In my life this week...
Back a year or so ago, I did a fitness "boot camp" with teachers from school. We were fit and motivated. They still are....this week they entered their first triathlon. I looked at the photo with joy (for them) and envy (me).
Last year I was commuting up to 3 hours a day, so fitness took a back seat to driving. I promised myself this year would see me looking after myself better as well as homeschooling. Well, I've got the homeschooling thing going on pretty well, but the fitness thing....not so much. I keep telling myself "it's time". It's time!
In our homeschool this week...
After a teary start to the week (who know cutting fingernails was so traumatic?), I figured sitting down to a tough session of decimals wasn't going to go down well. So I asked the kids if they could learn anything at all, what would they like to learn more about? Video Boy said "cooking". So, cooking it was! We have been trying to cut out sugar after reading Sweet Poison, so we were trialling some of the recipes using dextrose instead of sugar. The coconut biscuits were yum!
We then completed in a fractions worksheet from Enrichematics which I thought was a pretty clever way of linking in maths with recipes! See, I'm starting to get into this natural learning thingy!
The other HUGE interest this week was history. It had been bothering me that we had not really touched on history at all. So I pulled out an old History of the World book I got when I was young, and we started at the beginning (a very good place to start, I'm told!) - the stone age.
A couple of YouTube videos later from the Horrible Histories series and they were hooked! We finished up our stone age day with a notebook , which I had wondered about but not really looked into, and a timeline.
Video Boy got right into it and started a very detailed cartoon of his view of stone age life. Wombat Girl found the task a bit too open-ended and more tears ensued. What a day!
We went to the local bookstore and purchased the DVD of Series One of Horrible Histories - it has been on constant play ever since - I think the kids have learnt more history in one week than I have in my life! Not what I had planned, but who can argue when they are loving learning?
With all that history, it was Pi Day and we missed it...never mind, we will revisit when we get to geometry.
Places we're going and people we're seeing...
We ventured out to meet up with a local homeschooling group on Wednesday - our first one! Wombat Girl fit in straight away with the other kids, while Video Boy had a good time once he was introduced to the other boys (those teenagers look so old!). I had a nice time getting to know other homeschooling mums from the local area and found we homeschool for such a variety of reasons and the people who homeschool are just as varied as the kids we teach.
My favorite thing this week was...
The cooler weather! Such a relief - I was melting.
What's working/not working for us...
Wombat Girl had real trouble with the notebooking concept. Other mums suggested she might prefer the more structured approach of lapbooking - something I will have to look into.
Homeschool questions/thoughts I have...
What's lapbooking and will it work for us?
A photo, video, link, or quote to share...
My turn...
I love love love that you used cooking for your lessons. Doing those kinds of learning activities are the things that can make homeschool so great; and what a great skill to teach our kids. found you on the homeschool mom linky; hope you will come over and say hello.
ReplyDeleteStopping by from HSMJ, looks like a great week . I'm your newest follower =)
ReplyDeleteLapbooking for us is doing research, cutting out pictures, doing mini-books, illustrations to complile into a tri-folded file folder. We love them. Visiting from THMJ.
ReplyDeleteI love that your incoporated cooking into your class work.
ReplyDeleteNew follower from Homeschool Mother's Journal. Never heard of that history series, will be looking for that. We are planning on concentrating more on history coming up in the fall. I was going to use Story of the World with supplemental materials.
ReplyDeleteIf you get a chance check out our world...
www.krazykuehnerdays.com
Renita
PS Very jealous of the "melting" comment...we have been freezing here in Ohio (USA)
The cooking was a great pressure valve! And it was great we could link it to our maths.
ReplyDeleteWhere in Ohio are you Renita? I have an email-pal who lives in Delaware.
Hi Ingi! I love how you break up your posts into little headings. I may have to try that one day!
ReplyDeleteWe make lapbooks on occasion. My boys (8 and 11) will look back at a lapbook, but not so much with a scrap or notebook.
~Liz (burfhe from TRP)
Hi Liz! The headings are from the Homeschool Chick's web link up - nice way to summarise our week and think about what we are doing.
ReplyDeleteoh, yeah, I think I just realised that when I saw it on another blog. You'd think I'd just dropped into the blogosphere and I've been reading blogs for years!
ReplyDelete