Category Archives: Homeschool

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

Homeschool

To share or not to share?

8 Comments

Here’s an equation I’ve been puzzling over lately:

3x(2y)+h=s

wherein:
x = the numbers of bedrooms in our house
y = the number of children in our family
h = homeschooling
s = where, precisely, is the homeschooling going to take place?

We’ve been doing our schoolwork at the kitchen table and on the couch. It’s worked out fine, but I’d like to get all of the stuff into one place. I’ve been thinking about putting the kids’ beds in one bedroom and turning the other room into a playroom/schoolroom space. Because we have a boy and a girl, it wouldn’t be a long-term solution. But right now they’re nearly-5 and nearing-3, and I think they’d be fine with limited privacy for a few years, at least.

What do you think?

Homeschool

Ars poetica

4 Comments

We’re reading “The Glorious Flight” this week for school, and it has contains some really lovely descriptive phrases. So yesterday, P and I talked about descriptive writing. I did give her a little guidance as to how to put the descriptions together to create poems, but the phrases themselves are hers.

Grape Juice
Green.
Cold and sour, too.
Spills on the table
waiting to mop.

Milk
Cold and sweet.
The color white.
Good with peanut butter waffles.

The Red Marker
The color of bags,
aprons, cherries,
apples and Mickey Mouse’s buttony shirt.
It’s kind of funny.
You draw with the marker.
When you put it on paper
and zig-zag with it,
it makes a picture.

Papa’s Motorcycle
Brrrm brrrrrmmmmm
Loud.
And I need earplugs like
my ear fingers.
A big black seat for Papa.
And two bars for my Papa.
It’s fast and big.

Homeschool

My artsy preschooler thanks you, government

2 Comments

"The People Who Are Always Stuck in Mud." From P's rose period.We’re using Mary Ann Kohl’s “Discovering Great Artists” this year. The book features a little bit of information about each featured artist, along with an art project in his or her style. It’s a really nice resource — so far we’ve done a collage in the style of Hans Arp, a Ghiberti-influenced relief and a some “one-color” paintings a la Picasso — but it doesn’t have terrific illustrations of the actual art.

I’ve been trying to find an inexpensive source for that, so I was just thrilled to discover that the National Gallery of Art has an awesome education department. They’ve put together downloadable teaching kits, and they also have a mail-order loan program for DVDs, CD-ROMs and the like. I used their Picasso kit last week, and the quality of the art and instructional materials was wonderful. Next week, we’re going to be talking about Degas and how to portray motion — and the National Gallery has materials about that very thing! Way to go, National Gallery!

Do you know of any other free art resources? I’d love to hear about them.

The painting is from Poppy’s “rose period.” It’s called “The People Who Are Always Stuck in Mud.” Creepy, yes?