Although I'd like to do year round school it has never really worked out, I usually lose motivation by the beginning of July. I have a feeling it will be that way this year, too. And then we have our road trip and move in August. Hawaii has year round school. I am curious whether having the public schooled kids in school all year will encourage us to to the same. I am also wondering about staying motivated when the weather is summer-like all year round. I used to be opposed to year round school because I think kids should have time to run around and play outdoors when the weather is nice. But if the weather is nice all year round... Also, will I feel the same motivation to hunker down and do school in the Fall and winter when the weather is not cooling off???
Here are the things left on my list that I wanted to accomplish this year.
finish SOTW2 - ha, ha, ha, ha!!! We are halfway through. I can't believe that we have been working on this level for 2 years now I we are still not done. I am actually OK with it. We have been learning about other things and we stop by history every now and then. and the kids like history, so that is what is important.
finish poetry curriculum - maybe, we'll see.
enjoy some math and grammar readers - almost done. We read a bunch last week and will finish the rest on Monday.
start learning about the 50 states - spending time learning about all 50 states was my goal for this year, but I think it will be an ongoing process. I just really want to learn a little bit about each state that we will travel through on our road trip this summer.
preparedness unit - I got some preparedness activity books at a fair I went to and thought it might be good to learn a bit about things we can do to be prepared in an emergency. I may do this, just spend one day on it, but I also may postpone this until next year when we can learn about preparedness issues specific to Hawaii.
electricity unit - this was left over from last year... I don't know if we will get to it again. I recently bought Real Science 4 Kids and plan to do Biology next year, then Chemistry, and then Physics. So we won't get to electricity for several years. And I have an electricity kit that I bought last year that gives me a guilt trip every time I see it in the cabinet. We'll see, I may get to it and I may not.
I actually feel pretty good about where we are academically. The girls are plugging along with their skills, math, writing, spelling, reading; thanks to our wonderful new schedule. Arwen is improving with her reading. We still have a ways to go before she will be reading independently, but I see progress and spurts of understanding. And everything else is the fun stuff. We learn about history, science, music, art, etc. Sometimes I make a plan and we carry it out and sometimes we just learn things in our regular life. We don't learn everything every year. We have until they are 18 to impart knowledge to them. And really what I want is to give them a love of learning, so that they know that they can learn anything they want to if they put their mind to it.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
March
First I was going to update this blog daily, then weekly and now it's monthly...
Is is just me or does it seem like it is almost the end of the school year when March rolls around? We took at trip to visit my family in Ohio in the middle of the month , so that kind of threw us off schedule and even though the weather hasn't really warmed up, I feel a bit of spring fever starting. Along with this, I am feeling (self imposed) pressure to get everything from this school year's list of goals done.
During the first week of March I didn't want to start anything new because of our trip to Ohio the following week, so we read some random books. This may have been the week we read about John James Audubon. I had been wanting to read The Boy who Drew birds for a while and I found it and another picture book biography at the library. We have also been continuing to work on a poetry curriculum that I am beta testing.
The second week we were in Ohio. The third week we got back on Monday evening and I had intentions of getting right back into school mode, but it didn't happen. "the best laid plans..."
On Monday of the fourth week we finally got around to the puberty/reproduction lesson that I had been planning to for a while. I had been waiting for a book from the library, but when I finally got it I decided not to use it. I ended up using Usborne's "What's Happening to Me?" girl's book. We had a lovely discussion using the book as a guide and we even went into the bathroom and checked out my tampons and pads just for fun. This lesson was mostly for my 10 year old, but the 8 year old participated, too. The 6 year old didn't seem to be paying much attention.
I can't remember what we did the rest of the week. We may have worked more on the Poetry curriculum. I didn't start it until January and we intending to use it as a unit study even though it was designed to be used a few times a week for the whole school year, but it didn't really work out. We are about halfway through the 72 lessons.
We have continued with the daily schedule. Reading, writing/copywork, math, instruments, typing, and spelling. This month the local water park had a reading incentive program. If the kids read 500 mintues in the month of March, they got a free day pass. The older 2 girls were especially motivated and I was impressed when I found out that they both read around 900 minutes in March.
We also had choir on Thursdays and that will continue until the beginning of June. Our middle ages group met and we focuses on Russia. We ate borsch, learned a Russian dance, made painted eggs, and looked at items for Russia.
Is is just me or does it seem like it is almost the end of the school year when March rolls around? We took at trip to visit my family in Ohio in the middle of the month , so that kind of threw us off schedule and even though the weather hasn't really warmed up, I feel a bit of spring fever starting. Along with this, I am feeling (self imposed) pressure to get everything from this school year's list of goals done.
During the first week of March I didn't want to start anything new because of our trip to Ohio the following week, so we read some random books. This may have been the week we read about John James Audubon. I had been wanting to read The Boy who Drew birds for a while and I found it and another picture book biography at the library. We have also been continuing to work on a poetry curriculum that I am beta testing.
The second week we were in Ohio. The third week we got back on Monday evening and I had intentions of getting right back into school mode, but it didn't happen. "the best laid plans..."
On Monday of the fourth week we finally got around to the puberty/reproduction lesson that I had been planning to for a while. I had been waiting for a book from the library, but when I finally got it I decided not to use it. I ended up using Usborne's "What's Happening to Me?" girl's book. We had a lovely discussion using the book as a guide and we even went into the bathroom and checked out my tampons and pads just for fun. This lesson was mostly for my 10 year old, but the 8 year old participated, too. The 6 year old didn't seem to be paying much attention.
I can't remember what we did the rest of the week. We may have worked more on the Poetry curriculum. I didn't start it until January and we intending to use it as a unit study even though it was designed to be used a few times a week for the whole school year, but it didn't really work out. We are about halfway through the 72 lessons.
We have continued with the daily schedule. Reading, writing/copywork, math, instruments, typing, and spelling. This month the local water park had a reading incentive program. If the kids read 500 mintues in the month of March, they got a free day pass. The older 2 girls were especially motivated and I was impressed when I found out that they both read around 900 minutes in March.
We also had choir on Thursdays and that will continue until the beginning of June. Our middle ages group met and we focuses on Russia. We ate borsch, learned a Russian dance, made painted eggs, and looked at items for Russia.
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