Busy mid-winter week
January is always usually a pretty productive month for homeschooling at our house. Co-op takes a break until the end of the month, the weather is usually too cold to go out much and no field trips are planned. It's a time for new units and consistent days, getting alot done, but there are also the days when we get very little done because it is cold, gray and dreary and no one feels much like getting out from under the blankets.
This week, except for Tuesday, was very busy. We had a family with five children over on Monday to do some fun group work and start our new Human Body unit. Four of the children are close to Dakota in age and they worked together around our table and the last little guy is Natalie's age and played nicely with her. Earlier that morning Dakota and I had gotten our regular work done only by sheer determination. There was alot in my planner and if we wanted to get all our work done and get a lunch break before our friends arrived, we knew we had to bust our bottoms, and we sure did. When we did start group time we learned about the brain, the nerves and the senses. The kids did an art project, did a brain mapping project, listened to a story and learned about the parts of the brain. They practiced balancing and they learned what good posture was and what part of the brain controlled it. We talked about the senses and drew some pictures and then played the guessing games with taste and smell. Magic School Bus: A Haunted House video about sound waves was the last activity of the day.
Tuesday we decided not to do much at all and we had done enough on Monday to share! Wednesday was another extremely busy day and then again Thursday not so much. We are having fun with figurative language and it's encompassing language arts, computer time and math. We have watched songs, plays and other videos and played computer games about similies, metaphors, synonyms and homynyms, as well as onomonopeia, assimilation and idioms. We also started reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and, while it's a tough read because of all the nonsense that goes on, Dakota seems to be enjoying it well enough.
Today is always a half day for us because we have swimming lessons a 1/2 hour drive from us. We did a scaled down version of our morning work, read a chapter of Alice, Dakota did his reading, we did a math lesson, learned about the ear in science and read chapter 9 in Story of the World. That's where we are currently. Then it will be time for swimming, a trip to Cici's for a pizza lunch, dropping Natalie off at her house and stopping at the library.
Tonight Dakota has a game at 6:10 and Brian has a game at 8:00. Not an opportune set up since Dakota will be finished by 7 and it will be too early to go to Brian's game, but we'll find something to take up our time, I'm sure. It's a cold one out there today so we'll be bundling up. It's the only thing I hate about basketball season....that long cold walk from the car to the gym where they play!
This week, except for Tuesday, was very busy. We had a family with five children over on Monday to do some fun group work and start our new Human Body unit. Four of the children are close to Dakota in age and they worked together around our table and the last little guy is Natalie's age and played nicely with her. Earlier that morning Dakota and I had gotten our regular work done only by sheer determination. There was alot in my planner and if we wanted to get all our work done and get a lunch break before our friends arrived, we knew we had to bust our bottoms, and we sure did. When we did start group time we learned about the brain, the nerves and the senses. The kids did an art project, did a brain mapping project, listened to a story and learned about the parts of the brain. They practiced balancing and they learned what good posture was and what part of the brain controlled it. We talked about the senses and drew some pictures and then played the guessing games with taste and smell. Magic School Bus: A Haunted House video about sound waves was the last activity of the day.
Tuesday we decided not to do much at all and we had done enough on Monday to share! Wednesday was another extremely busy day and then again Thursday not so much. We are having fun with figurative language and it's encompassing language arts, computer time and math. We have watched songs, plays and other videos and played computer games about similies, metaphors, synonyms and homynyms, as well as onomonopeia, assimilation and idioms. We also started reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and, while it's a tough read because of all the nonsense that goes on, Dakota seems to be enjoying it well enough.
Today is always a half day for us because we have swimming lessons a 1/2 hour drive from us. We did a scaled down version of our morning work, read a chapter of Alice, Dakota did his reading, we did a math lesson, learned about the ear in science and read chapter 9 in Story of the World. That's where we are currently. Then it will be time for swimming, a trip to Cici's for a pizza lunch, dropping Natalie off at her house and stopping at the library.
Tonight Dakota has a game at 6:10 and Brian has a game at 8:00. Not an opportune set up since Dakota will be finished by 7 and it will be too early to go to Brian's game, but we'll find something to take up our time, I'm sure. It's a cold one out there today so we'll be bundling up. It's the only thing I hate about basketball season....that long cold walk from the car to the gym where they play!
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