Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
Weeks of March 4-16
Lots of the standard school work this week. Plugging away at math lessons, spelling, language, and French. We studied Jupiter this week; did an experiment showing the effect of hurricane type winds on particles and began putting together models of all the planets. Our moon diary project continued with some good opportunities for viewing the moon. Everyone enjoyed running more of our paper route with the nice weather and spent lots of time outside climbing trees and riding bikes.
Lily and Gabe started swim lessons this week. They are really enjoying being back in the pool and like the Spring Break lessons which go everyday for two weeks.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Weeks of February 20 - March 2
It's amazing how easy it is to fall behind in posting! We've been busy with our usual school work though this last week was a bit more relaxed due to runny noses and headaches and general malaise.
All three kids are making good progress in math, slogging away each day with their lesson. John in particular has really gotten into the habit of daily lessons which I hadn't been forcing too much before. He is making real progress with adding doubles and ones. Gabe is subtracting 9s and 2s and reading and recording the temperature to the nearest 2 degrees. Lily's math has focused on fractions: reducing, multiplying and dividing.
Our study of the Solar System is going strong. Lily and Gabe both began a 30 day project of charting the moon's phases. We've been playing the Solar System games - with great success. Reading more about Mars and Uranus and exploring the iPad apps.
We've been watching a lot of the Brain Pop videos (default mode when no one really feels like up for school) and doing the quizzes. Videos have included Uranus, Angles (very timely as Lily was introduced to supplementary and complementary angles this week), Renewable Energy, Nutrition, Leap Year, Architecture, Teeth and Main Idea.
Lily has been settling into her writing lessons with really diligent daily work. She is also really enjoying reading the Greek Myths. Gabe and John are both progressing with their reading and Gabe is doing good spelling work. John is now writing both his first and last name.
We finished reading, journaling and studying the Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt and began studying Ancient Greece. We've listened to the chapters in Story of the World about Greece and watched Drive Thru History: Greece. We will return to the Story of the World chapters in the coming weeks but have began work in the History Portfolios.
We went swimming last week. Lily and John also went tobogganing in addition to our usual PE activities.
In addition, John learned how to play checkers this week. It has been wonderful watching him learn strategy and play games with Gabe. We also played rounds of Yathzee and Backgammon.
All three kids are making good progress in math, slogging away each day with their lesson. John in particular has really gotten into the habit of daily lessons which I hadn't been forcing too much before. He is making real progress with adding doubles and ones. Gabe is subtracting 9s and 2s and reading and recording the temperature to the nearest 2 degrees. Lily's math has focused on fractions: reducing, multiplying and dividing.
Our study of the Solar System is going strong. Lily and Gabe both began a 30 day project of charting the moon's phases. We've been playing the Solar System games - with great success. Reading more about Mars and Uranus and exploring the iPad apps.
We've been watching a lot of the Brain Pop videos (default mode when no one really feels like up for school) and doing the quizzes. Videos have included Uranus, Angles (very timely as Lily was introduced to supplementary and complementary angles this week), Renewable Energy, Nutrition, Leap Year, Architecture, Teeth and Main Idea.
Lily has been settling into her writing lessons with really diligent daily work. She is also really enjoying reading the Greek Myths. Gabe and John are both progressing with their reading and Gabe is doing good spelling work. John is now writing both his first and last name.
We finished reading, journaling and studying the Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt and began studying Ancient Greece. We've listened to the chapters in Story of the World about Greece and watched Drive Thru History: Greece. We will return to the Story of the World chapters in the coming weeks but have began work in the History Portfolios.
We went swimming last week. Lily and John also went tobogganing in addition to our usual PE activities.
In addition, John learned how to play checkers this week. It has been wonderful watching him learn strategy and play games with Gabe. We also played rounds of Yathzee and Backgammon.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
A Typical Day
I love reading what other homeschooler's days look like and thought it might finally be time for me to share what a fairly typical day looks like for us. So here's today: Friday, February 10th, 2012.
7:30 John climbs into bed with me for a quick snuggle.
7:45 Up and having coffee. Gabe and John are reading Asterix.
8:10 Lily is up. She heads to the couch with a book and a hot chocolate. Usually I'd make her get moving a little earlier but I know she went to bed with a sore throat and needs a little more time this morning.
8:15 Make a coffee cake for breakfast ( this is a treat I've been craving for awhile). Shower, get dressed while the cake is baking.
8:45 Take all 3 and go do our paper route while the coffee cake is cooling.
9:30 Home again. Breakfast.
9:40 Start our official school day. John starts with French on the computer (Rosetta Stone). Gabe starts with Language Lessons, we're learning about commas today. Lily starts with Writing with Skill. They then rotate with Gabe doing typing lessons on the computer, John doing his math and Lily stills finishing writing. When Lily is finished writing I teach her math lesson (a short one today: polygons) while Gabe reads and John does a dot to dot on the iPad. Then it's onto Gabe's math (subtracting) and reading with John. After everyone has finished their math we sit together and read our history lesson from Story of the World on the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. Gabe and Lily fill in pictures, vocabularly words and short narrations of their history while I warm up lunch.
(I used to teach all the math at once, then move on to grammar, spelling, ect. I finally got smart a few weeks ago and started teaching Lily's math while the boy's do handwriting or something else that doesn't require help. Then I switch and do the boy's math together.)
12:15 Lunch - leftover homemade Mac and Cheese with slices of orange pepper. Lily, John and I play a game of Uno while finishing our lunch.
1:00 Quiet reading time for all.
1:45 Boys convince me to read two chapters of the BFG.
2:00 Time to fold and put away laundry. (Washed and dried during the morning)
2:30 Back downstairs to finish up our history and any other loose ends. Lily hops in the shower as she didn't have time in the morning. And then puts her laundry away before joining us. Lily proofreads her history summary, then does some decorating in her history journal before moving on to update her history timeline. Gabe and John both want to work on learning to type (I think they must just want to play on the computer since we've been going all week with no computer/TV time) so I set each of them up.
4:10 Lily has a quick doctor appointment.
5:00-6:30 Gabe has Judo. We decided to try the older student's class today. Gabe has been really frustrated by the younger boys. Success! The focus of the older boy's is much better so Gabe didn't experience the frustration he's felt in the younger class. It was a hard workout and Gabe finished feeling exhausted and hungry.
6:45 Home to dinner.
7:30 Gabe and John into bed.
8:15 Lily settled into bed with her book. I stayed and read a chapter of Wrinkle in Time. This is a great way for me to introduce books that Lily doesn't normally like or are too hard. She had tried reading Wrinkle in Time to herself and didn't like it but is enjoying having it read to her.
7:30 John climbs into bed with me for a quick snuggle.
7:45 Up and having coffee. Gabe and John are reading Asterix.
8:10 Lily is up. She heads to the couch with a book and a hot chocolate. Usually I'd make her get moving a little earlier but I know she went to bed with a sore throat and needs a little more time this morning.
8:15 Make a coffee cake for breakfast ( this is a treat I've been craving for awhile). Shower, get dressed while the cake is baking.
8:45 Take all 3 and go do our paper route while the coffee cake is cooling.
9:30 Home again. Breakfast.
9:40 Start our official school day. John starts with French on the computer (Rosetta Stone). Gabe starts with Language Lessons, we're learning about commas today. Lily starts with Writing with Skill. They then rotate with Gabe doing typing lessons on the computer, John doing his math and Lily stills finishing writing. When Lily is finished writing I teach her math lesson (a short one today: polygons) while Gabe reads and John does a dot to dot on the iPad. Then it's onto Gabe's math (subtracting) and reading with John. After everyone has finished their math we sit together and read our history lesson from Story of the World on the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. Gabe and Lily fill in pictures, vocabularly words and short narrations of their history while I warm up lunch.
(I used to teach all the math at once, then move on to grammar, spelling, ect. I finally got smart a few weeks ago and started teaching Lily's math while the boy's do handwriting or something else that doesn't require help. Then I switch and do the boy's math together.)
12:15 Lunch - leftover homemade Mac and Cheese with slices of orange pepper. Lily, John and I play a game of Uno while finishing our lunch.
1:00 Quiet reading time for all.
1:45 Boys convince me to read two chapters of the BFG.
2:00 Time to fold and put away laundry. (Washed and dried during the morning)
2:30 Back downstairs to finish up our history and any other loose ends. Lily hops in the shower as she didn't have time in the morning. And then puts her laundry away before joining us. Lily proofreads her history summary, then does some decorating in her history journal before moving on to update her history timeline. Gabe and John both want to work on learning to type (I think they must just want to play on the computer since we've been going all week with no computer/TV time) so I set each of them up.
4:10 Lily has a quick doctor appointment.
5:00-6:30 Gabe has Judo. We decided to try the older student's class today. Gabe has been really frustrated by the younger boys. Success! The focus of the older boy's is much better so Gabe didn't experience the frustration he's felt in the younger class. It was a hard workout and Gabe finished feeling exhausted and hungry.
6:45 Home to dinner.
7:30 Gabe and John into bed.
8:15 Lily settled into bed with her book. I stayed and read a chapter of Wrinkle in Time. This is a great way for me to introduce books that Lily doesn't normally like or are too hard. She had tried reading Wrinkle in Time to herself and didn't like it but is enjoying having it read to her.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Weeks of January 15 & 22
Lily covered division withe decimals, circumference, dividing by a fraction, missing number problems with fractions and decimals.
Science continued with our study of the Solar System with indepth reading about the Sun from Kingfisher Science Encyclopedia, Usborne Encyclopedia of World Geography, and Earth and Sky. Lily completed some diagrams of the distance from the Sun to the Earth, day length and how fast light travels. Gabe made a diagram of the path of light from the Sun to the Earth. We also read a story about a Eskimo boy called Nutik, the Wolf Pup by Jean Craighead George, which tied in very nicely as it depicted the seasons in the Artic. The iPad apps Solar System and Star Walk have really captured the kid's imaginations and helped them to grasp the immensity of space.
We've gone ice skating a couple times in the past week and Lily and Gabe continue with Judo and Highland.
Lily has been working on piano duets with one of my piano students and has found new motivation for practicing.
New motivation has also been found in French. At Thanksgiving they learned that their cousin is in a French Immersion school and they were impressed by how much she'd learned in a couple months (she's the same age as John). John has even shown an interest and started on the Rosetta Stone.
A few weeks ago we were driving through Canal Flats and John started asking lots of questions about the logs. So we had a great conversation about logging and wood and the things that are made from logs.
Friday, January 20, 2012
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