School
We have had a great 3 weeks of school this month, which I'm really happy with. I started doing something another mom talked about - doing only a few subjects a day. I've found that the days are shorter (duh) and Kara's focus is sharper. If I spend much more than 2 hours on school and jump around to cover 8+ subjects a day, my 7 year old can't focus quite so well. That first hour her mind is a steel trap so we always start with Bible and reading. As the morning goes on, we move to math, grammar, spelling, etc. and finish with health, art, etc.
Here's what we've been up to:
Bible - we use her Awanas book (and I am learning so much right along with her). She is earning jewels and badges and all of that. She learns scripture from the old testament and the new testament. She learns the gospel, as well as people's stories from the old testament, and other facts like she can list the books of the new testament. She's memorizing enough scripture that when she sat in big church with us, she recognized what the preacher was teaching as a previous memory verse. Good stuff. :-)
Reading - Kara has decided reading chapter books is awesome. She and I read other books together, but she reads enough chapter books, I let that count for school. Her vocabulary is growing, grammar is growing, and punctuation (with commas and quotations) all makes sense because she spends so much time with her nose in a book.
English - Okay, reading is well and good, but here is where we have to learn the third grade stuff. In the last 3 weeks, we've talked about summary, main idea, venn diagrams, compare and contrast, context clues, similies, metaphors, personification, fiction/non-fiction, mood, setting, chronological order, title, author, synonyms, antonyms, homophones, onomatopoeia.
Spelling - Even more English related lessons. We've done 3 lists. The hardest word was miscellaneous. Okay, confession, I didn't know how to spell that before this month.
Grammar - We are catching up on this, so we're reviewing some things and learning some things. I'm using a text book to get through this. We've learned direct quotations, indirect quotations, paragraphs, topic sentences, nouns, common and proper nouns, capitalizing, singular and plural nouns, irregular plural nouns, possessive nouns, compound nouns, nouns of direct address, and pronouns.
All of that is all the English stuff! Whew!!! I haven't even been keeping track of the Vocabulary words we're learning. Yikes. I better get on that.
Math - she is almost done with 3rd grade math, but I feel like I've been saying that since October. We are officially checking everything off the list and should be onto 4th grade math by January. This month we did graduated cylinders, fractions, cup/pint/quart/gallon, mL/liter, multiply 2 digit by 1 digit, divide 2 digit by 1 digit. Dividing was a little hard for her, until she said, "can we do math with objects instead of worksheets?" Okay.....so we learned long division with little table scatter I got on sale. I put groups of 10 in dixie cups and we went step by step with long division using objects. Whew. That stretched by teaching abilities. :-) So, we have probability left to discuss (which I think will make a lot of sense to her), and right angles. I think that's it, then I'm going to give her a giant test to be sure she actually knows everything before we move on.
Science - we got into the kitchen and did hands on projects and experiments with graduated cylinders, we showed how water can be solid, liquid, and gas, we talked about water as steam being vapor in the air and what other vapors are there? We talked about heat and cold changing things like melting chocolate, boiling and egg, and freezing water in a straw. We also talked about some earth science - the ocean is just land with mountains, valleys, etc covered in water, and why the moon looks different sometimes (how much of the earth is blocking the light from the sun).
Geography - we talked about north, south, east, west, distance scale, hemispheres, longitude, latitude, hills, mountains, peaks, valleys, canyons, cliffs, plateaus, rivers, and plains.
Social Studies - Ancient Greece - history overview, trojan horse, growing up in Greece, Greek homes, Greek gods, Olympics, theater, and art.
Health - we finished our chapter on vitamins, worked on a lot of manners and safety, then we started the food guide pyramid and mealtime manners.
P.E. - this has been fairly limited because it's been freezing here this month, so my mom took her to the playground once or twice, and I took her to a bouncy house once. Plus horse lessons, which uses every muscle in her body. Then we go to a friend's house and play on their backyard playground at least once a week.
Art - pottery every week, plus whatever cool craft we learn/do with Michael's mom via skype
Music - sing at church every week
WHEW. Are you tired just reading it? I am. We got all of this done in 1-2 hours, 5 days a week, over 3 weeks. (Except the reading - she reads chapter books on her own time. She's read about six 75 page chapter books in the last 3 weeks.)
Now we're going to take 2 weeks off for Christmas. I'd say we've earned it, wouldn't you. ;-)
P.S. Homeschool is still the most awesome thing on the planet. Kara, Michael, and I are all still thrilled God called us to this life. We don't think everyone should do it, but we love it for us. :-)
Here's what we've been up to:
Bible - we use her Awanas book (and I am learning so much right along with her). She is earning jewels and badges and all of that. She learns scripture from the old testament and the new testament. She learns the gospel, as well as people's stories from the old testament, and other facts like she can list the books of the new testament. She's memorizing enough scripture that when she sat in big church with us, she recognized what the preacher was teaching as a previous memory verse. Good stuff. :-)
Reading - Kara has decided reading chapter books is awesome. She and I read other books together, but she reads enough chapter books, I let that count for school. Her vocabulary is growing, grammar is growing, and punctuation (with commas and quotations) all makes sense because she spends so much time with her nose in a book.
English - Okay, reading is well and good, but here is where we have to learn the third grade stuff. In the last 3 weeks, we've talked about summary, main idea, venn diagrams, compare and contrast, context clues, similies, metaphors, personification, fiction/non-fiction, mood, setting, chronological order, title, author, synonyms, antonyms, homophones, onomatopoeia.
Spelling - Even more English related lessons. We've done 3 lists. The hardest word was miscellaneous. Okay, confession, I didn't know how to spell that before this month.
Grammar - We are catching up on this, so we're reviewing some things and learning some things. I'm using a text book to get through this. We've learned direct quotations, indirect quotations, paragraphs, topic sentences, nouns, common and proper nouns, capitalizing, singular and plural nouns, irregular plural nouns, possessive nouns, compound nouns, nouns of direct address, and pronouns.
All of that is all the English stuff! Whew!!! I haven't even been keeping track of the Vocabulary words we're learning. Yikes. I better get on that.
Math - she is almost done with 3rd grade math, but I feel like I've been saying that since October. We are officially checking everything off the list and should be onto 4th grade math by January. This month we did graduated cylinders, fractions, cup/pint/quart/gallon, mL/liter, multiply 2 digit by 1 digit, divide 2 digit by 1 digit. Dividing was a little hard for her, until she said, "can we do math with objects instead of worksheets?" Okay.....so we learned long division with little table scatter I got on sale. I put groups of 10 in dixie cups and we went step by step with long division using objects. Whew. That stretched by teaching abilities. :-) So, we have probability left to discuss (which I think will make a lot of sense to her), and right angles. I think that's it, then I'm going to give her a giant test to be sure she actually knows everything before we move on.
Science - we got into the kitchen and did hands on projects and experiments with graduated cylinders, we showed how water can be solid, liquid, and gas, we talked about water as steam being vapor in the air and what other vapors are there? We talked about heat and cold changing things like melting chocolate, boiling and egg, and freezing water in a straw. We also talked about some earth science - the ocean is just land with mountains, valleys, etc covered in water, and why the moon looks different sometimes (how much of the earth is blocking the light from the sun).
Geography - we talked about north, south, east, west, distance scale, hemispheres, longitude, latitude, hills, mountains, peaks, valleys, canyons, cliffs, plateaus, rivers, and plains.
Social Studies - Ancient Greece - history overview, trojan horse, growing up in Greece, Greek homes, Greek gods, Olympics, theater, and art.
Health - we finished our chapter on vitamins, worked on a lot of manners and safety, then we started the food guide pyramid and mealtime manners.
P.E. - this has been fairly limited because it's been freezing here this month, so my mom took her to the playground once or twice, and I took her to a bouncy house once. Plus horse lessons, which uses every muscle in her body. Then we go to a friend's house and play on their backyard playground at least once a week.
Art - pottery every week, plus whatever cool craft we learn/do with Michael's mom via skype
Music - sing at church every week
WHEW. Are you tired just reading it? I am. We got all of this done in 1-2 hours, 5 days a week, over 3 weeks. (Except the reading - she reads chapter books on her own time. She's read about six 75 page chapter books in the last 3 weeks.)
Now we're going to take 2 weeks off for Christmas. I'd say we've earned it, wouldn't you. ;-)
P.S. Homeschool is still the most awesome thing on the planet. Kara, Michael, and I are all still thrilled God called us to this life. We don't think everyone should do it, but we love it for us. :-)
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