Sunday, May 29, 2011

The Homeschool Mother's Journal - 13

In my life this week…
I have been tutoring!  Word of mouth spreads quickly and I am doing 2-3 hours of maths, science and chemistry tutoring every afternoon.

Up to Week 9 in C25K - I can proudly say I can run for 30 minutes without stopping! I "graduate" on Sunday! This running bizzo has made such a difference to my life and I can safely say I'm addicted and will keep going.

In our homeschool this week…
Lots of maths - volume, converting units of volume, area of triangles.  I'm really proud of the kids' maths. They (for the most part) handle the more difficult questions I set for them and Wombat Girl is working around 3 years ahead. It is rewarding to see them being challenged at just the right level!


Poetry - we did some poetry exercises from Creating Poetry. Now I have to say poetry is NOT one of Video Boy's favourite things, but he loved the "train of thought" exercise! Still working on re-drafting and then editing those initial idea starters. I promised I wouldn't put them on my blog :-)

Combined science and english with a viewing of Mountains of Power DVD from the Snowy Mountains Hydro company. For those overseas, Australia's biggest engineering achievement was the building of a huge hydro-electric scheme in our Snowy Mountains area (and I use both the words "snowy" and "mountains" loosely here!!). I wanted the kids to develop their notetaking/summarising skills (we used this scaffold to help us) and also I wanted them to look at the information presented critically.  What was the video NOT showing us? Is hydro-electricity all good, clean power? What are the negative impacts that they did not show us (no surprise)?


Self-portraits. Video Boy baulked BIG TIME at completing this, and this is attempt 5! But it turned out pretty good in the end. Wombat Girl loved the whole thing. I did one too!





Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
Feels like I have been juggling a lot of balls and they are falling around me. I am a real introvert - I could happily stay at home, but I have to make more of an effort to see the people who are important to me and to get out and do things that are important to me.

My favorite thing this week was…
Guided meditations with the kids. Just lovely to have quiet time, to slow our busy "monkey minds" and "be". 

What’s working/not working for us…
Being able to have in-depth discussions with the kids. This is too hard in the classroom, because there are just too many kids. But being able to discuss things, talk about issues, explore them in depth, express ideas, think critically - that is one of the many bonuses of homeschooling!


Homeschool questions/thoughts I have…
Do you ever get rid of the feeling that you should be doing "more"?


A photo, video, link, or quote to share…


No - you can't share my poetry with the world!

3 comments:

  1. I love the drawings you lot have done of yourselves. Good job!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi! I love the self-portraits, too!

    And I'm only going on my 3rd year homeschooling, so no I've not figured out how to get rid of that 'I should be doing more' feeling. When you find a way, please share!! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Finishing up 7 years of homeschooling and I still feel I should be doing more. Nasty monkey on my shoulder!

    ReplyDelete

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