9.13.2008

We made it through the 1st week

The first week of homeschooling that is, and it has been awesome! The kids were a little hesitant of my ambitions on Monday but by Friday they had embraced the idea with open arms. Whenever we are at the table working on projects my daughter insists on calling me Teacher Emily. And one afternoon while we were reading a book she had an enlightening moment where she realized that "homeschool" was two words, "home" and "school" which led her into a delightful explanation of how homeschooling is like having school at home. My son has been a little more of a challenge in that he is sure he already knows all there is to know about everything and has a hard time believing that there is anything that I am capable of teaching him. And of course the baby isn't a fan of mommy directing attention at anyone but her so she always brings just a bit more chaos to the classroom.


Our daily journals have been the most consistent piece of our daily routine. And also one of the kids' favorite things. They provide a place to practice writing the date and names each day, a place to write, doodle, draw, practice letters and numbers as well as to record anything we are studying or observing. For a 4 year old it is turning into a collection of words that describe his pictures with the occasional observation, but he has enjoyed learning about dates and it is good practice for writing his name repeatedly. For my 3 year old it is more of a drawing notebook, with lots of letter A's and occasionally the rest of her name as well.

We started sprouting some beans this week and drew observations of them each day to see how they changed. We cut lots of fruits and veggies to look at the different seeds inside. We even planted some, but the purpose of that was mostly just to play in the dirt!


We made applesauce one day and bread on another. We visited the grocery store and weighed fruits and vegetables on the scales discussing which items we thought would weigh more or less and what would happen to the weight when we added more or took some away. I think the person who worked there was starting to get irritated with us touching everything after a while so we bought a few more things then we actually needed.

Thanks to a large spider who built a web in our front window we were able to observe his life in action. We watched as his web grew bigger and bigger. We saw his prey get trapped in the web and observed as it became a tasty meal. This led us on a trip to the library to check out all sorts of books on spiders. We weaved webs with yarn and cardboard, made pictures of spiders with our thumbprints and filled our journals with many pictures of spiders and their webs!

We finished out the week with a trip to our CSA, Sun Gold Farm, I posted some pictures of that fun outing here.

A successful first week and we can't wait for more!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! That is awesome you are homeschooling. I remember my mom home schooled all 4 of us one year, and I felt like that was the year of school I learned the most and was able explore the things I was most interested in, like biology. You are creating wonderful memories for them and they are going to learn so much.
It's nice to know from reading your blog that some little boys come into the world thinking they already know everything. Since we got full custody of Parker when he was 8, I've had to play catch up in raising boys. I think I have all the parenting book. He too, loves to tell endless stories.
I look forward to more post on how class going.

Anonymous said...

That is so cool, Emily! What a great week! :)

Thank you so much for the potluck invite (from Sarah). I think we may be out of town that weekend, but we are so excited for such a group. Thank you!!

Oh- one more thought- when we first started homeschooling my youngest sister, she insisted that she already knew how to "read." (Too stubborn to admit that she really didn't.) We ended up having her "teach" her baby dolls how to read, and it finally clicked.

I wonder if Cole might end up in a similar situation. :) The library has a good "reading to the dogs" program that might be fun. (Although, you could probably just borrow someone else's dog.) :)

Michele