Most of the schoolchildren in our neck of the woods have been out of school all week. We did go out and sled and build some snowmen, but the snow didn’t mean any days off for my poor homeschooled kids. Here’s what we did this week:
Math
Poppy hasn’t been having a problem with the concepts in her new math program, but the all-worksheets, all-the-time format isn’t working so well for her. She’s bored with it, and that’s manifesting itself in the way we’re butting heads over it. We’ve been doing math first thing every day. I’m going to rearrange our schedule a bit and see if that helps matters.
Spanish
After an initial reluctance to start a new unit, Poppy’s back to doing just fine on her Spanish lessons. She’s doing lessons on Monday and Wednesday and tests on Tuesdays and Thursdays now, with a break from Spanish on Fridays.
Health
This week’s lesson was about Different Ways to Exercise. Which pretty much meant the kids went bonkers for about 20 minutes.
Physical education
In addition to the health-lesson shenanigans, Poppy had her regular ballet class.
Reading
Poppy read for at least 20 minutes on her own every day this week, and we’re still reading a chapter of “A Little Princess” every day. spoilers Miss Minchin’s ‘tude toward poor little Sara prompted Poppy to declare that she’s “so glad we do school at home.”
Geography
We studied Maine this week. If Poppy were the kind of girl who ate anything other than peanut butter, it would’ve been a great excuse to buy a lobster. Oh well. She loves geography thus far. I think we’re going to start our days with it next week.
Science
We only did one of the planned lessons this week. The second one was about weighing things, and I don’t have a small scale. So we’ve bumped that to next week. Poppy did enjoy the lesson we did do, though, which was about estimating measurements.
Are you happy with the geography book you’re using? Wendy LOVES maps and stuff, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to introduce her to geography in our kindergarten year.
You don’t think Poppy would like lobster? Wendy ate crab as fast as I could shell it last night!
.-= Jeni´s last blog ..Ways to Beat the Winter Blahs without taking a cruise in the Caribbean =-.
I really like the book we’re using. It’s “Trail Guide to the US,” and I bought it as a PDF download from currclick.com. (It can be purchased as an actual book, too.) There are three “paths” of varying difficulty to choose from, so we’ll be able to use it again in a few years. This year, for example, we’re just concentrating on learning the capitals, state birds and a few famous people for each state. Later options include writing reports on each state’s industries/economies or other such things.
Don’t they make peanut butter in Maine? When you do Vermont, will you buy cheddar or Ben&Jerry’s?
What concepts are you doing in Math? If you dig the worksheets even though Poppy doesn’t, you could try the following (which works pretty well with high schoolers, who are not so different from kindergarteners): cut the exercises apart and tape them around the room; make some easy to find and some harder; encourage Poppy to keep looking until she’s found them all. With the high schoolers, I would require them to solve each problem before moving on. When I just needed them to practice a given skill they’d learned, and therefore wanted to just give them a bunch of practice (i.e., a worksheet), this kept them more interested.
Variations of the same idea: I taped the problems to the desks and had students rotate after a given amount of time (like stations). Sometimes I’d put the correct answers at the next station so students could correct their work. I also had students design a scavenger hunt using practice problems with multiple choice answers, each of which led to a next location, though only the right answer led to the right location with the next clue.
I know these strategies don’t fit the lofty constructivist approach we all envision, but sometimes you just need kids to practice!
I love having smart friends. 🙂 We’re working on addition and grouping. I’m going to incorporate some math card games next week, and we also ponied up for a subscription to Dreambox Learning. She’d get a kick out of running around searching for her work, though, so I’m thinking we’ll do that, too!
That’s definitely a good way of looking at it. We’ve got to be thankful and appreciate what gets done. Next week is another week to do more.