Week two of homeschool is over already and with remarkably little time in the school room. People always ask me "how I do it" and the answer is "as quickly as possible," which I manage by doing loads of prep. When you do all the prep in advance there's a lot less time spent faffing around looking for materials during which the kids get into fights and make messes and lose concentration.
Last week we worked ahead on some this week's Latin and Language Arts lessons because Monday we slept over with the grandparents and took Tuesday off to run errands. An hour spent at ICBC with 5 kids wasn't a brilliant time, but at least we aren't behind in schoolwork.
Monday was our big school day with the other family we work with. They learned about molecules and how polar and non polar molecules behave. We did 3 fun scientific demonstrations, one of which was pouring oil and water on a baking sheet to watch how the water drops were attracted to each other and the oil drops attracted to each other. Watching the oil on top was really neat--like shiny magnets all joining together.
Eustace was less interested in school this week which was fine. We did colouring and a few letters, but mostly he played with the little girls and that's a good skill too.
Theo was so excited to do Latin he actually did it in the evening for fun. This week he learned accusative and nominative cases of nouns and we talked about how in English nouns don't usually change for different cases (unless they are pronouns), but how in Latin the nouns change endings depending on their function in the sentence. He is just loving it.
Georgie's printing has really improved since last year and she's much quicker at it. She is still resisting writing her own compositions, but we are working on it. She only got one of her spelling words wrong on her test and she had the thrill of doing FaceTime with her cousin in California for her test. She and her cousin are doing the same spelling curriculum so we thought it would be fun for them to test each other.
This week Georgie learned about Christopher Columbus, Magellan, and Henry the Navigator and did a page in her history portfolio. Theo caught up on the maps in his history portfolio and wrote a report on early exploration and two short reports on the end of Byzantium and the voyages of Bartholomew Dias and Vasco de Gama.
This week was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross-- which commemorates the finding of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem by St. Helen in the 4th century. Theo did a Bible study on the gospel reading and Georgie learned the story of St. Helen and did some copy work for the portfolio. They also learned the tropar (special hymn of the day) for the feast.
Finally, we all got to do something we have never done before --go places with Mummy driving the the car!! I got my license just before Daddy started his new job on the first day of school and as a result we can now go places we never could before. Next week we have diabetes clinic and we DON'T have to skip schoolwork to take the bus to Abbotsford. And we can all go to the Apple Barn midweek without the crowds--which we are planning to do next Friday with other homeschool friends. It's a whole new world!
No comments:
Post a Comment