So I'm working on reviewing sentences and sentence structure today in homeschooling. However, I have to acknowledge that I had to prepare for this lesson. I've forgotten so much about language arts that it's just sad. But having my 1st grader jump in and ask questions when discussing this lesson? priceless.... Having my older daughter help my youngest learn? priceless.. You can't buy these things for any amount of money and it's yet another reason I love homeschooling. As you can imagine, we have decided that this is working well for us and we're going with it again next year. Very happy about that. Plus I'm trying now to figure out how to incorporate "Learn at the Beach" day for us.....thoughts?
(Psttt....basically I want a day at the beach but trying to work out a way to have school that day 2)
So my Duchess is finishing up 1st grade. She is streaking through her school books like a knife through warm butter. That said, she wasn't really into school before we started homeschooling. Oh she did really well and made good grades but now, she is all about "I wanna read" and "can we do school" at 9:30 pm instead of going to bed. Not to mention when I did an exit interview with her teacher she was at a perfectly normal mid 1st grade reading level. She is now reading books with very few pictures. The kid is reading like a champ. She read Dave her entire chapter on Animals in her science book the other night, for fun. I see the progress that thinking outside of the box has done for my kid.
Princess is catching up full stream. She is doing better with her spelling (which was previously sooooo bad you could hardly tell what she'd written), her math is moving so quickly ahead, and we are working on getting language up there too. For her, this has been a chance to work at her own pace and emphasis. The subject she wants to do the least, we do last in our day and frankly by the time she is tired of it, it's been 2 hours. We are hammering math and she isn't even aware that she hates it so much, much less that we are doing math, hours go by instead of minutes. I love the unstructure of this life.
We have absolutely no clocks in our school area, there is nothing set for our day except what concept I'm teaching. For instance, this is what my lesson plan for Duchess is for this week for a couple classes:
Spelling:
Monday: test
Tues: new words, 5 ea
Wed: computer spell games, silly sentences
Thur: 5 ea, verbal games
Fri: practice test (if makes 100% no Mon test), missed words 10 ea
Extras:
Mon: n/a
Tues: lesson on manners, act out situations
Wed: typing exercise
Thur: n/a
Fri: typing exercise
However, 1st grade is alot easier to teach than 5th....take a peek:
Language Arts:
Mon: issue book reports for Sat/ diagramming sentence quiz
Tue: Ask? State. Command. Exclaim!
Wed: Punctuation continue - worksheets, correct together
Thur: Punctuation continue - computer game
Fri: Quiz - punctuation
History:
Mon: n/a
Tues: Chapter 3 review, turn in project
Wed: cont. Chapter 3 review, verbal discussion questions/answers
Thurs: Chapter 3 test
Fri: Intro to Ch 7, project intro and application
(we are going out of order in History as she has previously done most of the later chapters in her previous school)
So I don't set times, I'm flexible about their days. For instance since we had a trip to Houston yesterday, we had no school on Monday this week so we shifted everything so we have school on Saturday now.
It's crazy how my love of running projects has translated into running my kids' education.
Send vodka...... (kidding!....kinda)
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Ask? Exclaim! Command. Declare.
