Fifty Five!
Can anyone guess what this number stands for? It is the # of days left that I'm required to teach Leah for the rest of the school year. By the California Education Code, I must teach 180 days for a school year. Since we are year round private school, I have 55 more days that I'm required to "teach" Leah by August 31st. Do you think I'll make it? If we have school every week day through June 11th, taking 1 week off for Easter Break and 1 day off for Memorial Day-we'll have met the state's requirments. So I'm going out on a limb here, but even if we take a few days off between now & Aug. 31st, I'm guessing we'll exceed the state's requirements.
In January, I signed our family up for a new homeschool co-op. On Fridays the co-op holds classes at our church. I believe we have 70+ families signed up and 200+ kids. So every Friday, the kids and I head to co-op where I co-teach one class and take pictures for the yearbook the second hour. Nolan is taking an Arts & Crafts class (that I co-teach) while Leah's learning some facts in her "Geography" class. Then the kids meet up in their "Wacky Wild Science" class while mom meets up with her yearbook team & then is off to take pictures.
We are really enjoying it. I'm quite surprised to see so many familiar faces from our church that homeschool. There is a good number of kids that Leah and Nolan know or recognize from their Sunday school classe and Awanas. And there are a few from our Marine Biology co-op that we have once a month as well. Not that it matters much, but for those of you who are/were concerned, this co-op will help the kids learn "class room" etiquette, social skills, and be able to take directions from other adults. (Not that they were not already getting that in our weekly Sunday school, Awana's and Marine Biology co-op.)
Leah & Nolan both finished memorizing America the Beautiful-all 8 stanzas-though prompting on some verses is necessary for them to complete them, as many of the verses repeat a portion of the verse & add new verses to the end-which can be confusing. I give them both credit, as even I can't recall half of the verses they do without cheating and looking at my sheet with the song. I'm leaning toward "The Gettysburg Address" for our next memory verse that we'll start in April.
Both Leah & Nolan have been enjoying our math games that I introduced last month-of course their favorites being the games that I use mini-marshmallows or chocolate chips as our counters :) Currently their favorite is an additon/subraction game called "Add-in, take-out" because when we subtract-they get to "take-out" the treat to their mouth!
We have two more chapters to complete in our Marine Biology book. I'll be teaching the lesson for the younger kids on Jellyfish & Sea Anemones (as long as I'm not called for jury duty) Leah found a great jellyfish craft to make, so we'll be using that for our craft for the class-hopefully.
It's been really fun coming up with "alternate" ways to teach the kids. I want them to grasp the concepts I'm teaching and not just "memorize" math facts etc. Even when I teach them our "memory verse" it becomes a history lesson and vocabulary lesson with all the new words introduced and we pull out the dictionary to look up the meaning of words or even how to pronounce the words that even mom doesn't know. Of course this might be one of the reasons I'm amazed sometimes at the words these kids use during play (and in the correct context). That and we listen to audio books EVERY TIME we drive anywhere-to co-op, to the park, to doctor/dentist, to the grocery stores, to the library. So far this year we've listened to 17 audiobooks since Sept. 1st. That's pretty good considering we've not been on too many big trips and I know for 3 weeks we listened to stories from "The Adventure's in Odessey" which were stories from a radio show.
Between being gone & ill in January, then starting co-op, we've not gone on too many field trips. I hope to remedy this soon. We did take a field trip the end of February to the Jelly Belly Factory with our Scope group and the kids were very excited that Dad could come with us. It worked out well, because he had inspections to do on the way home so he didn't miss out on a work day :)
We learning about Ancient Egypt in history and I hope in the near future we'll be able to take a field trip to the Rosicrucean Egyptian Museum in San Jose. Leah's been fascinated with mummy's for quite some time, so I think she may enjoy it.
That's about it for now. Thanks for reading.
In January, I signed our family up for a new homeschool co-op. On Fridays the co-op holds classes at our church. I believe we have 70+ families signed up and 200+ kids. So every Friday, the kids and I head to co-op where I co-teach one class and take pictures for the yearbook the second hour. Nolan is taking an Arts & Crafts class (that I co-teach) while Leah's learning some facts in her "Geography" class. Then the kids meet up in their "Wacky Wild Science" class while mom meets up with her yearbook team & then is off to take pictures.
We are really enjoying it. I'm quite surprised to see so many familiar faces from our church that homeschool. There is a good number of kids that Leah and Nolan know or recognize from their Sunday school classe and Awanas. And there are a few from our Marine Biology co-op that we have once a month as well. Not that it matters much, but for those of you who are/were concerned, this co-op will help the kids learn "class room" etiquette, social skills, and be able to take directions from other adults. (Not that they were not already getting that in our weekly Sunday school, Awana's and Marine Biology co-op.)
Leah & Nolan both finished memorizing America the Beautiful-all 8 stanzas-though prompting on some verses is necessary for them to complete them, as many of the verses repeat a portion of the verse & add new verses to the end-which can be confusing. I give them both credit, as even I can't recall half of the verses they do without cheating and looking at my sheet with the song. I'm leaning toward "The Gettysburg Address" for our next memory verse that we'll start in April.
Both Leah & Nolan have been enjoying our math games that I introduced last month-of course their favorites being the games that I use mini-marshmallows or chocolate chips as our counters :) Currently their favorite is an additon/subraction game called "Add-in, take-out" because when we subtract-they get to "take-out" the treat to their mouth!
We have two more chapters to complete in our Marine Biology book. I'll be teaching the lesson for the younger kids on Jellyfish & Sea Anemones (as long as I'm not called for jury duty) Leah found a great jellyfish craft to make, so we'll be using that for our craft for the class-hopefully.
It's been really fun coming up with "alternate" ways to teach the kids. I want them to grasp the concepts I'm teaching and not just "memorize" math facts etc. Even when I teach them our "memory verse" it becomes a history lesson and vocabulary lesson with all the new words introduced and we pull out the dictionary to look up the meaning of words or even how to pronounce the words that even mom doesn't know. Of course this might be one of the reasons I'm amazed sometimes at the words these kids use during play (and in the correct context). That and we listen to audio books EVERY TIME we drive anywhere-to co-op, to the park, to doctor/dentist, to the grocery stores, to the library. So far this year we've listened to 17 audiobooks since Sept. 1st. That's pretty good considering we've not been on too many big trips and I know for 3 weeks we listened to stories from "The Adventure's in Odessey" which were stories from a radio show.
Between being gone & ill in January, then starting co-op, we've not gone on too many field trips. I hope to remedy this soon. We did take a field trip the end of February to the Jelly Belly Factory with our Scope group and the kids were very excited that Dad could come with us. It worked out well, because he had inspections to do on the way home so he didn't miss out on a work day :)
We learning about Ancient Egypt in history and I hope in the near future we'll be able to take a field trip to the Rosicrucean Egyptian Museum in San Jose. Leah's been fascinated with mummy's for quite some time, so I think she may enjoy it.
That's about it for now. Thanks for reading.
Comments
Post a Comment
Your comment will be posted after moderator's approval.