Weeks 2 and 3 Wrap Up

Talk to any homeschooler and you'll learn that the "home" part is often the hardest part of homeschooling to fit in. I think this is particularly the case when you live in the city where there are a million wonderful things to do and Dad travels a lot. In the last two weeks, we took a trip to Madison, Wisconsin, where we toured the capitol building, sparking an interest in state capitals, and Grandma showed up in town for a visit, leading to much (good) disruption.

We've had a lot of success working on the 3Rs. I'm working through the RightStart math series with John and Anna and I consistently do three to four lessons per child each week. I recently realized that John's math facts are shaky enough to slow him down, so I dusted off the math games book and found a few games that he, Anna, and I can play together to cement his addition facts and to help Anna begin learning hers. Our favorites are Math Grid Bingo and Fill-In-The-Grid. Math games at this age make so much sense to me for fact learning.

Additionally, the kid started tessalation projects with Dan Saturday morning after wondering about the hexagon tiles in our bathroom. Ideally we'd do a math exploration once a week, but often other tings take priority. It is great when an exploration comes naturally and ends up being  a lot of fun.

I am teaching spelling and handwriting using Spalding (Writing Road to Reading). I have a love-hate relationship with Spalding. It takes a good amount of time, but when I use it consistently, John spells like a natural speller and uses beautiful handwriting. When I back off it, he spells poorly and his handwriting gets sloppy. Finally, I realized that if something works very well for us, I need to just use it. I combine the kids for phonogram review and handwriting instruction but dictate the spelling notebooks separately.

We've been reading aloud some time everyday, but not as much as I have planned! The kids also read on their own and we've done narrations about every other day. John took a liking to a biography of George Washington Carver I bought at a used book sale, read it on his own, gave me an amazing narration, and then asked for it to be the evening read aloud. We're getting a lot of mileage from this book and discussion topics linked to it. (Civil war, slavery, Abraham Lincoln, inventions, soybeans...)

The kids developed an obsession with state capitals after our visit to Madison, WI. We've listened to the Animaniacs song on capitals twice each morning for the past few days and know a lot. John decided to make some flashcards, too, to solidify his knowledge. While walking to church this morning, the kids read off the names of states from car license plates and then told me the capitals, so I guess the information is sticking.

We've pressed a bunch of leaves and drawn the only tree in our backyard for science. We know how to identify a Gingko Biloba tree and know that pill bugs are crustaceans. (Who knew?) Bugs caught so far: earth worms, box elder bugs, pill bugs, spiders, and centipedes. All have been released besides one centipede.

At the State Supreme Court, Madison, WI

A homeschool book I read recently talked about starting your week by looking at an art print, narrating it, and then spending some time copying part of it. We've done that for the last two weeks with prints of Renoirs from the Art Institute. When we're done with all the Renoirs from AIC, we'll go visit them. Before this schedule change, we never got around to art.

That was our week!