Homeschooling, Week 4

     Yawn.  That is how our homeschool week started.  My daughter was extra sleepy after a very active Monday.  She woke up late and said, "I'm tired." then laid her head back down.  On Monday we headed out to meet with our Classical Conversations family to discuss The Core while the kids played on the field.  If you are interested in homeschooling or even just supplementing your child's education, I highly recommend reading The Core, now.  While your little ones are still little.  It will make a huge difference as they get along further in school.

     During our book club discussion we covered Math and Geography.  Admittedly, math was not my favorite subject in school.  I was a fan of English and Art.  My husband is a math whiz and I find myself being lazy and turning to him to calculate something instead of taking it upon myself to solve.  That bad habit ends now.  Or, at least I'll try.

     Anyway, the wonderful moms shared some great ways to incorporate math into daily routines:

• Cooking, especially teaching kids how to halve or double a recipe.
• Flash Cards (for speed and accuracy)  You can make your own and personalize to your child's level.
• A deck of cards (or two) which you can use to have your child either add, subtract or multiply as you lay the card(s) down.  I actually want to play this myself.
• Use a ruler to measure things different things and then either add or subtract the difference (again, depending on your child's level).

     While shopping I give the kids our budget and then as we put items into our grocery cart we add things up and see how close we are to either meeting our budget or going over it.  This isn't easy for my Kindergartner since she can't add yet, but this also serves as a lesson in smart purchasing choices and how to stick to a budget. My son adds things up (with the help of my husband, the walking calculator) and lets us know when we're over our budget.

     Our group also discussed Geography and I shared with the lovely ladies a great website that provided printable maps.  I'm currently working with the kids to help them learn the Continents and their location on a World Atlas.  Worldatlas.com is another source for larger, colorful maps.  We have a map of South America printed out and in my school binder from this site.  Last year in CC, thanks to a delightful song taught by my daughter's teacher, both of my kids have the countries of South America memorized.  There was even a question on Jeopardy last week about South America and my son was able to answer it because of the song (my daughter was napping and missed out).

     That was just part of our Monday.  The rest of the day was filled with activities, before and after the book club meeting.  We were so busy that when Tuesday morning came around, both kids were still feeling the need for rest.  Our school day started slowly (and later than usual).  I could tell that they weren't ready for class, so we took it easy; only doing our Bible study and some reading.  Afterwards, I let them relax.  My Little Toughie opted to draw and this is what she came up with:

     We just finished our study on weather last week and while she didn't have the energy to go over new material that day, I was happy to see that she wanted to share what she had learned with a picture.  She explained to me that the girl got caught in a thunderstorm.

     This is the prettiest thunderstorm I've ever seen!