Tag Archives: homeschooling

This week in homeschooling: Shakespeare, spelling and civics

10/21/2016 Nichole 1 Comment

Every week we get to Friday and I think “We didn’t get a thing done this week!” And then I start to write this and realize that we did, in fact, get quite a bit done. Next week, however, we actually won’t get a thing done because we’ll be on Fall Break. We are all looking forward to it.

Here’s a bit of what we did this week:

Reading

We are still listening to “Little Women,” even though the kids told me they already know about “the big twist” because their cousin listens to “Little Women” constantly. I was not aware of that before I picked the book. But it’s a good book, so I stand by my decision.

Much to my chagrin, I realized today that Poppy hasn’t been reading much of anything lately. We’ll need to do something about that. Pete has been reading the “Warriors” series and a biography of Hillary Clinton that he picked out at the bookstore a few weeks ago. He really enjoys the “Who Is” biographies, if any of you are looking for something to give him for his upcoming birthday.

Language Arts

Poppy finished one level of WordlyWise 3000 this week and — once we figured out how to activate it — moved on to the next one. Pete is also continuing his WordlyWise studies. He’s also been working with a spelling tutor for the last few months. It seems to be going well, but I haven’t tested him or anything. Poppy’s work in her writing class tells me we need to start a formal spelling program with her again, too. I’m looking at Spelling Power, but I haven’t made a final decision on what we’ll use.

Math

Rockford has been working with Poppy on her math in the evenings, and I think both the change in timing and personnel has been good for her. Pete continues to sail through his math book with just a little bit of help.

History

“Story of the World: Volume 4” seems to be a great leap in content and effort from Volume 3, and we were getting a little overwhelmed with it. So we’re slowing down a bit and taking two weeks for each chapter. Last week we talked about the Canadian rebellions in 1837, and this week we started learning about post-revolution France. We’ll revisit France after our fall break.

Extracurricular

Poppy saw a performance of “Twelfth Night” this week, both kids had their usual music lessons and Pete went to chess class while I had coffee with a friend. We also had a brief Civics lesson, in the form of standing in line for an hour to vote. There wasn’t much time spent at tae kwon do this week — due to “Twelfth Night,” doctors appointments, haircuts and soreness from new braces — and Poppy only had two days of soccer practice this week rather than the customary three.

How was your week?

Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!

Homeschool

Pete learns to Stonewall, and Poppy dissects a paragraph

09/09/2016 Nichole 2 Comments

Every semester there’s a week when I say “What have I done? We are so over-scheduled.” Welcome to that week. All but one of our not-at-home homeschooling activities has started, and it’s going to take me a week or two to figure out how to juggle our at-home work with the kids’ outsourced classes, sports and other activities.

Here’s a bit of what we did get done this week:

Language Arts

We’re in the final third of “The Secret Garden,” Poppy is reading “Where the Red Fern Grows” for her literature study and Pete is reading both “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” and “The Last Dragon Charmer #2: The Quest Maker.” (Also: I am reading “John Quincy Adams: American Visionary” by Fred Kaplan, and Rockford is reading Stephen King’s “It.”)

For a kid who’s never really had homework before (or who has only had homework, if you want to look at it that way), Poppy has quite a bit of homework this weekend for her writing class. She’s working on finding the key ideas in a paragraph and then rewriting said paragraph in her own words.

Pete’s adventures in spelling have been pretty well documented here. He’s working with a spelling tutor this year. They just started, but he’s having fun with it so far. I am ever hopeful that this will be the key for him.

Math

Poppy is taking a math test this very moment. She’s been drawing angry faces at the end of every long division problem for the past two weeks, if that gives you an indication of how well she and math are getting along.

Science

This week Pete learned about the sun, did some review and wrapped things up with a science test and a project. The test didn’t go so well — there was a lot of vocabulary matching, and the difference between a meteoroid, a meteorite, a comet and an asteroid tripped him up a bit — but the project was interesting. We made a pinhole viewer out of cardboard, tape and aluminum foil, then we used it to calculate the diameter of the sun. We were around 63,000 miles off in our calculations, though. Perhaps our measurements weren’t entirely accurate.

Poppy’s Earth Science class has been studying minerals for the past couple of weeks. She’s had a little bit of homework every week, and she’s done a good job getting it done without having to rush to do it right before class.

History

The kids listened to their “Story of the World” chapter at the beginning of the week, and then we didn’t do history for the rest of the week. We’ll be revisiting this week’s chapter next week.

Extracurricular

Poppy is taking a lot of extra tae kwon do classes in an effort to be able to test for her red-black belt next month. She also has soccer practice three times a week, and she has two games this weekend.

Pete started a beginner chess class this week, and he loved it. The instructor is a Life Master, and he is very enthusiastic and engaging. Pete has been practicing The Stonewall Attack every day.

Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!

Homeschool

When your homeschooling isn’t so much at home

08/26/2016 Nichole

Most homeschooling families I know eventually reach a point when a majority of their homeschooling isn’t actually taking place in their homes because they’re involved in multiple co-ops or super-active in extracurriculars or doing Classical Conversations or taking dual-enrollment courses at local colleges. We aren’t quite there yet, but this week featured multiple appointments, a couple short-term classes for Poppy, soccer practices and a lot of tae kwon do. It definitely felt like we were away from home more than we were there this week.

Even with all the busyness, we were able to get all of our schoolwork done this week. I give the kids a lot of credit for that. They were up and ready to work every day. (Well, except for today. Poppy was pretty wiped out after two soccer practices and five tae kwon do classes over four days, so she decided to take the day off.)

Reading

Our current read-aloud is “The Secret Garden,” which Pete is enjoying despite his early reservations about it. Poppy started reading “Where the Red Fern Grows” for her literature study this week, and I’m reading it along with her. For his assigned reading, I gave Pete a book I’d picked up for Poppy that she never read. Laurie McKay’s “Villain Keeper” is the first book in a trio called “The Last Dragon Charmer,” and Pete asked me to order book two for him before he’d finished it.

Memorization

The kids are working on memorizing all the counties in our state this year. They finished the first 10 this week.

Math

In an odd turn of events, Poppy did her math without complaint this week while Pete was… less than eager to tackle his work.

Science

This week Pete and I learned about the planets in our solar system. Much time was spent mourning poor Pluto. Today we put together a “planetary bracelet” using string and beads to illustrate the distance between the planets. Marsha T. Cat attacked the solar system while we were stringing it together, and now it’s hanging above the windows in the living room where she can’t get to it.

History

Our “Story of the World” chapter this week discussed Matthew Perry’s negotiations with Japan and also the Crimean War. Volume Four of SOTW asks the students to make an outline of each chapter. It’s been a bit of a struggle to get Pete to do that, so we’ve walked through it together thus far. The mapping sections are also considerably more challenging than they were in Volume Three.

The activity we chose this week was to create a five-day “Medical Record” of a family member, because Florence Nightingale pioneered the use of medical records during the Crimean War. We did not manage to keep it up for five days.

Extracurricular

I believe I mentioned that Poppy went to so many tae kwon do classes? She’s aiming to test for her red-black belt in October, so we should have many more such weeks in our future. She also had her first soccer game of the year this evening. Her team won 2-1! It was an auspicious start to the season.

Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!