Sick day

No home-school today.

C was not feeling good. He didn't eat breakfast or lunch, which is not like him. He even put himself back to bed and slept for an hour. Said his tummy hurt. (sad face) Since C is the one I am really doing home-school for, and he is already past Kindergarten levels of competency, and we are in the summer months anyway, I am not worried about missing a day.

We just read some books and took it easy.

Day Something... Don't remember

Maybe it is because I felt awful last week, had no energy, and was generally no good at anything (read the previous 2 posts)... but I have been thinking about home-schooling, and think that a paradigm shift is in order.

First off, I am going to be taking fewer pictures, since we are going to be doing more long-form things. Second, the kids really don't like formal instruction. They felt bad last week too, and all they could do was whine and beg for video games and TV. It got to a point that I was going crazy from denying them constantly.

I am not going to give in and let them veg out, but maybe there is a way they can engage better with their learning. I think I have been trying to make us stick too hard to a plan and a schedule. So the new plan is to not really have a plan. I am going to insist that we cover all of the Hour of Power subjects every day (maybe not all at once), go outside everyday, and from there we will just wing it. There are opportunities every day that I can incorporate the things I want them to learn, I just need to wait until they are excited about something, and then shift it into a learning opportunity.

It was beautiful outside this morning, so we went straight outside first thing. It was cool, but they wanted hats, so they wore hats.

C found a Rolly-Polly outside. It was one of the biggest Rolly-Pollys I had ever seen! He carried it around for over 30 minutes.

D wanted to wear her wings, sunglasses, headband, and hat. Ok, why not?

Here she is looking super cool. C is in the background making a Rolly-Polly playground.

Seizing opportunity, I decided to invite the Rolly-Polly inside for home-school.

I spent a little birthday/graduation money on a Kindle Fire HD 7" tablet. Amazon has an app called FreeTime where you can subscribe to kid content, build each child a profile, and then they have a safe area with unlimited age appropriate content. This is a great deal, because there are tons of interactive books for free, tons of educational games for free, and tons of kid shows for free. Well, you have to pay a subscription price, so I guess it's not free, but you don't have to pay $1 for each little thing. Plus you can restrict their game time, video time, and book time separately to make sure that they are nudged towards educational content, not just angry birds.

Anyway, here (above) they are watching an interactive book that teaches about insects. See? C found a Rolly-Polly, now let's learn about insects? The book is much more succinct than I could be about the subject, and they were much more interested than if I had told them at the white board.

Of course, that didn't stop me from pausing the book to teach them about the life cycle of cicadas, since we are in a cicada year. They were amazed that cicadas live underground for 17 years.

D was just having fun hanging out.

Not pictured: I had them do some writing and reading exercises, and then let them play a letter game on the kindle. Then we did our Spanish conversation and played a Spanish game on the kindle.

S got bored with home-school, and went off to play. C was into math time, so I let him play a math game (basically just a math problem, and you drag the answer over). He went through the hardest level of math, and the hardest level of subtraction just fine! He is really proud of his math abilities. I am too.

For Social Studies I quizzed them on our leaders and city, state, country. They are really getting it down.

C wants to start an art business selling his drawings for a dollar each so that he can save up money to buy souvenirs from the zoo gift shop the next time we go. I figured that was a good way for us to talk about the government and tax, so I bought a picture for 4 quarters. Then taxes took one of his quarters away.

Then I has S sit down, and got a couple of stuffed animals, and they each earned $2. I told them that a road needed to be built down the middle of the table so that we could go see the Rolly-Polly. The road costs $2.50 to build. Not one of them had the money for the road, but through taxes (75 cents each), the government took a little from each of them and got together $3. This way everyone gets a road, and each person only had to pay a little, not all of their money.

It was an ok example and they understood it, which was all I was going for.

Lunch time, rest time, and free time. They had a big snack only an hour ago, so they had a smallish lunch. I let them do a couple of interactive books for lunch: Rikki Tikki Tavi  and Another Monster at the End of This Book. We went outside again. They cleaned up their room and the living room. Now they are watching the Electric Company, which -by the way- is a great show that is really engaging them and teaching them reading concepts.

The end.



Ok, here's what's up.

Long blogging and taking so many pictures is slugging out my phone and my brain. It takes about 30 minutes two times per day to put together a post. I work on it at rest time and after the day is over and they are watching Electric Company. I've got to scale back.

I think I'll take a few pictures, and put the blog together once at the end of the day. So there may be less in the near future. That is what I did today, and I like it better.

Puke Week Fun

So we were all pukey for a week, almost two. But we still had some fun anyway.

This is from the Friday that I missed a post. I was starting to feel bad, but it was Memorial Day weekend, so I was trying not to let it show. It was Montessori Day, so I let them do centers, run around, watch PBS Kids, and play learning computer games.

After Daniel Tiger we went to the library, so that there wouldn't be a rush. I saw on facebook that the summer reading program had begun. We had to go sign them up right away.

Here they are all somewhat excited about summer reading. If they read 8 books and visit the library four times then they get a medal and a coupon book for free tater tots, ice-cream, etc. If they read 20 books then they also get a bonus prize (I think it is a stuffed groundhog and an inflatable toy).

After the library we went outside for lunch.

They played for a while after eating. It was nice outside.

I read them All In A Day by Cynthia Rylant. It was pretty good. The art was nice.

Here they are all piled on top of the little slide.  That was mostly it for Friday. I was feeling pretty lousy, and so I let them play and learn (probably more playing than learning).

This is D at Memorial Day. This is about how last week went...

 

C was the first to get over the pukes, so he got to have some fun last week building things with toothpicks and marshmallows. The thing in his hand is a lump of palm sugar to represent the sun. I know we did other things last week too, but I wasn't in the mood to take pictures. The kids were not in the mood to have their pictures taken.

So we took last week off mostly. This week should be our off week, but I am having us go through this week and then next week will be our first week off. It really was rough last week, and I am not going to say that last week was any type of relaxing fun vacation time. It wasn't fun for anyone. Bad, bad week. 

So today is the beginning of our 3rd week, and is the last week in Unit 1. Next week will be our vacation week.