnight or later. As I am not a night owl, and I wake before the sun most days, that nap is now kept to 2 hours or less before I wake her up. And during 1 1/2 of that 2 hours I'm doing medical care with Mason.
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| Emma doing Apologia Biology |
One subject that is outside my comfort zone this year is art with Joseph and Emma. They decided I need to participate in Artistic Pursuits with them. Drawing is not an area I enjoy. I just keep reminding myself that they feel that way about some of their other subjects, so surely I can cheerfully do art. Today's task was exploring the different art pencils and doing a rough sketch of something interesting to us. We headed outside to draw.
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| Tobias loves this Button Art |
Friday
We made it through the entire first week of the school year without tears. It is probably a record. So far I think the block schedule is going to be a great fit. The moments of me being pulled in too many directions/subjects at once were few this week because everyone had the same general subjects each day.
In history group (Emma down through Samuel) we sat around the living room listening to the first audio story for this year's history curriculum. We learned more about the ancient Greeks. We pulled out our timeline and used it to answer some questions relating people and events we learned about last year to this year. Then we did our first day with this history level's game. It is a card game that is set up to be used like a memory match. On light blue cards are descriptions of people. On dark blue cards are a picture and name of a corresponding person. These are all people we will learn about this year.
For today, I passed out people cards to the kids, including Tobias, and kept the description cards. I read a description card aloud and they could guess who the match was. If they didn't have any idea I would tell them. When you had the match you brought it to me. The kids loved this sneak peek at the people we will learn about this year. As we go through the rest of the year we will play the game as a memory match. Sometimes I will give description cards to each family member and have them pretend to be that person and give us clues about who they are. We will do Pictionary with the cards and take turns drawing the clues. There are lots of different ways we can play with these cards.
While we were doing this Joseph was reading about Einstein's teen years and writing about him for history. He's decided to begin his history study with Einstein.
Over lunch today I read aloud a chapter of Archimedes and the Door of Science. This is the first read aloud we'll do with The Good and the Beautiful History 2.
Well, that's all my notes from the week, so I'm hitting publish. Hooray for another year learning together at home!
What a week! We're gearing up for the same getting-into-the routine for next week, and honestly, though yours was a success, reading about all of the organizing and rhythm-making is daunting. I wish we could skip over that and fall right into the rhythm we need without tweaking or fussing. :) At any rate, your crew is blessed to call you mom/teacher. You are doing wonderful things each day!!!
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful first week of school. I can hardly wait till we start next week.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great week! I'm glad it went so smoothly.
ReplyDeleteWe started the week before, and I was sooooo tired by the end of the week. I sat here reading all that you do, and I'm not sure how you fit it all in. Homeschool is wonderful, but it does take diligence.
ReplyDelete