School last week went well, but as an introvert I'm already weary of the ramping up of the schedule that occurs as holiday prep, winter extracurriculars, and other seasonal activities all collide. And thank goodness for Matt, because only he could EVER navigate the Saturdays that have lately become all about driving kids to ballet, ice skating, Mandarin class, more ballet, some sort of cultural or science festival at the library or local museum, and, more often than not, a birthday party--or two!
It's a little silly, I know, because as a homeschooler I should be able to mediate our activities better than this, but I have always been bad about passing up opportunities for the children. Free robotics workshops all semester? You bet! A free series of girls-only podcasting workshops? We'll be there! Free foreign language classes? We'll put it on our calendar! A field trip to a baking powder factory combined with a cooking lesson? Definitely! An essay contest? Sure! A coloring contest? Well, why not?!? Spelling bee? Let's start studying! A Revolutionary War class on a Minecraft server? Why, the kids love Minecraft!
Anyway, I am seriously digressing during this precious peaceful time when both of my children are contentedly working on their math. Instead, let me tell you about THIS week! Memory work includes cursive, spelling, and Mandarin, and Books of the Day consist of non-fiction books about Native American peoples, a couple of Calvin Coconut books for Syd, and some living picture books on totally random topics. In addition to that, Will has a Minecraft class on the Revolutionary War that began this week. For now, I'm having her work on it during her screen time, so that I can evaluate how much time she's going to spend on it. Next week, I may reserve time for it in our weekly schedule.
And here's the rest of our week!
MONDAY: We took a field trip to the Clabber Girl Museum and Bake Shop on this day. Syd acted out for quite a bit of the time (she didn't think that the museum was going to be kid-friendly... until she discovered that half the museum is a pretend play area. SIGH!!!), but both kids thoroughly enjoyed both the pretzel-making class--
--and the scavenger hunt that was part of our field trip experience:
I was pleasantly surprised that the grocery store that was set up for pretend play was a World War 2-era grocery. Bonus enrichment for our history study!
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| These are ration point-friendly recipes that the company sent out during the war. Will is going to try this one! |
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| As part of their scavenger hunt, the children were asked to create a meal from this store with a total cost of less than $1. All of the children's meals pretty much consisted of doughnuts and sausage. |
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| A pretend play saloon! This cracked me up. |
TUESDAY: We're still in the same Math Mammoth units--multi-digit multiplication for Syd and fractions for Will. Will, in particular, seems so comfortable with fractions that I'm thinking of encouraging her to do double assignments next week so that she can advance more quickly. Perhaps we'll have Double Math Week instead of Free Week!
There's a local coloring contest whose winner gets to throw the switch to turn on the downtown Christmas lights in Indianapolis, and so I'm having the children enter that contest today, just for fun. Our homeschool group's play group and the children's robotics class will round out our day nicely!
WEDNESDAY: Both children have been showing the need for a little more multiplication drilling, and that's what these color-by-number worksheets are in disguise. Mwa-ha-ha!
You know we love our essay contests, so for the rest of this week the children will be working on yet another one, this one a personal essay about their volunteer work. Good thing that they regularly do some!
I've been thinking about what science unit we might want to tackle next, and chemistry is always a popular choice. I want to make a DIY chemistry set that will encourage open exploration of substances, as well as provide guided experiments, and I'm hoping that the children will enjoy helping me do some of the research for this project. If nothing else, I bet that looking up ideas for chemistry experiments is going to inspire a lot of chemistry experiments on this day!
THURSDAY: Although I've got a couple more projects in mind for our World War 2 study, we're almost finished with the bulk of it--in fact, this day's study of the atomic bomb and the next day's review of the geography of the war will just about finish us up! Perhaps Will will make us fried meat patties as a Victory Day treat.
FRIDAY: We've done a lot of war-related mapwork, but not much that's really let the children look at the entire theater of war as a whole. I know they both enjoy pin flag maps, and I think that they'll enjoy doing this one that's focused on important places from World War 2.
SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ballet, ice skating, a science fest, Mandarin, more ballet, and a slumber party for Syd. I swear, next week we WILL stay home more!
I mean, probably we will...
That recipe looks yummy! I just read that WWII helped identify a "treatment" for kids with gluten intolerance/celiac disease. Before the war, there were a lot of sick kids and no explanation for why they were sick, but once the war and the rationing kicked off, the kids started getting better, but got worse once the war/rationing ended. I found that fascinating.
ReplyDeleteWe have tossed most everything aside this month except the writing. So far, Emma has written just over 7,000 words. She hand writes her novel in a notebook and I type it up for her each day. It's pretty awesome to watch her novel unfold. She will take a break from her novel in December (and probably do double math the entire month), then starting in January, she will begin the revisions. Her dad has agreed to help with the revisions, as he has a MUCH better understanding of all that.
We have a game called Secret Code 13+4 that we use as a math enrichment sometimes. Once Emma started working with multiplication and division, she needed to use those functions instead of addition and subtraction. It's a quick and fun game. http://www.habausa.com/secret-code-13-4.html
On a side note, as I was looking up the website for the game, I found that the CIA website has a kids zone. https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/games/break-the-code
I can't wait to read Emma's novel! I think we'll be doing double math at least for next week, but then we'll likely take the entire next week off.
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