Category Archives: Homeschool

Learning at home with a second-grader and a fifth-grader.

Homeschool

This week in homeschooling: Bears, burgers and ballet

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Twelve little bears in two straight lines

Reading

“Anne of Green Gables” got slightly more interesting this week, what with Anne Scandalously Putting Flowers on Her Hat and the Amethyst Brooch Mystery. I’m still not enjoying it all that much, but the kids are into now so onward we go.

Poppy finished Alexander McCall Smith’s “The Great Cake Mystery,” an “Arthur” book and Ursula Le Guin’s “Catwings” and “Catwings Return” this week. She said she liked “Cake” because the protagonist “figured out the whole thing all by herself.” Girl power! She was flying through her solo-reading books so quickly that I was worried she wasn’t actually reading them, so she’s started writing short book reports when she finishes. You can read her thoughts on “Catwings” and “Arthur and the Cootie-Catcher” on her blog.

Pete’s “Five in a Row” book this week was “Madeline.” I didn’t think he’d like it all that much, since it’s all about little girls. I’m happy to say I was wrong, though. He loved it!

Math

Pete has been concentrating on learning the days of the week and the months of the year this week. We also spent some time grouping little plastic bears as part of our “Madeline” story. We lined 12 bears up “in two straight lines,” and then he explored different ways to group them. And after that the bears had some sort of bear battle, because that’s the sort of guy Pete is.

My friend Laura asked on the Butterscotch Sundae facebook page whether I had any advice for helping her little guy learn the months of the year. I didn’t have any special tricks or tips, but Angela pointed us to this song on YouTube:

Thanks for sharing that, Angela! The same people also made a Days of the Week song. It looks like a channel worth exploring.

Poppy started working on time and clocks yesterday. She already has a pretty firm grasp on telling time, but still enjoyed playing with the clock.

History

The Roman Empire is coming to a close this week, and the Barbarians are closing in. We were supposed to have a Celtic feast last night for dinner, but we were out too late looking at cars so we ended up going to Cook Out instead. Poppy decided it would work as our feast since we were eating with our hands, just like I’d told her we’d do. I have a hunch that the Celts didn’t eat all that many cheeseburgers, though.

Extra credit

  • Poppy’s ballet classes resumed this week. She’s moved up a level this year, which means she gets to wear a burgundy leotard instead of a light blue one. The burgundy girls have a bigger role in “The Nutcracker,” but they also have to do a weekly rehearsal for it. The rehearsal day is the same day as her ballet class; we have yet to decide whether she’s going to do it. An hour and a half seems like a lot of ballet in one day for a 7-year-old.
  • Poppy memorized “Toasting Marshmallows” this week. It’s a cute little poem, and Poppy really likes the quick-moving part at the end. Pete’s poem this week was “The Cat of Cats.” He can hardly get through it without laughing. Cats are grade A humor to the 4-year-old set, I guess.
Homeschool

Road scholars

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Homeschooling in a hotel

Rockford travels quite a bit for work, and one of the wonderful things about homeschooling is that we can go along with him without worrying about the school schedule. I try to join him for a trip at least once a year — this year it was to Chicago, and I had undiagnosed bronchitis which made it not entirely the best trip ever — and we sometimes all go along when he has to go somewhere within driving distance.

This week was Poppy’s seventh birthday, and Rockford had to go to Orlando. It’s a destination the kids have wanted to visit for as long as they’ve been cognizant of the Disney marketing machine. So we packed up our studies and headed for Florida.

(In August. I know. I know.)

I didn’t want to bring all of our stuff along, so we had a modified work schedule. We spent our mornings swimming in the hotel pool — physical education! — and floating on its lazy river — recreational therapy! — then came back to the room for lunch, schoolwork and a rest before going back to the pool.

It was a really, really nice week.

Reading

We’re plodding forth with “Anne of Green Gables,” and Poppy is getting a little more enthusiastic about the book. On the solo reading front, she read “The Knight at Dawn” by Mary Pope Osbourne and started “The Great Cake Mystery” by Alexander McCall Smith, which features the protagonist of the “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series as a child.

Pete is making progress in the BOB books. I think he’s trying to memorized the book we’re currently working on, though, so I need to find a way around that. I’ll make flash cards of the words next week to test him.

Math

Making animalsI brought Teaching Textbooks 3 along, but Poppy didn’t do a single lesson of it. She and Pete did, however, get through all of the McRuffy lessons I’d planned for them. Pete has been primarily working on tracing his numbers. His manual dexterity is still a little shaky, so he’s needed a lot of help with it. He doesn’t have any trouble at all with the work itself, though. This week he worked on the concept of Less Than, and he did a little bit of work with shapes. The McRuffy manipulatives kit includes a batch of colorful little shapes, and Pete loves using them to create robots.

History

I didn’t want to bring along everything we’d need to do Story of the World this week, so we took a break from world history. I did bring along “The History of US,” but we only read one chapter. It was primarily about James Madison, who was all of 36 years old in 1787 when he went to Philadelphia to help change the world entirely. It always surprised me how young these guys were.

Today we’re at Disney World, where we’ll definitely be visiting The Hall of Presidents to say hello to ol’ Jemmy.

Misc.

  • Poppy worked on memorizing Robert Frost’s “Fireflies in the Garden” this week, while Pete did “There Was a Little Girl” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They like to append “and her name was Poppy” to the end of “There Was a Little Girl,” and I won’t tell you that it doesn’t drive me a little bit nuts. Because it does.
  • I’m starting to think I should’ve started Poppy on a higher level of SpellWell. It isn’t challenging her at all. On the other hand, maybe this will give her some extra confidence in the spelling department.

Extra credit

One of my friends revealed on Facebook recently that he was in the process of planning his 43rd trip to Disney World. That’s a lot of Mouse. This is my second visit (the first was when I was 10 or so); Rockford’s second (he was 2 or 3 the first time); and the kids’ first. How many times have you been to Disney World?

Homeschool

Wading into ‘Green Gables’ and other homeschool pursuits

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Catherine M. Rooney, 6th grade teacher instructs her alert pupils on the way and how of War Ration Book Two
This is pretty much what our days look like.

We’re finishing up our second week of school today, and so far it’s going swimmingly. Poppy has been eager to get to work every day. Pete has been a little difficult this week; I think he’s entering a Whiney Stage of Development. He settles down and actually enjoys himself once he finally succumbs to the learning process.

Would you like to know a little more about what we’ve been doing this week? Allons-y!

Reading

Our first read-aloud of the year is “Anne of Green Gables,” because that’s what I picked up on my last mad rush through the library. I’ve tried to read it before on my own without much luck. I just have a hard time getting into the story. Pete has been paying very little attention to it. He wanders through the room while we’re reading, but that’s about it. I don’t think it’s Poppy’s favorite book ever, but she enjoys the cuddle-on-the-couch time anyway.

We’re going to be studying the Middle Ages in history this year, so after we finish “Anne” I’m going to try to choose read-aloud books that are at least tangentially connected to that. Here are a few I’m considering:

  • “Igraine the Brave,” by Cornelia Funke
  • “The Squire’s Tale,” by Gerald Morris
  • “The Adventure’s of Sir Gawain the True, by Gerald Morris
  • “Favorite Medieval Tales,” Mary Pope Osborne.

    • Poppy’s daily schedule this year includes 30 minutes of free reading. This week she read a lot of books from my old “Sesame Street” collection as well as a new “My Little Pony” book from Grandma.

    Teaching Pete to read is one of my primary goals this year. We’re using the BOB books, and he read the first one on the first day of school with hardly any help at all.

    “How’d you know all those words?” I asked him.

    “Oh,” he said. “I’ve just been learning.”

    I’m hoping he magically absorbs Calculus the same way in a few years. Speaking of which …
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