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.
Well I’ve already tweaked our Summer plans a bit. We will be taking our break earlier than originally planned because we will be starting First Grade a few weeks earlier than we began school last year. This next year, we will be joining a virtual charter school for our homeschooling adventures. The charter school we chose, while it requires that we cover California’s State Standards, does not require a specific curriculum for us to use. The ES (Educational Specialist), who we will meet with monthly and who will be available for us to contact any time in between meetings, needs to approve our curriculum choices. She could also help us make these choices but we’ve already met and she put me down as the 100% “curriculum choice-maker” after I discussed our First Grade plans. One of the reasons why we homeschool is that I want my child to have an individualized curriculum so the freedom to choose that curriculum is huge for me. There are plenty of virtual charter schools in our area that do the choosing for you, which some parents desire, but that would never be for me personally. And the funny thing about us covering the CA Standards is that we can hop around grade requirements. When I told her we would be covering The Ancients for history she said that was great and that she would be ticking off Sixth Grade history standards. LOL
Anyway, so this change (our charter school’s year starts August 18th!) means I sped up some of our lessons. As of yesterday, my little Kindergartner finished her Religion Study and Prehistory lessons. We also got half-way through Math Mammoth’s First Grade and did a review so that seemed like a good stopping point for the Summer. I think we’ll continue her Spanish lessons for about two more weeks while we finish up her Composer (Bach) and Artist (Gauguin) studies.
We may or may not cover California History in July. I may just stretch that unit study out over First Grade and make it a 1-2 times a month lesson. We will see.
I have been in major planning mode and have been creating our curriculum (Ancient History, Science, etc). I am excited to get First Grade started but it will be nice to take a break and not have anything scheduled minus her circus classes.
Doo has been swimming along wonderfully with our new Math Mammoth program. I think she really enjoys being able to read the instructions and get to work on her own. I always check each section and she lets me know if she has any questions but is otherwise very independent with her math now. She enjoys doing the worksheets and they definitely help her focus on the problems easier than with the manipulative in RightStart Math (which, I still think is a great program, just not a good match for Doo).
One of the many benefits to homeschooling is the ability to tweak your child’s curriculum to best meet their educational needs and strengths. We are trying out Mammoth Math currently to see if it is a better fit than RightStart. We have definitely enjoyed RightStart Math and Doo has learned a lot from it. What I thought would be great is how hands on it is. And sometimes that is great. But what I have found is that Doo gets very distracted during these hands on tasks. She’s wiggly, wants to add made up stories (which would be fine but they distract her), and, in general, has trouble visualizing some of the math in her head. Anyone who knows her knows her mind goes nonstop, she’s a huge talker, very social. So I started thinking that maybe a table top, sit down type of math would be better. I also wanted something where she could read what to do versus listening orally to the instructions. In comes Math Mammoth. The worksheets flat out tell her what to do and I hover a bit to make sure she gets the instructions. So far so good. She is really enjoying doing these worksheets and I think she likes reading the directions on her own. I am 99% sure we will be buying this curriculum via the Homeschool Co-op‘s discount for this month. In the mean time, we’re using the free trial pages and will probably poke around RightStart Math a bit more.
Well I didn’t catch up on blog posts at all during our school break. BUT we did have loads of wonderful family time so I don’t care.
Today we started learning about money with RightStart Math and we finished our reptiles lesson for prehistory. I rented the first DVD of Life in Cold Blood and we watched it during our rainy Sunday. Doo really enjoyed it and got very excited to see a Thorny Devil since she saw one yesterday at Grandma’s (not a real one, part of an alphabet toy)!
Our Tuesday co-op doesn’t start for a few more weeks (and we dropped the Wednesday one, for now, due to our schedule being too tight) but we are otherwise back to our usual school schedule.
Sunday was our first day of Kindergarten. Doo was quite excited. We took the obligatory first day of school photos and then the 2 of us headed to the farmer’s market.
Once home, lessons commenced. We reviewed math (she remembered it all) and she read from Pippi, narrated a Blacky the Crow chapter, and practiced writing her “S” which she has been reversing lately. We also started our prehistory lessons. Today’s focused on discussing the various periods and how long Earth’s timeline has been. We got out her new evolution timeline playmat, which is longer than our hallway, and read bits from every period.
Next week, our 2 homeschool co-ops are starting. She will take a cooking class and storytelling/art class on Tuesdays. The Wednesday co-op’s schedule hasn’t been posted yet but there will be a one time “mad science” class later this month and a 6 week woodworking class starting in October that we are signed up for. We are both very excited!
Our mini vacation is over and today we enjoyed a math lesson (a review of our last one which Doo remembered well), reading her chapter book (no help from me – she read words such as “insolent, pleasure, and anxious” with ease), narration after reading a chapter from Blacky the Crow, and our bird study.
Today’s birds were the American Woodcock and the Spotted Sandpiper. We found both birds very amusing with their movements and the American Woodcock’s method of getting worms (shoving his entire long bill deeply into the ground) very interesting.
