Fall Homeschooling

I am a fall kind of person and nothing is better than a crisp autumn day, a nice long walk in the morning and schooling out on the deck.  Today I planned just that kind of day for my little son, granddaughter and I. We had a slow start, but after getting ready and getting a late breakfast we still decided to start our day with a long walk through the park.  The sky was an incredible blue and the temperature was just right.  We were out about an hour and then came back in to put Natalie in to nap and start our schoolwork.  We sat at the table and did our daily prep work, spelling, language arts.  We hadn't gotten to science for a few days so we spent some time reading and talking about stars to get a good understanding before we head to the planetarium tomorrow for our first Homeschool Day class at the Maryland Science Center.  We made a constellation box and some constellation cards to go with it.  We did a demonstration of the earth going around the sun and talked about why we have the seasons and the light and dark each day.  We even found a cool app on my phone called SkyView that showed us the constellations that were above us as we pointed the phone to the sky.

We took a quick lunch break and watched a Magic School Bus video while we ate and then since Nat was awake, we all went out on the deck, taking our reading and math with us.  Dakota learned to do multiplication with carrying and then we started our third mystery, Horrible Harry and the Locked Closet.  I am so pleased that he is expanding his horizons a bit with reading.  Last year he would only listen to or read picture books or Magic Tree House books.  This year we are using September to explore mysteries and he has really enjoyed them.  I have tried to keep them fairly simple and tried to appeal to the things that interest him like baseball and, in the case of Horrible Harry, a boy close to his age who is amused by bathroom humor and likes things that are gross.

Tonight, after playing on the trampoline and playing some pick up football and basketball with the neighbors, Dakota got his bath, ate dinner and went into his room to "do his thing" and watch the Ravens game.  He came out several times showing me things he was doing and I was just really tickled when he came out and showed me his idea for a new book he wanted to write...a mystery :-)  He's putting it in "Dakota's Creation Book" and he you can see those wheels turning in his little head as he dreams up a story.  Although I felt unprepared because I hadn't time to plan all weekend and things weren't right at my fingertips, all in all I think we got alot in and had a pretty decent homeschool Monday.