This week in homeschooling: Spelling, snow days and suspension bridges

snowday

We got about 7 inches of snow this week. Usually we don’t take snow days — we prefer to skip school on nice, sunny days — but with that much snow and Rockford trapped at home with us I couldn’t resist. So instead of school yesterday, the kids spent the day sledding, having snowball fights and making snowmen.

It was the best Thursday in recent memory.

Spelling

Pete didn’t do any spelling at all this week. The curriculum he’s been working with is the standard memorize-the-spelling-list-and-do-some-worksheets model that I grew up with, but it doesn’t seem to be clicking with him. He’s been struggling with it, which has led to him hating the very idea of doing his spelling work. So we’re taking a break from it until his new spelling curriculum (All About Spelling) arrives. I think the “multisensory” approach will work well for Pete.

History

This week we talked about the industrialists of the Gilded Age (Rockefeller, etc.) and about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. The rich-guy stuff was OK, but the bridge construction was fascinating. We read “The Brooklyn Bridge” by Elizabeth Mann, and we watched the following video:




And now Pete wants to go to Brooklyn so he can walk across the bridge.

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