Our schedule is filling up. We have lessons, and events to go to. A full curriculum to cover and new this year, Tuesdays with friends. I have met some cool Moms with great kids and this year I am offering them a day off. The girls have made some great friends, unfortunately they all live about 45 minutes away , so getting together is a challenge. Meeting other homeschoolers in our area who are not teaching science according to the bible, has proven difficult. So even though I hate to say, it is so cliché socialization has been an issue.So as incentive for my intelligent great friends to drive clear to my house, I have offered a day. Drop your kids here for school and take the day. I get to teach, the girls have friends over, Moms can have the day, everyone wins.
Our day begins with breakfast, a warm up activity of some kid, and math. Math is our challenge subject. I want to get right to it while everyone is fresh and ready to work, and before life can interrupt the day, which can often happen in our homeschooling life. This is also the subject that never gets done when the girls are left to independent, interest lead work. So we do math first, just us and then we'll open our classroom to friends for Science, Language Arts and Social Studies.
For each subject we have a video or website online, an activity we do together, an activity they do alone, and reading, so four things to complete.
Sample Week:
Science- The morning will look something like this..
We will look at the chem4kids.com website and read the section on atoms. My oldest and I both have laptops so I think gathering around two should be sufficient for everyone to see. Next I have a coloring page of the element- this is from this cool scientist woman who sells her How to Teach Science. We will be looking at that day, some additional handout and worksheets, and books on elements and the periodic table. Then they will build molecules, following a chart using gum drop is and tooth picks. Kids will create and keep a notebook following the scientific method of learning.
Social Studies: This is still a work in progress. One thing we will doing for sure is looking at our own heritage. I have been researching ours, even did the DNA test and have become kind of obsessed with the whole thing. So I will be teaching the girls what I know about our history. As a group they will learn about the parts of the world their ancestors came from. (We kind of did this before with a Geography club. It was a fun meeting but I unexpectedly started a job right when it was getting going and the whole thing kind of fell apart. ) Kids will pick a country to study where their ancestors are from. We will locate it on the globe, take a look at it on Google earth, and do some hands on activities that with resources. In the past we have made lapbooks, built a 3 -d Eiffel tower puzzle, made lefses, and painted pictures. Exactly where this goes depends on the choices the kids make.
Map work, reading, locating latitude/longitude, map symbols, that kind of thing.
Presidents-flipbooks, reference books, websites, and worksheets. I have a lot of stuff for this.Language Arts
Writing practice. I found some great , odd picture writing prompts on Pintrest. That could be hilarious with a table full of kids. We will also be working on the mechanics of writing, parts of speech, grammar, sentence and paragraph structure. Eventually research paper later in the year
Idioms, similes, metaphors. We will also be reading A Series of Unfortunate Events.
After all that the kids will have lunch and just play. If its nice we can walk to the park. Lots to do around here.
I'll be right here, with my feet up. Should be fun. :)
