So, homeschooling in the Walls household has been a little more free form than usual this week. Our school week goes from Tuesday through Saturday because we like to take Mondays as a sabbath. (Sundays tend to be long and busy, so we don’t usually get much rest then.) I had intended to get everyone, myself included, on an earlier bedtime routine, but, circumstances I didn’t plan for sabotaged my efforts. But here are some things we did accomplish.
~We went for two nature walks. On one of them, the girls collected leaves, pine cones, and other plant specimens. They will draw pictures of what they found in their observation notebooks. They also draw pictures of their observations in their observation notebooks. Eventually, they will be writing in these as well.
~We made ice castles and snow men--indoors. We lugged snow in and made them on old cookie sheets at the kitchen table. Very, very FUN!
~We practiced Spanish. We went over greetings, introductions, and basic vocabulary--counting, colors, weather, etc. I spoke to them almost entirely in Spanish during one of our nature walks. It worked out really well. I think that will make a good, consistent, opportunity for Spanish practice.
~We read five chapters of The Magician’s Nephew from The Chronicles of Narnia. We also read from Aesop’s fables.
~They each did a page in their math workbooks, and another day we did addition word problems, and counting by 5’s, 10’s, and 100’s.
~We only managed to get copy work in one day. Although, I do still have tomorrow. Still, I would prefer we do copy work every day.
~They both did a little bit of reading in their easy readers.
~I try to have them narrate, or at least discuss after each reading, but I need to get into the habit of having them narrate separately. That is still a work in progress.
~We also have a trip to the Missouri Botanical Gardens planned for tomorrow, which will add a third nature walk to our week.
Now that I have all that written down, it doesn’t look as horrifying as it felt in my head! I would, however, like to add piano practice, more copy work and narration, and phonics to next week. We will see how we do. It is comforting to see our efforts “on paper,” so to speak. It looks like we actually did something!
