Tag Archives: what do homeschoolers do all day

The mediocrity of magma and other homeschooling news

02/26/2016 Nichole 2 Comments

Science

We spent a fair amount of time this week making a volcano. We papier-mached, we researched the optimal ingredient ratios, we painted, and we waited and waited and waited for everything to dry so we could make our hand-crafted volcanic eruption.

And today, when we finally put everything together? It was a pretty pathetic eruption. Things went much better when we were just doing our research.

I’m sure that’s an appropriate metaphor for something along these lines:

And you know what? We did find the journey to our disappointing volcano quite enjoyable.

US Geography

We took a break from our Geography study this week, because I neglected to put the necessary library books on hold. We’ll be back at it next week with a study of Florida. Which means, of course, that we’ll be making key lime pie.

Reading

We’re making good and steady progress on “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” It’s much easier to do that when your primary reader (by which I mean: me) doesn’t have a cold. Pete has also been reading the first “Encyclopedia Brown” book and a biography of Rosa Parks, and Poppy just finished “A Snicker of Magic” for our book club. Her current literature study book is “The Westing Game.” She’s not crazy about it so far, but I suspect that’s because she knows it was one of my favorites when I was her age. I find it very frustrating that she’s so reluctant to consider the titles that I suggest she’d like, and I’m not sure what to do about it.

Math

Poppy finished her current math curriculum yesterday, and she’ll be starting the new one on Monday. Pete finished his old curriculum a few weeks ago and had been working on Teaching Textbooks 3 while he waited for the new level of McRuffy Math to arrive. It finally got here late last week, and he started it on Monday morning.

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

Homeschool

This week in homeschooling: A lot of tea and Vitamin C

01/29/2016 Nichole 1 Comment

Today we are celebrating our 100th day of school. I thought about doing an adorable 100th Day of School activity, but I’ve been sick all week and never quite summoned the motivation to find and prepare anything. So by “celebrating,” I mean we are saying “Happy 100th Day of School” and patting one another on the back.

US Geography

We started studying Mississippi this week, and we’ll continue it next week because we didn’t finish everything I’d planned to do. We did start making Matt Lewis’ Mississippi Mud Pie last night, but I need to get some cornstarch today so we can finish it.

Language Arts

Reading

We weren’t able to do much reading aloud this week, thanks to my cold, by Pete did read some of “The Jungle Book” to me and Poppy read a Steve Jobs biography. Two and a half times. She’s spent a good part of the week quizzing me on what Apple products we’ve owned.

Grammar

We’re continuing to work thought “The Giggly Guide to Grammar.” The kids get a kick out of the goofy sentences in the exercises, and it’s a good review of the material they learned in the Michael Clay Thompson books.

Math

Pete finished his second-grade math book yesterday, and that’s when I discovered that I’d only written down that I needed to buy a third-grade workbook. So he’ll be working on Teaching Textbooks until that arrives.

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

Homeschool

There’s no “snow day” in homeschooling

01/22/2016 Nichole 2 Comments

The non-homeschooled kids in our town had Monday of for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Tuesday was a teacher work day. They went to school on Wednesday, but they went back home by 10am because the side roads were icy. They went to school yesterday, and last night it snowed six inches so school’s canceled again today.

My homeschool kids, meanwhile, had school every day this week. This week was one of the few times they envied the public school kids’ schedules.

It wasn’t all protractors and sentence-diagramming this week, though. They finished school by 1pm every day this week and spent their afternoons as they wished, and they’ve already had a snowball fight and a mug of hot chocolate today.

US Geography

This week we studied Tennessee, and today we made Dollywood cinnamon bread. The recipe calls for an unbaked, frozen loaf of bread, and Rockford grabbed pre-baked mini-loaves when he braved the pre-snow-ravaged grocery store yesterday. The bread still came out delicious, though. We also read a biography of Davy Crockett over the course of the week, and we watched a short documentary called “For the Love of Music: The Story of Nashville.” I had hoped it would focus on Nashville’s history a bit more, but it wasn’t bad.

Language Arts

Reading

We finally finished “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” this week, and the kids started the movie almost as soon as I’d closed the book. They were not pleased with the differences between page and film. We started “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” yesterday, so we’ll be reading that for the foreseeable future.

Grammar

We’re reading and working through the exercises in “The Giggly Guide to Grammar” together. This week we talked about pronounces and action verbs.

Math

Poppy is doing a lot of work with fractions these days, and she’s also examining three-dimensional shapes. I wish the McRuffy manipulatives kit came with 3D models of the shapes, because I have a hard time visualizing all of the faces and edges. A hands-on model would be helpful. She’s doing pretty well with it, though.

UPDATE: I want to draw everyone’s attention to the brilliant comment my brilliant friend Rachel left.

It’s good to have smart friends.

END UPDATE

Pete has been doing division. He wasn’t having a problem with it until this week, when he got to dividing by 8. I think we need to do some work on his multiplication tables above 7.

Do your kids get days off for bad weather? What’s your favorite snow-day memory?

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