I still don't feel quite ready for this because we're still not completely unpacked from our recent move from Michigan to Maryland. But it could take quite a while for me to get the learning room exactly the way I want it. I firmly believe that something is better than nothing (and the perfect is the enemy of the good!), so we started our formal schooling on Tuesday.
We had been doing basic lessons throughout the summer, just about 30 minutes or so of handwriting, math games and drills, and drawing. Just enough so that we wouldn't have to spend time backtracking this year (like we did last year!). Plus it really helped them stay in the habit of getting lessons out of the way early in the day. I didn't even have to nag (just told them no Wii until morning routine, chores, and lessons were done - and some days they were done before 8:30 am!).
We started out with a special breakfast. I think I invented a new pancake! It was going to be just chocolate chips pancakes, but then I saw those mini marshmallows, and voila - s'mores pancakes were born! I did find that dropping the marshmallows onto the pan first, pouring the batter over them, then dropping the chocolate chips on top works best.
Then we headed down to the learning room. Zachary couldn't wait to get started - he remembered lots of the things we were doing last spring, so we just reviewed some of those for our first day back. First we sang our "Yellow is the Sun" song:
Yellow is the sun, six is five and one.
Why is the sky so blue? Seven is five and two,
Salty is the sea, eight is five and three.
Hear the thunder roar, nine is five and four.
Ducks will swim and dive, ten is five and five.
Then we reviewed how to represent numbers with tally sticks:
Zachary specifically requested our "Quick as You Can" game (when I lift the folder he has to tell me how many as quick as he can - this helps teach children not to count but to recognize quantities) For the life of me I can't get these to rotate - so in the interest of fighting my tendency toward perfectionism I'm posting them anyways!
Then he worked on writing his numbers and lowercase letters:
Nathan is in 2nd grade this year and is continuing to practice his cursive. Last year he kept asking to learn it and I was resisting because they don't normally learn cursive until later, but I guess one of the benefits of home education is being able to work with the child's interests and at their pace. He loves it and generally doesn't complain that his hand is hurting like he did with manuscript.
We are doing an Ancient Egypt unit for Nathan's world history and geography this fall. Last year we did Ancient Greece and Rome, at his request. It all started when I got him D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths and Jim Weiss' CD stories She and He and Greek Myths (all highly recommended). He was really into all the god and goddess stories. We had a lot of fun expanding that interest into ancient history, geography, the Olympics, and even did some Greek cooking. This year we will continue that interest with the Egyptian and Norse mythology, and at some point Ancient China and Japan. Love it! And I'm learning a ton too.
So we started with a read-aloud on the hammock of A Place in the Sun. Each chapter references different gods or goddesses, Pharoahs, architecture and art, and religious customs, which we then look up, followed by Nathan notebooking something of interest to him.
He chose to trace and color the god Amun and write a few sentences about him. I love this living books approach, way more fun than textbooks and he retains the info because it brings it all alive for him.
A bit of math review,
They both watched Little Pim for Spanish, and we were done!
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