Last week we discussed light, rainbows, shadows and mirrors for science.
A lot of this has been review for Doo. In fact, a lot of Start Up Science has been review for her. I don’t think this has been a bad thing, though. It’s solidifying some of this knowledge for her. I am very glad I paired the workbooks with library readings because otherwise it would have been much too little for her. We will finish out our science plan for this year and then go into something a bit meatier and more hands on for second grade. Right now I am mulling over Delta Education’s Space Science Cluster.
In Math, we have been covering time the last two weeks. Doo has grasped this pretty easily.
Once we finish up with Math Mammoth’s first grade, which we have 3 chapters left, I am mulling over changing her to Teaching Textbooks. We would still use the Math Mammoth worksheets from time to time but I really like how interactive this program is. Doo and I tried it out before Christmas and she loved it. I definitely think we will use it come second grade, I just haven’t decided if we should start once we finish first grade Math Mammoth (just 2-3 months left of that I am guessing). Hmmmm.
With our busy schedule and Mama juggling working plus homeschooling Doo, our nature study has taken a huge hit. Doo has spontaneously gotten out her nature study journal a few times on her own but the last time we purposefully sat down somewhere to do a lesson was last February!
I forget if I mentioned here that this next half of the year we decided to not participate in our Tuesday homeschool co-op. Wonderful co-op and people but we needed a weekday where we could just do our own thing like hang out at a park and do lessons, go on a field trip, etc… We have always had that until this Fall and it was deeply missed.
So yesterday we headed to a large, local park with a man-made lake and enjoyed watching the ducks, cormorants and other birds. Doo decided to draw a Brandt’s Cormorant (at least that’s what we figured it was after consulting our nature guide). We had watched one diving and throwing up little fish and gobbling them down. Quite entertaining.
We also read our Thornton Burgess book for our animal study as well and were visited by a Common Grackle. I am pretty sure he was convinced we were going to feed him because he hung out with us for a long time, even when Doo walked up close to him. We had no goodies, unfortunately.
Life has been pretty packed which has gotten in the way of blogging. Egads! I have some posts to share, hopefully sooner than later, about various things we have been doing homeschool-wise. Including making a volcano when we learned about Crete. It was a big hit.
Our last animal study brought us the resourceful beaver.
The last 6 weeks of Ancient History has taken us from the first farmers and the fertile crescent through Sumeria and now we are starting our lessons on Egypt.
A couple of weeks ago we learned about the first writing so Doo created her own cuneiform tablet. She chose “Love, Hope, Peace” for her words.
We’ve read some good library books.
And created our own Nile River. It took less than a week for the grass shoots to poke up after the “Nile” flooded!
The Start Up Science workbooks we have are very simple (I do not agree with the first/second grade label) but they are also very sweet. The workbooks are definitely on the easy end for Doo but they also helped structure our science year. She enjoys working in them and every week we read library books to coincide with the lessons. The “living book” additions help flesh out the curriculum and have made it worthwhile to keep for the year.
So far we’ve covered living vs. nonliving things, the human body and a lot about animals. Habitats, diets, how they move, etc… And along with the library books we have enjoyed some good videos on Discovery Streaming.
Doo is also enjoying a whole semester on the human body and with earth science via her classes. Science continues to be her favorite subject.
In the co-op class I am teaching we have studied the Fall Equinox and why leaves change colors the last 2 weeks. Today each kid created an arm/hand “tree” and added autumn colored leaves (colored leaf cutouts plus they created their own with construction paper).
