After an extended break, we are back to learning. Our two week Christmas break stretched into three because of a bad reaction to onions. Evidently this baby doesn’t like them…so mom was on the couch for two days. By the time I was ready to teach, we had a field trip to the Nutcracker and two Christmas programs, not to mention cookies to bake and presents to wrap!
The plan was to start school again yesterday (Monday), but I decided to take it slowly and let the kids get used to dad being back at work. Monday is also my day to teach, so I had to get myself back into that groove as well as homeschooling. As I scurried around locating materials and packing snacks for the afternoon, I quickly realized that even minimal school would not be happening. Although I canceled school for the day, they quickly showed me that we are raising children who are independent learners and who know how to occupy themselves constructively. Nathanael began to add additional components to the computer game he is creating using the Tektoma tutorials (more on that in a few days). Maggie and Katie decided to put on a puppet show. Maggie even wrote three plays and made a sock puppet without any help from me. I guess that took care of composition and art for the day!
Now today, Tuesday, I’m still working to get myself back into the swing of things. Before Christmas I began tweaking our workboxes. Although I love the idea of having different things every day, much of the children’s work does not change from day to day—they have math, language, spelling, handwriting, etc. everyday. It was getting very tedious to “reset” the workboxes every night when I could very easily write out their weekly schedule for those repetitive subjects. Also, we do so much of our memory, history, read aloud and science together that it isn’t practical to use individual workboxes. So, we’ve changed it up a bit. I’ll post the details tomorrow.
We haven’t completed as much as I would like today, but we did accomplish this much:
- Nathanael worked on Worship Guitar (review item—post coming later)
- Maggie worked on her attitude :) and cursive
- All of the children began working on Math Score and Facts First, two new math websites we are reviewing for the Crew
- Benjy and Katie had story and snuggle time on the couch with mom and then watched the Young Minds Numbers and Counting DVD from Math Tutor DVD (quickly becoming one of my top picks for preschool/K educational videos)
- We read several chapters of Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze, our current read aloud.
I’m hoping to use these long cold wintery days to get a jump ahead on our schedule. I’ll keep you posted on our progress…
